Mindless, or not...

I left home today evening consumed by awe for Delhi, my home. I loved everything about it... the people, the ethos, the city lights, the city itself. I reached my destination, met my girl, talked about parallel universes, shared a drink... I had a question thrown upon me - 'What is your take on drugs?' 'I have been born to rehabilitate those in its shackles', I said. I believed it. As I was leaving, we stopped for a quick bite, take away from McDonald's. Right there, I was struck by my disillusioning sense of grandiosity, my impotency! A heavily drugged girl, no more than 20, propositioned me and my friends. She didn't seem like she was aware of herself, let alone her surroundings. With a slurred speech, she asked for some water. She was pale, her body was scarred and grimy. She would have been pretty if not in the throes of whatever it was that she was smoking or sniffing. I wondered what it was... couldn't have been marijuana. Perhaps it was cocaine. Or maybe LSD. Perhaps I could have found out if I would have sat down with her and had a conversation. But that would not have been possible, for she seemed to have been too consumed by lust at that moment - lust for what? Another fix, perhaps. Or just sex. It seemed that she didn't have any discretion at that moment. She could have taken on whatever came her way. As for me, all I felt for her was just pity, perhaps a tiny amount of anger too.

As I drove back home, I wondered what was it really that I was angry about? Was it that a potentially beautiful person was wasting a life out there just for immediate gratification? Or was it the realization that there were millions out there like her, losing their lives to chemicals, to an escape gone overboard? Or was it the reminder that unless willed on their own, so many of them would never actually seek help, and given that, there's nothing I can do, sitting in my chamber everyday; that actually my religion, that I hold to be so special, so true, is also like every other, just with a God that only a minority worships, a religion that actually fails each one of use at some point? Or was it just a flashback of a love long lost? I don't know. But what I do know is that I was forced to think of a choice that i did not make, and that I am proud of. I was forced to think of my own despair that I do not choose to temporarily escape by route of an induced hallucinatory fantasy land, but to live, every second of every day. My despair is the same as hers, and yours, only the content differs, the reflectiveness differs, the degree of responsibility and ownership differs. Who's happier? Neither. We're all sailing the same boat - the man who sleeps shivering on the streets on winter nights, the girl I encountered today, the woman who has abandoned her children because her husband's invectives made her dysfunctional, the boy who struggles to support his siblings after losing their parents in a plane crash, you, me. Then why the alienation?

No matter how much I rant about individual dispositions, circumstantial behaviours and all the jargon that I have learned, I will never be able to find a satisfactory answer to such self-destructive, anomalous behaviour. Except, the freedom of choice, that ironically all the people who execute it in such deleterious ways do not believe that they have. In fact, perhaps majority of us believe that we are subject to one thing or another, always outside of us. It is a sorry state, the extent to which we underestimate ourselves. The more I witness such conundrums around me, the more strongly I believe in Thenatos. Who are these people who have disavowed the Death Instinct? Perhaps they come from same the lineage of people who disavow any other form of instinctual behaviour - hunger, thirst, sex - too afraid to confront their condition in all its nakedness. Stiocs, that's what they call themselves! Under a facade of bravery and courage, they are actually punishing themselves for being alive, and everyone around them. The one and only thing that binds us together is despair. It is the fundamental requisite in any philosophy we choose to abide by; be it hedonism, or stoicism, or nihilism, or existentialism. Then why are we so afraid to confront it?

The only way to conquer despair is to live it!!!

The advent...

Driving back to my parents' house today, the festivity in the air dawned upon me... A little belatedly, one would think. Th festive season has been around for quite some time now - Navratras, Durga Puja.. and finally tomorrow, Dussehra. The fact that my last few visits home have been in mourning for my grandmother explains the absentia of festivities in my family. But what really struck me was the its insignificance in my life. As I drove through a massive traffic jam, presumably people going to visit their families and friends, I wondered if I would ever do the same. Or would I be going home from work on Dussehra or Diwali or Holi all my life, celebrating only the fact that I have a holiday from work... or perhaps not even that. I don't say this with a sense of loss. For me, Psychology is my religion, and I would rather spend my day working, or reading rather than burning effigies. But in our country, religion has been a necessity... for some an escape from the disappointments of reality, for some their impetus, for some a defence against their own morbid thoughts, while for others, only a matter of convenience. But to be an atheist in India, or even a non-practicing theist is a rarity. If not on one's own will, everyone is forced into some or other form of religious rites and rituals as a social obligation.



But today, I see a whole generation that is renouncing the traditions and customs. Each one does it in their own special way... each with its good and bad. The educated, urban Indian is no longer superstitious, doesn't believe in extravagant havans and pujas, or the dispensable customs and traditions that have been followed blindly for many generations. Call it lack of time, or just a lack of belief, religion is taking a backseat in everyone's lives. Dussehra, Diwali and other festivals are no longer celebrated for their mythological significance, but only in the spirit of a respite from the hustle - bustle of city life. At a personal level, this is perhaps a progressive change. We are moving from being a collectivistic nation to an individualistic nation. But this metamorphosis comes with the price of loosening of family values, a very high vulnerability of the propelling generation to various stressors, with compromised coping mechanisms, the development of a huge schism between personal needs and wishes, and social duty. The big price, however, that we have to pay for this is the departure from being social animals to becoming schizoid. Although reversible, this repurcussion is the weightiest for the ones who are actively living this change, practically split between multiple roles - of a professional, of a homemaker, a friend, a sister... And how does one cope up with this? By building a whole universe that is very private and too sacred to share with anyone, thus widening the gap between oneself and others... The Advent of The Sole Warrior!

A sleepless night and a hyper-stimulated mind...

Another sleepless night before a really long day ... apprehensive insomnia seems to have become a habit, maybe it is self-inflicted. But then tonight I am stimulated... with a lot on my mind. No, it's not the wonders of the world, it's the wonders of humankind.



I guess I can say that Psychology has become an obsession for me, and I mean it in the technical sense of the word, not in the loose sense that the word is abused these days. Well, this brings me to how annoying I find such loose usage of words that actually carry so much weight. You see words like 'psycho' or 'retard' being thrown at people like 'scoundrel' or 'rascal', not realizing that these are actually states of existence that are not to be loathed, but be appreciated, valued and explored. There is an immense lot to learn from these people that we have ostracised just because they don't fit our notion of 'normalcy'. What is normalcy anyway? Who defines it? Can you even call it a logical concept when my normal is not your normal? One citation that I feel is eternal and applicable to one and all is 'Normalcy is an idealistic fiction', courtesy Freud.


There are grave loopholes in the way we define 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Let me just say here that I do not believe in these two concepts (because if I were to, I would most definitely fit in the latter, and I find that to be apocryphal.) The concept of 'normalcy' defies the purpose of Psychology. Psychology is a practice that appreciates individual differences, and works toward their enhancement. By labelling certain people as 'abnormal', and then trying to fit them into a bracket of characteristics that match with what everyone else accepts, all the while, with the excuse of guiding them to the path of self-actualisation, we are in fact making them like everyone else. What we are aiming at is not the self-actualisation of that person, but moulding him into a cast that can be worn by one and all. Do you call it spirituality then? One soul in all of us? I don't think so. Soul may be one, but its forms are many. And the job of a Psychologist is to preserve the forms, each one in its glory, and not the soul. The saviours of the soul are the mass Psychologists, the ones that sell the most in a country like ours, those hypnotists under the facade of gurus that know when the iron is hot enough to hit. They are the ones who are experts at making each one of us like every other - the characteristics I choose not to be too vocal about, for they may seem blasphemous to some. What mental health professionals, then are doing is just a retreat to convenience, for the very nature of their work is such that they can't form generalisations, they can't make rules. But they have to, for without them they can't function.

One school of thought defines abnormal according to statistics - the behaviours common to the majority are normal and the ones that are prevalent in minority are abnormal. Galileo was condemned of heresy because he said that the sun does not move around the earth, but the earth revolves around the sun. He was the minority then, with the entire church as his opponent; but would you say he was abnormal? Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian government for holding up a Philosophy that challenged their hegemony, for standing by the truth, and ardently believing in virtuous living... was he abnormal? No he wasn't; he was a great man who gave people like me the reason to live. Well, they would say culture plays an important role in distinguishing between normal and abnormal. But in that case, these concepts become relative to culture. Hence, what may be considered abnormal in one culture may very well be accepted in another. We make universal assumptions, using them to create guidelines that are supposed to be universally applicable. But, what we apply them on are particulars, relative to so many things - culture, gender, age etc. Fallacious? The point I am trying to make is that as Psychologists, we carry preconceived notions of people who walk in to our offices, targeting them as pathological, in need of a remedy. I do not see empathy here, I do not see unconditional positive regard, and all the other hogwash we live by. All I see is unsolicited tyranny.



Then there are Psychologists who say that impaired functionality implies abnormality. Why not ask the ones that you and I think are functionally impaired? Human existence is a purely subjective experience. Who am I to say that a schizoid personality is functionally impaired just because he finds his happiness in solitude rather than other people? What of people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, who were famously neurotic, but such great men? Were they abnormal or enlightened? Camus is believed to have devised his own death - a planned suicide. To himself, he answered the greatest question faced by mankind - whether this life is worth living or not. His, he believed wasn't. But during his lifetime, would one say he was abnormal? He was a man of great literary expertise, and a mind put to use, for generations to come after him. Leonardo Da Vinci, famously depressed, so much that his melancholia flickers in Mona Lisa's smile... but his creativity shone, only as a result of his melancholia. Freud himself was a cocaine addict... what does that leave us with?



But the saddest thing about the state of Psychology today is that it isn't Psychology anymore, it isn't the study of the human mind anymore. It has lost the human-ness of its endeavour, rendered no more than a business, a job, a money making scheme. Or perhaps, I am wrong.. because I am really a Philosopher at heart, pretending to be a Psychologist.

A day in the life of a city girl...

I managed to surprise a whole bunch of people when I decided to live all by myself in a city that's not the safest place in the world. More than being concerned about my safety, people were shocked to know that I had decided against a roommate. The easiest response to give them was that it is hard to study when you have a roommate. But my reasons were much deeper than that. For one, I really needed to learn how to manage everything on my own. But more importantly, being the loner that I am, I wanted uncensored time to myself and my thoughts. The worse kind of intrusion to a person like me would be someone who wouldn't give me adequate time with my thoughts, for there are too many, and it takes a whole lot of effort to organise them. And given that I have nine hour days, another person to come back home to and entertain would have been no more than a burden.

So anyhow, my decision to stay alone brought with it inadvertent responsibilities. My day begins with washing utensils, clearing the trash, then I mop my bathroom floor and take a quick shower. I do all of that in an hour, which is a big surprise, considering that I used to take forty five minute showers when I had the luxury of not having to do anything else but groom and read. And even more surprisingly, I feel just as clean after a ten minute shower as I did after a forty five minute shower! At 8.45 Jenny, my classmate, comes home and we leave for college. Classes till 1.30, and then we rush off to the only market there is in the city for lunch. We are regulars at a small Italian cafe. An hour and a half spent talking about all sorts of things under the sun - ex-boyfriends and no hope left of finding mr.right, wannabe twenty-somethings and elitist thrity-somethings, feeling proud for being elitist intellectuals and not some bimbos; intellectualism, vandalism, major egosentrism - there's nothing like bonding with your girls! Nearing the time for our afternoon classes, we inevitably spend the last fifteen minutes at the cafe convincing our classmates over the phone to get the rest of the classes cancelled. But it never works in our favour. And so never before 3.00, we drag ourselves back to college for 2.40 class, only to find out that the teachers are only marking attendance! And then we drive back home, Jenny usually accompanies me. We hang out for a while at home before she goes back to her pad. And then I have the rest of the evening to myself, which is spent reading a bit, studying a bit, socializing a bit, cooking a bit, cleaning a bit... and then I take a shower and by bed time, I am exhausted and I sleep as a log.

That is thrice a week. On the days of field work, I meet my old girlfriends... Since my field work hasn't really taken off, I just spend those days mainly catching up with old friends or reading. I am hoping that my internship kicks off next tuesday. I am quite thrilled about my new placement, which is at a reputed hospital, under a big shot Psychiatrist. I have a strong feeling that I will be overworked there. I shall find out on tuesday. Till then, it's big time socializing.

My life may not be all that eventful, but I love every second of it. I do not happen to be fond of partying (as certain people think) and neither am I a late night person. I am quite an old lady in the body of a 21-year-old. I enjoy Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee, I love reading classics and I worship Friedrich Nietzsche, Psychology is my religion. I love watching plays. And yes, I like going to gigs, not so much for the music, but because that is perhaps the only thing that makes me feel young.

So that's my life. Content, for I am doing something that I would not have a reason to live without; Happy, for I have the nicest girlfriends in the world; Deeply Amused, for I have a musical playing in my mind all the time... In brief, I am in love with life!

A Tribute to The Beatles...

As I write this, I am adorned in my much favored Beatles t-shirt,
terribly missing my huge Beatles poster back home, and listening to
'I'll follow the sun'...

There are many musicians that I absolutely adore, but none quite like
The Beatles. No matter what is said about them, it is an understatement.
The Beatles sang about anything and everything, one band that has made
music for all moods. They reaffirmed the notion that each one of us has
the whole universe within us, we just need to recognise it. They did.
All of us can relate to all their songs at one point or another.
I am reminded of the scene in sliding doors when Helen boards the train
and meets James for the first time, and he talks of the Beatles, 'Everybody's
born knowing all the Beatles lyrics instinctively. They're passed into the
fetus subconsciously along with all the amniotic stuff. Fact, they should be
called "The Fetals".'

What Beatles demand is fanatism, nothing less than that. One either has blind
faith in The Beatles, or no faith at all. They were not only musicians, they
were revolutionists. The Beatles was not a band, it was a movement. Their songs
are consumed with Existential values. Perhaps that is why they are eternal.

Let me take this opportunity to talk about the relevance of their songs even today.
'She's leaving home' was written and sung by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1967-

Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free.

She (We gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband Daddy our baby's gone
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly
How could she do this to me.

She (We never thought of ourselves)
is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye

Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade.

She (What did we do that was wrong)
is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
fun (Fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years. Bye, bye
She's leaving home. Bye, bye

This song is the story of each one of us, even today. Rather,
more so today. It talks of needs misinterpreted, love miscalculated,
loneliness misunderstood...

Most of us take material things to be fulfilling. But one who
recognizes that there's more to life than that is rendered lonely,
not necessarily alone. And his/her loneliness is then considered to
be an insult to the ones who have provided for that person. But what
have they provided? Things that stop mattering after a certain point.
One can't take an abundance of anything, least of all things that money
can buy. And perhaps it is then that one begins to question this life,
to look for something to transcend all the ephemeral things in life. This
is what this songs evokes in me, and so much more.

Then there is Nowhere Man, which each one of us are; Lady Madonna - everyone
encounters so many of them! And then of course, 'I'll follow the sun' which is
the story of my life... :)

A Solipsist's musings...

What if death is an invention of the mind, a reminder that we
have to stop dreaming one day?

An old writing..

This piece was conceived months back. One of my favourites, it is crying to
be shared.

"The alchemy is over, the magician's gone. His charm lingered till last
night, now it's only the marks of his love that persist. Marred by the
diabolical world, its prodigy is incapacitated of sustaining a thing pristine.
How sad is this life! And how ironic! Her talent shines only when she dies.
When her heart is alive, her words are crude. She'll only succeed in her
solitude. People corrupt her, restrain her. Look what she just purged. She
never ceases to surprise herself! One moment she's liberated in his arms,
the next she accuses him of holding her back!

She loves him so, but she hates this world. They don't know, those who say
love conquers all, the power of hate! Her agony tears her apart, leaves her
without a heart to believe in the things she sees. Her past has left her
impenetrable. So she doubted for a while, flew for a while, lived for a while,
but now she's awake, awake to pinch herself, or be pinched by this demonic
world that she dwells in, out of the dream she reveled in. And it's all over.
He doesn't have a place in her heart anymore, her little heart so consumed
by the chill of this world galore. But she loves him so!

Oceans apart he tries to touch her still, love her still, but she has shut
her doors on him; she tries and she tries with all her heart and soul to
feel him one more time, but he's only a stranger now, a mirage, a dream in her
distant past, not so distant.

She's losing her sanity, trying to hold on to her love, she finds another;
she feels no more for either, she feels no more at all.

Insanity gulps her down, but she feels more sane than she has ever felt.
No human contact, with her solitude one more time... solitary existence!!"

Pennies from Heaven

I have come to realize that I have a hypomanic disposition. It takes
a lot to upset me, but I can be happily excited with a wink! On normal
days I love being so dauntless and self-assured. But then there are days,
like today, when all the confidence and self-worth becomes a little too
much for me to handle and I wish there would be something to make me feel
just a little less agile. There are so many thoughts going through my mind
right now, so many things I want to write about, but they are too disorganised
and too transient for me to take a note of. The ego state of mine that is a
Psychologist would call this 'flight of ideas'. I just like to call it
a patternless canvas with too many colors to distinguish one from another.
But then, I am not complaining. I love it! The only thing that is worrying
me a little right now is that I am not even a bit sleepy and I have a long day
ahead of me, and knowing me, I may not remain in this state long enough to
sustain the whole day tomorrow.

Anyway, that is besides the point right now. In this moment, I am enjoying
Louis Armstrong like I never have before, listening to him with a totally
fresh feeling. This is one of those moments when I am trasported to another
world - a world of intellectual superiority, great aesthetic sense, chivalry
and sophistication. A world where people live by passion and not reason.
A world where there are no conspiracies, no malice, where everyone
is so deeply awed by existence that they don't think of anything other than
making it as beautiful as can be. A world that I have never seen, but experienced
in the darkness of my mind. A world that I have only now begun to share with people,
in the hope that it might be out there somewhere, but a world that I had been
living in for a long time. A world that perhaps is just a fabrication of my mind,
a mental anthology, plagiarised bit by bit from everything that I have read. A world
that perhaps I will always only vicariously experience.
How glorious was that man! He stirred so much in me! He was truly blessed I'd say
to have had a voice like that! And he did complete justice to it! And so he sings -
'Everytime it rains, it rains pennies from heaven! Don't you know each cloud contains
pennies from heaven. You'll find your fortune fall all over the town. Be sure that
your umbrella is upside down!'

Haha.. I can't stop smiling in my mind! I am bordering insanity! Perhaps I am overdoing
everything, but then it makes me ecstatic!

Pointless

This post is going to be completely pointless as I have nothing to say.
I am writing partly out of boredom, partly out of restlessness, and partly
because I just want to write whatever crap comes to my mind.
Well, I lost my cell phone today. Actually, I dropped it down the elevator
shaft. It seemed hilarious at the moment, and I unsuccessfully tried to
feel angry with myself. But it was so funny. It took me a while to feel
some sense of loss. And now, well, I have been made to stay back at home,
as my overprotective mother was apprehensive about letting me travel alone
late in the evening without a cell phone.
I see ahead of me a sleepless, lazy night - haha, and Louis Armstrong is
singing Lazybones to me right now - and a very long day tomorrow. Well, now
that it has come up, let me divulge you on how my ipod/ laptop always happens
to play just the songs that fit my mood at the moment. I sometimes very strongly
feel that your gadgets are not just machines. Over time, once you have spent
enough time with them, they begin to know you, get accustomed to your various
hues, and function to suit your needs. It's almost as if they're real people!
Take for example, my very sturdy former cell phone, which I miss terribly as I
write this. I, the clumsy person that I happen to be, drop my cell phone at least
five times a day. My baby was smart enough to know never to break! He (I am not
too much in favour of referring to valued things as 'it') did not even get scratched,
endured my battering unscathed!! Sigh!! Well, I guess I am too much in grief over my
cell phone right now to be talking any sense. Perhaps, I should just sign out...

To be Single...

In a recent struggle with my enduring and irrevocable singledom,
I picked up a long forgotten book from my mini (and much valued) library -
'Chasing the good life : On being single' edited by Bhaichand Patel. I had
bought this book in the super-feministic-self-sufficient-self-reliant-
egotistic-singleton phase that I went through in my second year as a
Humanities student in an all-girls college, as every girl in my situation
probably does. However, I never actually got around to reading it at the time,
perhaps because I was subconsciously afraid of the severely damaging
reinforcement that the book would prove to be to my feckless self-obsession.
I don't know what invisible force compelled me to pick up the book now, perhaps
the realization that my hopes for a man are only a flicker...

Anyhow, I randomly opened an article in the book and started reading it. It was
a woman's account of the emotions one goes trugh when suddenly found to be alone.
I could not relate to it much, except when in the end she writes-
'Of course, sometimes, not when you're down, but when you're soaring - high on a
phrase of music, or a piece of writing, or the antics of one of your dogs, or
some fragrance on the breeze - you want a partner. But somehow, no actual person
comes to mind - it's just a mental sketch of a composite creature, made up of the
nice bits of all the men that you know. Then the moment passes, and you stretch
luxuriously this way and that, quite smug and snug in your solitude.'
These few lines state my plight very well... those high moments when I read
something extraordinary, or listen to a song that transports me to another world
- and those moments are too many in my life - add to these the times when I look
in the mirror to see a fine looking young girl, and not just a face, but with so
much to say, and no one to talk to. It would be hilarious if it wasn't me!!!

But yes, at the end of the day I still bask in the glory of singledom. Perhaps, I
am not even capable of taking a man, what with all the barbarism that is inherent
to men as a species. In the last three years, I have almost been alienated to men,
and I have begun to enjoy it in a very weird way (no pun intended!). For there is
an unspoken and irreplacable comfort in sisterhood. Perhaps the reason I am still
so single, and most likely will remain for a very long time, is because I demand
the kind of intellectual sophistication, charm and gallantry that was found only
in the times of Jean-Paul Sartre and Frank Sinatra. And perhaps, I have accepted
that!

Living with Perfection...

We spend our lives single-mindedly chasing perfection... 
In disguise of happiness, or rightness, we are taught to chase perfection in
everything that we do. Perfect grades, perfect friends, perfect family, perfect
lovers, perfect jobs... that's all we seem to want. However, the very nature of
this pursuit is such that it defies its own fulfillment.

Perfection requires intense nurturance. It can only be achieved, if at all,
with a lot of effort and patience, and a fair deal of delusiveness, for in itself,
even perfection doesn't have a chance at existence. This quest, being almost
inherent, becomes the very reason for our existence. Hence, years on end are spent
on the betterment of one thing or another. When one commodity saturates with updation,
we look for another, not always out of necessity, but out of habit. Such is the circle
of life. Ironically, we go through it chiding and brooding over all the trouble and the
ostensive sensibility of it all... hoping for some miracle to happen, by the wave of a
magic wand, for eveything to fall into place. But it seldom does.

However, for a lucky few (or not), miracles do happen, life does adorn itself with
perfection. And then comes a whiff of confusion. For perfection had always been
just an idea, distant and surreal. All efforts had been invested in building it,
trying to give this idea a form, to make the surreal real. All the years spent were
spent with a purpose, a destination in mind. And now that the purpose is fulfilled,
and the destination in front of oneself, there is not much else left to do. And so,
one finds oneself aimless. It's nausea... in the face of perfection.

Perhaps that is how the pathology of the soul sustains. When left with happiness,
the soul fabricates reasons to be unhappy... when it achieves perfection, the soul
makes believe that something is wrong... By the time the input produces an effect,
one becomes so deeply accustomed to the state of dishevelment, that it is intrinsically
constructed, when not given to us.

Man, Machine, God - What's the difference??

A few days back, I was watching a show on TV about a group of Neuropsychologists
in the U.K who have induced Near Death Experience (NDE)
in a number of volunteers as a part of research on the subject. Being an aspirant of Psychology myself, I should have been 
thrilled at the news, but

all it did was to make me realize that advancing Science is only taking us farther
and farther away from the essence of being Humans, into a realm of androids.

Near Death Experience, for those who have had it, is a spiritually transforming event.
By making it a purely biological phenomenon, under conditions of high blood
pressure and some sort of chemical proportions gone awry that sometimes subsume 
when a person is critical, researchers are equating it with an illness. 
Before we know it, NDE will be rechristened as a horrifying
disease, like Thenatodelusionophrenia, and people who experience it will be put on 
medication for life, and be advised therapy to prevent any 'undesirable'
consequences of the event, for undesirable is what humanness is becoming to Science and its accomplices. 

Nietzsche said God is dead. We have killed him; you and I. True, we have, a million times. When Dolly was cloned, when test tube babies were 
conceived, when Genetic Engineering was invented, when hybrids were bred, 
when leather was invented, and now when NDE was slacked away as a physical 
phenomenon. 

I am not anti-Science, as it may seem. I regard the fact that Science and Technology
have made life a lot more convenient. However, I do feel that we have
invented all we need to. What we need is equal approachability of what is already 
known to us, 
to one and all. We don't need a couple of richest people in the world buying 
made-to-order babies, while scores of tribes don't even know how a child is
conceived. We don't need an air-conditioned nation, while hundreds of villages in
another part of the world have never seen a bulb glow. We are polarising into 
two extremes, one that is primitive and with every discovery or invention, is 
retracted deeper into deprivation. The other, where Man is becoming 
omniscient, and is fostering a will to control the rest of the world and its workings. 
In short, where Man is becoming God. Sadly, this latter world is the one that is dominant.
Sadly, we are headed to a world where no person will need to talk to another because
we will have invented a way to store every little thing a man needs in a chip. In a way, we are becoming primitive again, primitive among 
machines in lieu of plants. 
Primitive because we are disavowing the conventions of civilization; 
solidarity, compassion, humanity. 
Because we are becoming breathing machines. 

Men in Pink!!!

Our generation is a witness to a reversal in gender roles. Whereas
twenty years back, men were notorious for being chauvanistic,
dominating, yet committment - phobic and inaccessible, today we 
see these very qualities being fervently imbibed by women. Androgyny
seems to be the new thing, for men and women alike. Women today are
breaking away from traditional roles of home-makers, and are at par
with men everywhere. Not only are they more career-minded than ever before, they are seen to be venturing in not-so-traditionally-feminine jobs. Today, women are no longer only teachers or beauty 
consultants or PAs to big shots. Instead they are to be seen everywhere, 
and many a times, far ahead of men.

Howsoever, not matter how ardently a woman might seek this new 
equation between a man and herself, she still wants all the chauvinistic
charms in her man. Not only that, she also wants to be accepted and
respected in her androgynous role. She doesn't want to spend her days
catering to the needs of her man anymore, or rearing and caring for kids. She wants to hold a job, and wants an equal involvement from her 
man. But that is where androgyny stops for a man. A man who is
expressive with his emotions is called a crybaby, one who takes care to groom himself well is called a fag; 
a woman can disavow the painful saarees and chunnis, but a man who 
likes bling is tacky!!

Where does that leave a man? If he gives her woman ample space, she
suspects him of cheating on her. If he dotes on her all the time, she calls
him clingy. If he takes care to look good, she calls her feminine, if he
doesn't he's messy. If he doesn't tell her how much he loves her, he's a ?$%^@&*, and if he does, he's lovesick.
Who is to blame here? Is it man, with a compromised brain and very
confusing demands? Perhaps not!

Perhaps Freud was right when he said, "The great question that has
never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer,
despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What
does a woman want?”" Perhaps this question will never be answered!!  

Contemplating about contemplation

Today as I woke up, I found myself faced with yet another one of the untimely and unusually generous showers that Delhi has been blessed
with lately. Such weather usually puts me in a contemplative mood, and
today was no different. However, today I wasn't thinking about the 
paranormal, or reductionism, or even ways to convince people to 
make shrines in honor of Nietzsche. Today, I found myself thinking
about thinking. I was Metacognizing!

As I settled myself next to my window, with a steaming cup of coffee, 

and Peggy Lee humming a tune in the background, I found myself trying to fathom the need and importance of thinking to me. My mind has
always been a clock that never stops ticking. I have spent years as an
audience to almost involuntary thoughts that keep screaming in my mind.
Involuntary, that is what contemplation has been for me. But somehow,
during the last few months, it became a calculated task, almost ritualistic. Perhaps it was idleness. Or perhaps a necessity for me, 
considering the path I have chosen in my life. But, amid the transformation 
of contemplation from something intrinsic to me, to something that was
now a survival mechanism, I realized that I had stopped to enjoy it. It 
became work, like everything perhaps does after a point. 

They say Philosophy is either a luxury, or a desperate attempt at
justifying the desolation of life, for those who recognize it. Nietzsche said : "The great majority of people lacks an intellectual 
conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for 
an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated 
cities as if he were in a desert." 
I find myself surrounded by people who go through lives doing everything they
 should when they should do it, leading lives they way they have been told to,
 the right way. I always wonder if these people ever even give a fleeting 
consideration to why they are doing it the way they are. Do they ever sit 
and wonder how life would be if they lived it any differently, or even if there
 is a way for them to do so.
All these people, they seem so happy in their existence, so content with
obeying their parents without questioning their beliefs, so content with
their wives and husbands and children, living up to the conventionalities
that have been fostered for so many years. And then I wonder for myself,
for the need to complicate my life by questioning everything I see, by trying
to tread a path that is all my own. But then, I know there isn't any other way
I would want it. Life isn't about choosing what you want' life is about choosing 
what you don't want. And I believe, I have made an informed choice of not 
wanting a life where I can't question.