My Mind

One day, during lunch, one of my lunch mate started ranting about how bad one of his project team mate was dressed in a party. He totally disliked his team mate wearing the over exposing top. I asked him “say if you were born and brought up in a place where people wearing such clothes was common, would you have felt the same?”. We had a small discussion and that made me write this. Let me narrate a few incidents..

• The other day I was in the local bus, there was this elderly man shouting at young boys and girls. Reason was that the *boys* and *girls* were having a jolly chat. Probably, the first girl that man ever talked to might have been his bride. I have been witness to a few such incidents in buses.

• My uncle once in his college days visited one of his friend along with other friends. Customarily, they were offered tea. My uncle who was visiting this friend for the first time was shocked to see his other friends go out and wash the tumbler they had used to drink tea. This looked strange to my uncle but he later learnt that in this friends home, a guest not belonging to their *group* was supposed to clean the utensils if they use it. My uncle never visited that friend again.

• In the movie Gran Torino, that I watched today (I started this post last week), Waltz slightly brushes up a kids hair in his neighbouring Hmong home. People there take offence as they believe that one’s soul resides in the head and one should not touch other’s head. There’s this movie, the name of which I don’t remember( Google search says it’s Mars Attack), where the aliens attack humans mistaking the gesture of releasing the doves.

• There was some ceremony at a neighbours home and they had invited me for lunch. People were all seated on the mat laid on ground. Food was served on plantain leaves. Just when I was almost finished with the food, I saw a boy carrying a bucket to everybody’s seat. They were washing their hands in the bucket, sitting right at the same place.  I was seeing it for the first time and I felt it was weird and ill mannered.  Well, I was clueless when I saw the finger bowl for the first time.

• I also remember another incident where the man at a bakery refused to take money from me when I was holding the note between my index and middle fingers. He said it was ’scissor’ symbol and was bad for the one receiving the money that way.

• And then there is this rant of a north Indian visiting south India about the food available down here. They can’t stand coconut and rice. Well, some people here can’t think of a day without coconut and rice!

What is that I want to convey from these?
We live in our own universes. We have our own language, culture and all that. We travel to other universes, We meet people and come to know about their culture. We sometimes are shocked witnessing the alien cultures. We criticise and abhor them. Some of these cultures, we like and adopt. As we move between these universes easily and as bridges are built between them,  each universe evolves. One universe shuns one of it’s culture because there is another universe that finds it wrong(or maybe they realise that it is wrong). This has been happening for long time but it has gained momentum in last few centuries.

Just like water in an equilibrium tube  the ideas and cultures will travel universes and one day, there will be balance, uniformity. What I see in future is one such common culture being followed by all these universes. That day (,which may never come), we will have one universe.

But what I am confused about is the process how this equilibrium of ideas and culture will be achieved.  I know this is abrupt but the post has been long by my standards, so I will probably reflect on it in another post.

There was a time, when I was all careless, carefree. Never did I care about philosophy or life. I accepted things, as they came, did what I wanted ( which was usually what people around me did ).

And then, I met a few people. These people were different, their thoughts, beliefs, customs, traditions & language. Never before had I met people with such beliefs. Their beliefs were strong.  I was in no way uncomfortable, because there wasn’t a time when I was strongly attached to any belief system. It was a new learning experience.

And then there was a time, I wanted to classify myself, chose a philosophy, a theist or an atheist or something else. With no proof, I couldn’t choose. So, I had to be agnostic. But, I was not satisfied. I wanted to have an opinion,a strong one. I wanted to stick to something. And then, I watched ‘The Big Lebowski‘  and ‘The Fight Club‘ .  A new word got into my vocabulary: ‘Nihilism‘.

That was the time, I needed a pillar, to cling. And looking at people and events around me, Nihilism was the way to go. “Screw the world!”, I said without giving it a deep thought.

But then, I thought a little. Nihilism sounded cool but that wasn’t the practical way to live. I chucked it out. I wanted to go back to my old ways of carefree living.

There is so much to learn about life  that one life isn’t enough. There have been thousands of philosophers, scientists who have dedicated their lives to find answers to mystery of life. And I don’t think anybody has found an answer yet.

So, now… Do I stick to one belief system and criticize every other?  May be I won’t. I will try to accept things as they come. I will try to be open to other people’s belief.   There will be times when real life experiences will force me to think one belief system is much closer to truth than the other. Life’s going to be a nice learning experience. I will choose good things, things that suit me and make my own philosophy, my own belief system, one that will grow with me.

Anyway,I like this dialogue very much…

Mere man ko bhaya, mein kuththa kaat ke khaya.

So, what do you believe in?

Last Wednesday morning, I saw my dream of a lifetime. I usually don’t dream often, even if I dream, I don’t remember most of them. Well, there’s only one recurring dream that I have seen a lot, but this post is about my Dream of a Lifetime.

What I liked about the Dream the most was the whole pictureization. It was grand and unique which completely took me by surprise. There were 3 scenes in all.

Scene 1: I met two of my friends from college. Location, a huge ground in front just as you get down the wide stairs.  One of the friend(F1) was standing next to me looking at me. Another friend(F2) was down the stairs, with his head turned towards me, telling “I have to ask you something important, come” and walking briskly away from me. I said “stop, wait… what is it ?”.  I cannot take suspense, I again asked him to stop, he kept walking. I followed.

Scene 2: I’m following my F2 along with F1. Location is again the same ground but what I see is amazing. There are two huge mountains far away. It is completely brownish, without any patch of green, there are some dark spots in the mountain which look like some kind of  caves. There is a fort situated on one of the mountain, the architecture is Rajasthani. Its dusty behind the mountains and view is kind of blurred. There is some kind of storm behind the mountains. There are huge white bright clouds in front of the mountain. These clouds are moving fast over our head. One such cloud, is particularly very  bright and moving towards me. It is pure white, its rays falling on the ground taking weird paths. I told my friend F1 about the approaching cloud but he doesn’t hear. The cloud passes over my head and I am perplexed. Friend F2 is nowhere visible, F1 is walking forward and I follow him.

Scene 3: Now I’m in front of a large building. The building being wide, my whole sight was occupied. It had some 4 or 5 or 6 storeys ( that I don’t remember) above which I could see some dark clouds. My friend F2 entered the building and asked me to come in. I was behind by a long distance and started moving towards the building. F1 was walking with me. I raised my head and I could see a storm above the building. It was carrying some kind of a huge liquid fuel engine with a large tank. It was about to fall down right in front of the building and I realized that I had to save my life. I was scared and ran in the opposite direction but my friend F1 stayed there.

That’s it and I woke up.

I haven’t done justice to the dream, I’m at lack of vocabulary to describe it. This is one of those things that one has to experience and cannot be described by words.

I’m still scratching my head to understand what the dream meant.  Any idea what it means ?

For almost 3 months, I have been missing the ‘8:30 ki last bus’ that is supposed to carry me to my office. So I am left with one option, use the crowded BMTC buses. It takes a minimum of 30 minutes with minimal traffic and more than 100 minutes at peak traffic for commuting. I will not go on cribbing about the traffic woes here but will put down a simple observation.

There are multiple reasons for the Traffic problem Indian cities are facing, our Leaders & planners suffering from myopia, corrupt implementers, over-intelligent drivers and many more that I’m ignorant/unaware of.

One thing that I observed while commuting was the huge number of cars on the roads. Most of the cars accommodate only one driver who probably will be the owner of the car. These are obviously citizens of the city commuting alone to work in their cars. Hanging in BMTC busses I have witnessed so many of these cars driving harsh, change lanes at will. One of the many reasons for the traffic jams are these cars.

Commuting in a car to work is for sure safe and comfortable but shouldn’t one also think about the traffic problems that they are causing. Just cannot imagine the situation when Tata’s 1 lakh car comes out !!

Carpooling is a wonderful concept, that should be implemented and not just discussed about. [Stumbled upon a few sites www.commuteeasy.com , www.carpool.in, www.carpooling.in that may be useful for organizing carpools ]

A good exercise for companies, educational institutions, etc., would be to conduct a survey on different modes of transport its employees use. A suitable solution can be found out based on the results of the survey.