The Delusion Of Being...

You know how it starts. A lost soul entrenched in idyllic surroundings, strings together complex and inflated words to describe what he feels is the most breathtaking sight he has ever laid his eyes on. We swoon, we gasp, we are even spellbound by such artistic and abstract representation. On the other hand it maybe the solemn musings of a scorned lover. High on a few drinks, he lets out all of his heartburn through the quill. Letting words do what he cannot. Again, we are affected profoundly by the protagonists shattering prose. But does our fickle and questioning mind ever ask, what is the point of it all? I do. Almost half-embarrassingly so.

I have to admit upfront that I’ve never seen the point of poetry. Now before you attempt go baying for my blood to refill the ink pot for your quill, read me out. It is not like I am incapable of differentiating a good poem from a useless one. But I fail to see beyond the nominal lyrical value of such an endeavour. It’s rarely of any functional value. There’s really nothing that a well written story/ article can’t express. Imagery and the acoustic sense, normally championed by poets, can very well be conveyed without the unnecessary and at times, redundant, language labyrinths. Plus with poetry, you have to write within it’s perimeters of rhyme and segmentation and can't fully express yourself. Other forms like haiku, offer much more flexibility in that sense. The biggest drawback I feel is that you need to be dramatic while writing a poem and it’s almost next to impossible to write about otherwise normal and ordinary predicaments or situations. At times the poem tends to veer off and end up far from the theme. But I guess that’s a part of writing something like that. The meaning of a poem, in the process of sounding grand and abstract, sometime gets lost as the debate between the literary and metaphorical value takes over.Pedants reading this will probably assault me on the blog title by saying that poetry is totally different from prose. As someone I know, once likened it, “Poetry is like liquor where mere prose is bloating beer.”  But that’s hardly the point.

I remember coming across this poem on some Yahoo! Answers forum a while. Sums it up quite eruditely :)

“Those poets they are a useless lot
they drink red wine and smoke wicked pot.
They alliterate and use imagery
Meditate for hours upon some bloody tree!
But who has built a house of words?
Crops are not sown by a man admiring birds
And writing that his love is lorn
His life in tatters, his heart all torn.
Pick up a spade, you lazy clods
Plant the seeds, turn the sods
Do something useful, something real!
And bury your artistic zeal”

I don’t mean to discredit all the acclaimed poets who’ve devoted their lives to poetry. Nor those who enjoy the form. It’s just not my cup of tea, that’s all. Maybe it’s because I can write a poem to save my life. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been attracted enough to try!

“I fear one day I'll meet God, he'll sneeze and I won't know what to say.”- Ronnie Shakes

So after much hullabaloo and constant delay, the judgment on the six decades old Ayodhya title suite is out. And seemingly it seems balanced and logical. A three way division (2:1 to Hindus), to be enforced after 3 months. All in all a balanced and sensible verdict which certainly did cause none of the brouhaha the government thought it would. But this not what the post is about. That is for all the “learned” and “informed” panelists who are busy TV studio hopping from one channel to another, dissecting the verdict and giving each other congratulatory jhappies.Personally (and I’m sure it finds resonance amongst my peers), I couldn’t care less with what happens with the disputed area. Heck, erect a KFC there for all I care! And understandably enough, the same opinion is shared by most Indians which obviously also includes the eponymous “common man”, everyone’s favourite fall guy.

All this made me reflect on the bigger issue. How religion provokes and ignites such vehement and inflammatory opinions. Isn’t it supposed to unite and preach tolerance? But id you look at all the strife in the world, you’ll realize how foolhardy that notion is- whether it’s Islamic xenophobia, or the imperialist ways of right wing Hindu groups seeped in an Aryan mindset. And I haven’t even mentioned the race tensions in Spain, Israel, China etc.

To understand how we have arrived at what seems like a paradox, one must evaluate the basis and evolution organized religion. The first organized religions appear to have been based on fertility. They were focused on the worship of the great Earth Goddess. Religion evolved to include male Gods who were gradually given increased importance by the priests. Along with this different factors like the size of the human brain, increasing use of tools and increased prevalence of group living- also contributed to it. Expansion of the neocortex, which is involved in processing higher order cognitive functions that are necessary for human religiosity. According to Dunbar's theory, the relative neocortex size of any species correlates with the level of social complexity of the particular species. For example, in chimpanzees the neocortex occupies 50% of the brain, whereas in modern humans it occupies 80% of the brain. That may explain why humans have a more pronounced religious system than apes!

This may be the historical bedrock on which different faiths were founded but when you look at the present state of almost major modern-day religions, you’ll notice that they are largely a response to human fear. Their main function is to provide their followers with a feeling of security while living in a dangerous and volatile environment in which a person can be injured, killed or murdered at any time due to natural causes, accidents or human hatred and intolerance. This is the basic flaw. If something is founded on the exploitation of insecurity it is bound to breed insecurity. And people living in such an atmosphere or fear and virulence can’t get along. This cuts across all religions, whether it is the Maulvis who talk of the constant threat from Western powers or the equally terrifying prospect of Saffron extremism. We have ample evidence historically, which proves that such kind of hate-mongering, once mass bred, can lead to horrifying and catastrophic consequences (The Holocaust anyone?). Once man evolved to a slightly higher level of understanding, it created a concept of faith, an inner and personal belief in a supreme being or creator. Since this time, this has been hijacked by people looking to control the masses and represent a ‘greater power' to their own effect, this is where modern religions were born.

Contrary to what it may seem till now, I am not against religion. To the point that it provides someone with a sense of inner calm and belief, it’s fine, but the moment these vested interests turn it into a forceful and vicious propaganda, it loses all meaning. The scariest thing to me is the blind zealots which continue to use religion as a means of power and control. It’s then that you realize that religion is a man made concept created to fill the void of the unknown. As a species we are generally quite weak and very fearful of the unknown. Over the millennia, mankind has passed these theories and stories down from generation to generation, and the truth has become blurred and no longer truly recognizable.Where we are now is at a contradiction to the basic ethos on which these belief systems were founded. It was meant for a sense of spiritual upliftment, certainly not for furthering of malicious ideals. In today's debate, religion blurs everything, dividing our population like nothing else on earth. It is guilty of mass murder, slavery and hypocrisy and continues to drive a wedge between continents and societies.

A couple of weeks ago while travelling in the Delhi Metro I came across this old Sikh lady who was having incredible difficulty in standing. She was very frail and kept hobbling as if being weighed down something in contrast to her wiry frame. Then she proceeded to extract a heavy knife which she was carrying under her clothes. This was the Kirpan, a dagger carried by Sikh followers and a part of their five Ks. At once she felt at ease and was able to stand comfortably. This probably sums up the conundrum. You know something becomes a liability when it holds you down and becomes a handicap.

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”

Priest: "No, not if you did not know.”

Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?”

:D

“The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.”

-George Bernard Shaw

“Who do you want to be like when you grow up?”

I am sure this is a question we all have faced sometime or the other during childhood, adolescence and maybe even later! This is especially true for culture that is so soaked in customs, traditions and cherished institutions of thought like India. We treasure our community ties with an ardent fervour and are always looking to align our thought process with a proven and established set of ideas, to avoid failure and gain some sort of abstract validation.

I’ve always struggled with this question from time immemorial, and till date have not been able to come up with even a remotely satisfying answer. But then the voice (among the many) in my head asks, “Is an answer necessary?”

I mean its okay to admire people, ideas, institutions etc and all but then is it necessary to idolize them? Why is there this need to deity-fy everything and everyone? Whether its a sport team or an actor, an artist or an author, a company or a public institution? Is anything so beyond the realm of admiration and respect that it has to be a higher platform for us to truly appreciate its unique-ness? I can only speak for myself and I feel that its a just fail-safe mechanism we have ingrained in our systems to feel some sort of pseudo-security and feel validated for any rudimentary spark of original thought we may have. I for one have always looked up to several people (prominent as well as people you meet day to day), institutions, schools of thoughts etc but have (and probably will never) be able to single it down to one human being (no matter how acclaimed) or one single idea (no matter how widely accepted and recommended). It’s an amalgamation of a plural ideas. I guess that’s just a choice we make and there is really no ONE right way to look at this (as it is with almost every argument of this nature.)

What I feel is that we tend to take comfort in PROVEN ideas, people and institutions because we are afraid put our necks out and risk hitting the curb. We take shelter in other’s views because we are too scared to go out on a limb and try a novel approach just because it has not been tried by anyone before. We tend to underestimate the power and reach of Individual Action and overestimate the effectiveness of traditional methods and ideas. I don’t agree for most things Obama stands for but I agree with him when says,

"In America we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations."

Blind idol (idle) worship risks more because we lose out on precious new inputs we could’ve otherwise generated. This is all in the grey and as I said earlier there can be no ONE singular answer. My apprehensions about the whole system of Idols/ Heroes/ Paragons, is more to do the fact they are seeped in the past rather than the present. I don’t understand why people fear new ideas. Personally I’m more afraid of old ones. I guess it makes me a hypocrite because in the end I also favour one school of thought over the other. But then, aren’t we all?

P.S. I’ve changed the look of the blog, among other things. Regular (if any!) and even occasional readers are most welcome to provide feedback!