I suppose the whole cause-and-effect cycle of karma was devised by the wise sages of ancient times as a rule-of-thumb to guide our actions and inspire us to do good. Sounds fine on paper. But here are some critical points:
The devout among those who suffer in their present life accept it as unavoidable chastisement for past actions - which, undoubtedly, must be a good consolation. However, it also does away with the will to protest, and demand change. Quite often poor living and medical conditions are a result of bad laws and bad governance (regulations on free-trade, unfair taxation and monumental wastage of tax-money etc.). These are matters that may be changed slowly with awareness and social/political activism.
The lucky ones accept that their fortune is a result of previous good deeds, resulting in a crippling complacency in thought and action. That, according to the karmic theory, they will suffer again in next life gets drowned out in ennui.
In my opinion, there is a certain amount of unfairness in this whole matter. Suppose X kills Y. X gets away with it because he has better lawyers than Y's family. Should Y's family console themselves with the fact that X will be punished in some life after? Also, think of this: X is born again and has no recollections of his crime at all. Does he still deserve punishment? Can't he start anew in his next life?
All of this, mind, is argued from the POV of a believer. The final point is, however, this: why can't I live just for the sake of living? Can't I look forward to a pleasant stroll in the hills of Mussoorie without worrying about consequences?
P.S. - In the absence of a karmic code, how do you govern your actions? Simple: the democratic rule ("sway your stick while you walk, if you please, but take care it stops an inch short of my nose") and plain human conscience.
Amit Varma's India Uncut has been one of my favourite blogs since I started following it some months back. One of the chief reasons for it is his ability to opinionate logically with the strictest economy of words. The second and most significant reason is that he contradicts me on so many points and in so many ways that it is impossible not to be intellectually stimulated.
Take this article as an example. It clashes with some closely-held beliefs that some of us - sane and logical for the most part - hold.
"Take me, for example: I sell my skills as a writer, limited as they are, to write pieces such as this one. You no doubt have a job that involves selling your skills as well. Many people trade not their intellectual skills but physical labour. Most such trades, made to mutual benefit, are considered respectable. But when a prostitute offers her sexual services, that is somehow considered improper and unethical.
What is even odder is that in most countries, if two consenting adults get together and have sex, the state will not interfere – unless money has changed hands. On one hand, we sanctimoniously frown upon sex; on the other, we frown at commerce. The human race would not exist without either of these two."
It is, perhaps, human tendency to judge prostitution through a moral prism. Morality is, strictly speaking, a personal thing - all of us have different standards and parameters of judgement. Our error is in overlapping moral opinion with state-sanctioned law. Yet, straight logical argument lays bare this fallacy in a few words - there is an undeniable (and ironic) truth in what Amit says in the second (quoted) paragraph.
Even his points about drug-usage are valid, I think. Here the objections are perhaps louder - given the possibly fatal consequences of decriminalisatioin and free-market-mechanism working in the case of drugs. Yet, in effect, if addiction is a punishable crime, so is attempting suicide.
Democracy allows everyone the choice to decide for himself/herself, unless the choice jeopardises or infringes the similar rights of another. It may be argued with some truth that the family of a drug-addict is affected, but that is a problem resting within the private domain of the individual - the state should have nothing to do or say about it.
As for Amit's solutions, I agree with him fully. Bringing businesses like prostitution, betting and drug-sale within the ambit of law and opening up the market to free competition will eliminate the functions of the mafia to a good extent, besides extending legal aid to marginalised outcasts like sex-workers and junkies. As has been cited, Netherlands is a good example of how well this system has worked. In a somewhat related note, Japan - the third highest porn-manufacturing country in the world - has some of the lowest rates of sex-related crimes.
"Within Japan itself, the dramatic increase in available pornography and sexually explicit materials is apparent to even a casual observer. This is concomitant with a general liberalization of restrictions on other sexual outlets as well. Also readily apparent from the information presented is that, over this period of change, sex crimes in every category, from rape to public indecency, sexual offenses from both ends of the criminal spectrum, significantly decreased in incidence.
Most significantly, despite the wide increase in availability of pornography to children, not only was there a decrease in sex crimes with juveniles as victims but the number of juvenile offenders also decreased significantly."
Is this proof enough?
But, of course, even a vocal proposition like this in touchy India is going to throw up flames.
The Tsunami of 2004 did not affect me – I was fortunately nowhere near the troubled areas. Read about the incidents in the papers, of course. Neither did those affect me. Was I hardhearted, too self-centred to really care about something that hit the shores in places far from West Bengal? No friend or relative of mine lives in the South or the Andamans – so that may be a possible answer. For a long time, I grappled with the uneasy feeling that somewhere deep down there I was, inspite of my pretensions, a callous fellow who did not give two hoots about matters not touching his immediate circle of existence. The doubts were unquestionably helped by my feeble powers of self-understanding and introspection. The years rolled by, and the doubts were demoted to some of those hazy backbenches of the mind, only surfacing during stray incidents – a death of some casual acquaintance whom I did not really know, for example. That slight guilty feeling crept back for a few hours, asked a few troublesome questions, and then shut up.
The questions were not answered until about a month back. Verve ’09, NITD’s literary and youth fest, had a journalism workshop conducted by Dilip D’Souza. A name I recalled being faintly familiar with – not quite remembering the precise context of reference (and it wasn’t the Swades connect). Of the many important points about responsible journalism he made, there was one that really resonated with my ideas. And shooed away the uneasy feeling. The human detail. Conspicuous, yet elusive. There to be seen, yet woefully ignored. Hence the dryness and wooden quality of journalism in even widely respected publications. While figures, facts and statements can make good reports, they never touch the lay reader who has no stakes in the matter being described – including large-scale tragedies like the Tsunami. If journalism is really meant to stir us into action, and not merely inform, it has to strike where we are most vulnerable: the heart. A death toll of thousands boggles the eye and mind, but to the heart it remains a number.
If I consider the human detail to be the highlight of his discussion, it is because it applies as much to journalism as it does to literature and cinema. The best of both the fields are remembered chiefly for their storehouse of such little details giving deep insight into human nature. The most poignant moment about Indir Thakrun’s death in Ray’s Pather Panchali was such a small nugget: drained of all hope of reconciliation with Sarbajaya, and a contented twilight to her life, Apu and Durga’s pishi takes a last sip of water in her pet brass tumbler before stepping out of the house for the last time. Having quenched her thirst, she performs one of her numerous habits from the old days: watering the plant by her quarters which she had once lovingly sown. Even with death approaching her, the zest for life, the stimulus of organic growth, remained alive in that little-noticed act. And soon after, the inevitable happened. It is the persistence of those lingering strains of hope (speaking for mankind, in general, and Indir Thakrun specifically) in the face of tragedy and death that drives the significance and sadness of the incident home– just about three seconds on celluloid are enough to move the observant viewer. In that, and numerous other observations of the kind throughout, lies the film’s enduring greatness as a human document. So here’s the crucial point – why does this cinematic segment about one person’s death affect us, while a newsreport on the death of thousands not?
Mr. D’Souza, on his part, was a fascinating speaker. He had just the right mix of conviction and humility that gives opinions and arguments weight without overpowering the listener. And he kept his talk punctuated with fitting anecdotes. I’ll recall one or two.
An American reporter (as far as I recall, some lady) assigned the seemingly trivial, but delicate, job of covering a young soldier’s untimely death visited the family on funeral day. She chatted with some of those present and made note. But before leaving, she wrote down one thing to embellish her report. It ended up being the very cornerstone – the boy’s ma had put the lights on in his personal room, now empty. Over the switch there was a strip of duck-tape. The lights would never go out.
Then there was this fellow – whose name has unfortunately slipped my mind – who held a 9-to-5 job in some plush Delhi office. In 1999, he opened the papers one fine day. There was a cyclone in Orissa. In a jiffy, he wrote out a leave application for about a fortnight, headed straight for the station, bought a few essentials on the way, and caught the first train to Orissa. Mr. D’Souza happened to be in the cyclone-hit area during the time too. He met this gentleman from Delhi. The latter had devoted himself to relief-work with an urgency and concern somewhat unusual and unbelievable given his background. On being lightly asked about his inspiration, he simply made a casual reply. “Oh nothing, just wanted to check out how far I can go!” That, in a line, perhaps said something about man’s vulnerability and response to emotional motivation better than anything else.
On second thoughts, I made one slightly erroneous statement at the start. The Tsunami did affect me – the pictures did. Wittingly or unwittingly (depending on the lensman), some of those photos captured little visual details about the victims which connected with me. (Quite instinctively, too.) The words, sadly, did not. In most cases.
P.S.: About the part concerning the death of casual acquaintances: maybe those don’t sadden me much because I seldom identify the human detail underlining the tragedy (what with post-death conversations usually rolling towards the dry details of the last day – “you know, he ate just an hour before he died”). Or maybe, I’m plain hard-hearted after all!
For most of us, days go by in a steady rhythm, taking pre-planned paths, arriving nowhere, breeding quiet discontent. Often they drag along reluctantly, wishing to be left alone, grappling with themselves in the quagmire of business (much as old Watanabe, from Kurosawa’s Ikiru, did). Some are however redeemed – once in a lucky while - from such doomed ordinariness by imperceptible intrusions of fate. And so it was on a Sunday. Here goes two mails that speak for the occasion.
--
Just to share a few thoughts, LS ! As our car was wending its way back, cruising past Panagarh, I felt a sudden surge to meet Sudipto, who was just 15 kms down the fork: however, as like most of the ideas, popping up and dying away, I kept the idea to myself and promised that, must be, it has to be next time!
I could figure out the mane of the lion there, slowly giving way to a hare, with its distinct well-protruded longish ears, guising in no time, in a super-slow motion , to the flung tail of a horse, may be, and that too vanishing under the garb of a huge proboscis of the defaced-demon and then, lo and behold! As if, prompted by a rumbling call from an inscrutable corner of a stage set afar, everything suddenly fell into place; the graphical outlines coalesced into a thick, black, swirl of an unmistakable cloud mass, invading the entire turf, with an unfailing vengeance! The various shades of grey, from the innocuous white to the jet black, overlapped seamlessly on the overarching canopy, pencil-marked in reckless doodles, as if nature, after a long wait, has managed to snatch it, from one of its unknown contenders, as its most cherished canvas and was desperate not to part with it!
And then followed the trickling droplets, the steady drips giving way to a gurgle, and soon, with the coyness of the initial overtures effectively mastered, there were the torrents lashing on the windscreen with the fury of a ravaging charioteer! My mind flew on the wings of time to a similar experience I had with my father, more than three decades back, stuck no-where in the midfields! The wipers, on the windscreen and down under, on the mindscreen, were working overtime to keep the vapours in check, knowing fully well that they were already fighting a lost battle! A blinding shroud encapsulated the horizon and the car revved and ranted and settled quietly! The greens, yellows, blues and greys, the nature’s polychromes are now a smudged white, awash in abandon with a child’s free-play brush!
And as if, suddenly realising that they were making just a few cameo appearances at this stage-show and had, somewhat overzealously, strayed beyond their allotted timescales and that they had to honour other pre-fixed assignments elsewhere, the players tried to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the atrium once again for the maverick clouds, the sun, by now getting a shade exhausted and reclining under a purplish haze, setting the stage afire, to complete their finishing chores for the day!
And someone hummed the tunes softly into my ears!
“Megher bag-er bhetor map royechhe kon sudurer pari,
pakdondi poth beye tar bagan ghera bari,
bagan sheshe shodor duwar,
barandate aram chair,
galche pata bichhanate chhotto roder phali,
sethaye eshe megh piyoner somosto bag khali”
--
Dear K-da,
Your LS here also had a little experience of her own while her K-da was musing on the greys, the whites, the blues; making a hearty conversation with the lion, the hare, the horse; tapping his fingers lightly on the steering wheel in rhythm with the pit-patter of the rains. Yes, it could be "haare rere rere aamay chhere dere dere" or "aaji jhoro jhoro mukhoro baadorodine, jaani ne, jaani ne, kichhute keno je mon laage naa" or even the non-borsha "kothao aamar haariye jaaowar nei mana" playing in the background as K-da's Santro (it's a Santro, isn't it?) whooshed past the greens and the laal-maati landscapes of Bolpur...
Well, here, your LS was making her way to her Sunday 11:15 class at Dakshinee along the footpaths of Deshopriyo Park. The bright blue sky, the sunny sun, along with the humidity in the air made it far from anything that you experienced on your way to Shantiniketan on the very same day. On other days, the same footpaths are inhabited by beggars of varied needs, losses, ages and colours. But, on this particular morning, there was only one (not sure, whether there was only one, or if I forgot to notice the others): a small boy of about four to five years old and his baby sister. The boy was sitting on the brick pavement holding a small tin can and the baby slept on a rag on the ground. There was something about them - perhaps the unbearable heat of the day, perhaps the indifference of the other passersby, perhaps the way the baby slept without stirring, as if a dead sleep, perhaps the way the boy looked so helpless - that made me stop and give a lozenge and a rupee to the boy.
I had my class and was heading back to the bus-stop, when I met them again. This time the boy, with the baby girl (now awake) clinging to his waist, was walking around, tugging at the sleeves of the men's shirts and the free ends of the women's sarees, asking for some money/food. When he reached me, he asked for the same. But, perhaps, I'm finally becoming an-adult-like adult, so much so that I said, "Ki re? Toke ektu aagei dilaam na?" ("Didn't I give you a rupee just a while ago?"). He smiled at me and with that, a mischievous look crossed his eyes. I had gone a little way, when I sighed to myself, "Uff, the heat!!". And, then, something happened that made me stop and look back. I turned and went up to the little boy. "Aaye, aamar shonge aaye." ("Come with me.") He once again flashed that mischievous smile and started walking with me. "Khabi kichhu?" ("Want to eat something?") I asked. He nodded his head, still smiling. "Mishti khabi?" ("Sweetmeats?") and again he nodded his head, this time more eagerly. I went up to the sweet shop on the bend of the street where Dakshinee stands and asked for four pieces of a certain kind of rasha-kadam. It cost twelve rupees. But, I had only one ten rupees note that I had saved for the bus-fare back home. So, I gave the vendor a hundred rupees note. But, he said he didn't have a change. I insisted that I wouldn't be able to take the sweets if he didn't have a change. He shrugged and said, "Do as you wish! I can't help, madame." He wouldn't make one sweet less, nor would he give a discount. I turned back and saw the boy waiting for me outside. I frantically rummaged through the pockets of my bag and finally found a five rupees coin and two one rupee coins. I was glad: the bus-fare cost only four rupees. I paid and bought the packet of sweets. I handed it over to the boy and felt a little unsure (quite unnecessarily) if he would be able to feed himself and his sister. "Bon ke khaowate paarbi?" ("Can you feed your sister?") I asked. He nodded and smiled his sweet mischievous smile. He walked a few paces with me and then quietly retreated somewhere I know not, for when I turned back, I couldn't spot him anymore. I lost him in the crowd, in the water-vapours of the day....
Now that Section 377 has been finally been legally recognised to be trampling upon human dignity (besides violating several of the fundamental rights that the Constitution allows its people), we have gone a step forward toward achieving the true essence of democracy - liberalism. Social inhibitions and taboos are sure to remain for some time, but at least no one now can threaten a person with legal action just because of his/her sexual orientation. The government needs to amend the aforesaid section some time soon. Untouchability was a widespread social practice even some eight decades back and while significant traces of it remain even in today's India, it has become extinct in an overbearing oppressive manner (you jump into the Ganges no more if a sweeper's shadow falls on you!) at least in most parts of the country. Take an opinion poll and at least 80 out 100 persons are likely to dismiss untouchability as a disgusting shame for civil society. I hope that the taboo regarding homosexuality erodes away similarly.
Why is punishing homosexuality objectionable? For the same reason a physically handicapped child should not be held guilty for his condition (though lamentably, he is at times): he/she is born that way! Or has been shaped over the years by countless psychological and emotional undercurrents. Sexual orientation is natural (how really could "carnal intercourse against the laws of nature" be interpreted and turned upon homosexuals?). Moreover, it has no victim - we are talking of consensual intercourse in this matter. What has one got to be offended by? Say, if homosexuality were the "law of nature" and it had a biological result - children - and if it were the norm, would not heterosexuality be a taboo then? And under those circumstances, would it not be wrong to punish anybody for being attracted to the opposite sex?
As for our religious leaders, counter-activists and countless ordinary people worried about the threat posed to our culture and religions, I propose some measures that should work towards that objective in a far more logical and efficient manner: 1.) Stop heckling innocent people about things that are perfectly harmless to others. No burning of V-day cards and embarrassing lovers, no Mangalore-pub routs, no stupid court petitions for scratching off 'Barber' from a film's name either.
2.) Next time you see someone publicly relieving himself/herself, make it a point to politely request him/her to use a toilet. (If the need be, we can have more public toilets constructed and maintained.) On similar lines, no spitting and littering around. Be so kind as to follow these yourself before guiding others.
3.) Preserve heritage sites. If the government is apathetic towards maintenance, go through the bureaucratic and legal grind. If it still fails, go for independently raised public funds. I know it is thankless hard work; but if you are really concerned about culture, that should be the correct course. Many Indian lovers, in the admirable fashion of Shahjahan and Mumtaz, want to engrave their love immortal on stone. They may be politely requested to abstain from such ambitions. I am inclined to believe that a stern but polite request does the trick almost always.
4.) Behave well in public. Few things are as degrading to culture than watch thousands of people arguing openly on the streets about matters trivial and gargantuan. Things can be sorted out in private, preferably in peace. If such an option does not work, bad luck! No amount of shouting in public can solve deadlocks anyway. Also, remember to extend your help to people who need it: old people, children, physically handicapped, clueless foreigners...
5.) Take an active interest in art, read good books, watch good movies and listen to good music; if possible try your hand at writing. (This is subjective but not completely.) Nothing better at reviving culture! No need of banning Karan Johar and his ilk, just stop fattening his wallet by ignoring his latest floss (no need to picket theatres or harass devoted fans, all the same). Go fish out some RV Shantaram or Satyajit Ray. Keep the cultural economy open: allow influx and outflow.
6.) Ban censorship (haha!). One can and must decide what he/she wants to do, read, listen or watch unless it does not cause anyone any harm.
7.) Discourage mob politics. A crowd can get away with what three individuals cannot. It is badly reflective of our culture.
8.) Do away with religious and regional bias. An innocent Muslim should not be clubbed together with the irrational jihadi. Similarly, a Hindu murderer and rapist is as guilty as his Muslim counterpart. Also, Maharashtra is not only for Marathis.
Sounds impossible? Maybe. But criminalizing homosexuals in the name of preserving culture and religion surely is.
