Friday, August 28, 2009

Today, What are you escaping from?

I walked out of office last night at around 8:30 PM and called for a rickshaw.

Bhai, we will have heavy traffic on the way. Today, it’s Ganesh Visarjan.”

“No problem. Have to go. Can’t help. Chalo.” I could hear painfully loud music on streets.

A few meters ahead, I saw a troupe with a Ganesh idol. It was a beautiful idol. I love the craftsmanship involved in making of these idols. Yesterday was the fifth day of Ganesh Mahotsav and in Mumbai it’s more than a festival. If I say its madness, It won’t be wrong.

But then madness about what? One case could be that these people are madly in love with this god and its time to rejoice about their love. To justify this I looked a little closer to their faces and listened carefully to sound of music. But I neither could see nor hear love. All I could find was a celebration of our escapist attitude. I felt that the dance was not for Ganesh but for them.

Ever wondered why do we have endless list of festivals in India? Can it be a reason behind us being escapists? Are we the people who need to run away into something else to suppress the boredom of routine life or to fight our sadness?

We celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi or Durga Pooja and dance to the tunes of “Bidi Jalaile jigar se piya… jigar ma badi aag hai”. We celebrate Diwali and loose ourselves in noise pollution from crackers. We celebrate Holi and cover our faces with loads of colors so that for at least one day no one can see our real faces.

I appear cynical about our festivals? Ok then. Lets check out some other mode. Say Bollywood? The biggest hits in our country are movies like Hum Apke Hain Kaun and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge and a Raincoat or Zakhm would be floored on the box office. Why? We love to watch happiness; grand, out of the world happiness. We enjoy this second hand happiness because we not only think but strongly believe that we can’t live that kind of happiness. We are genuinely sad people.

More arenas? Lets talk Cricket. We have proved ourselves as Cricket-crazy nation. The maximum watchers of this game in the world are from our country. But the best players of the world? Beyond a Sachin or Kapil Dev, no we can’t produce such people. That’s not our breed. We are the people who sit back and admire good things in life but are coward enough to try making it happen to our own life.

So the point is – we need a reason to be happy. We don’t think that our very existence in this world is a reason to happy. Our existence is so routine, so unimportant that we seek for some special occasion to be happy. And it has been routed in our society so deeply that if we find some genuinely happy person, we can go to the extent of calling him or her MAD. We need to be told by someone else that when can be happy. A Pundit says that Ganesh Chaturthi is on so and so date. We choose that as our date for happiness. A movie director decides that our country should be happy and makes an ultra stupid movie. We choose that as our medium of happiness. The match fixers decide who will play good in one particular match. We choose that as our reason for happiness.

And it’s not only that we fix our days of happiness. We also fix these days for “Cannot be Unhappy”.

I remember from my childhood days that my sister would always complain about me being sad on every Diwali. I could never understand the reason what used to happen and why. She would tell me, “Today is a day of happiness. Be happy.”

I believe that the festivals have the sole purpose of identifying an event, cause or issue. And it’s upon us how we associate with that day. So when I was told to behave in certain way on a certain day, I would always wonder how one can BE HAPPY if he is actually not feeling so, just because it’s a day that the society assumes it to be a day of happiness? Why can’t the day I choose to be happy be the day of my happiness? Why can’t all days of my life be the days of happiness?

And I still do not understand this.

The bigger pain point is – now I try to escape from the reasoning as, at times, its unavailability makes me sad and at other times, I am not too sure of its availability and authenticity. So from this context, everything that I said above remains an idea or a thought and not a logically or mathematically proved theorem. So, you can go ahead and celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi for the reason you want to. Even if the reason be an escape from something that you desperately want to.

Happy Ganesh Utsav!

7 comments:

Rekha said...

Rohit,

Your emotions are very transparent and you express them well with a down-to-earth honesty.

Rekha

Unknown said...

oh no, phir se suru ho gaya tera bhasan. are doosre ko sudharne ke pehle khud to sudhar ja ;-)

Rohit Kumar said...

@ Rekha Mam.. Thank you mam :)

@ Sunit.. Bro... I guess you should re-read it. Its not a lecture for others but an expression of my own unidentified thuoghts...

Sourav Kundu said...

Rohit. I do not disagree with the point of "Why can't I be happy when I want to be happy or otherwise." That's quite logical and simple to understand.

Regarding your point about we being Escapist... well that's kind of true and believe me, you cannot just blame us for that. We have failed to change with changing times... our thoughts are still of the prehistoric era. We still follow customs without understanding the logic behind them... and its been propagated generations after generations from father to son and mother to daughter, and whenever we have a rebel who puts his head up and asks "Aisa kyun?" the older generation on lack of answers, would give some reasons just for the sake of it. But the question is not answered. That is one part of what I get from your blog. But times are changing and in about 2 generations time India would be back on Logical explaination.

The other section regarding us being Escapaist is that we're a bunch of unhappy individuals. Beleive me, we are ingrained with the thought to overlook the goodness in live and focus on the shortcomings... afterall we have to make things better, haven't we? But we get so engrosed that we fail to see the good things in life... sometimes we even take our survival as a non happy moment... we are running... we're gaining speed but ask someone where are we headed... the person might give an answer as to where everone is travelling... high salary, bada makan, badi gadi... but will those things give us what we really want?? I have my own doubts... we're kind of stuck in a vicious circle and the festivals are a break when we just forget the race and take a break, but still we miss the larger picture...

Just my thoughts...

Rohit Kumar said...

@ Sourav...

Gud to know that the blog was a way to think on these lines...or rather proved to be a way to express what you must be thinking quite often... liked the last line of ur comment... "we still miss the larger picture"... the interesting thing is... how may of us know in the first place there's smthing such as LARGER PICTURE... and of those who know... how many wud know which one is THEIR larger picture... strange thots... and so is life, i guess...

Rekha said...

Dear Buzz,

Your analysis is very interesting because it comes closer to a point of surrender in the sense of reaching a dead end where the bigger picture of life is concerned, where you said, ....

"we're gaining speed but ask someone where are we headed... the person might give an answer as to where everone is travelling... high salary, bada makan, badi gadi... but will those things give us what we really want?? I have my own doubts... we're kind of stuck in a vicious circle".....

When you use logic in terms of achieving functional things like job, meeting deadlines, and strategies to win a war etc. it works beautifully. But when this same logic is applied to see the bigger picture of life, it falls flat after a point.You can never get inputs for even a preview of the larger picture of life from the external. it can come only thru your heart. The master key to the bigger picture of life is through your heart. And the biggest firewall that inhibits entry into your heart is your mind. And the only person who can attempt to crack through thus firewall and dare to enter your heart is you.

Rekha

Rekha said...

Dare to understand what you can never escape from :

I come into this world absolutely ignorant about the ground realities of my existence. My childhood dependence on my parents for sheer survival naturally makes me think they are God. As I grow, their fallibility makes me insecure and desperate to seek someone else an aunt or uncle or teacher or neighbor as a solid anchor. As I grow older, slowly and painfully it sinks into me that no human being can be infallible. You’ll observe that subconsciously we’re constantly seeking someone emotionally stronger and more centered in life for an anchor.

This search must continue and finally reach such an intensity that everthing else in life becomes secondary. When you have reached this point, then you will encounter a person who can guide you. This whole thing is so beautifully programmed that you just need to raise your consciousness to reach this intensity to know your true identity (the larger picture of life)and this guide simply happens in your life. This is true. If this has not yet happened in your life, then you're still taking life as a spectator sport and not yet become a participant.

The larger picture of life cannot be objectified. It can be seen (when the mind is no more conditioned), understood and eventually LIVED, i.e., if you survive its power. It cannot be objectified because it is within you. It's an INNER JOURNEY.

Any understanding of life, no matter how rich in experience or brilliant in analysis, is incomplete without an understanding of death. It is death that gives a meaning to life. It is death that completes the circle of life. It is death that pulverizes a conscious inquirer into even a possibility of something beyond the physical dimension.

Isn't it ironical that we all know too well that the only certainty in life is death (we can never escape from it)and yet, while an inquiry and study of death never killed anybody, our understanding of life remains incomplete because we abhor even the mention of death.

Rekha