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!!"