Susegaad

"15 years ago, you should've seen Goa - it was actual Susegaad... things are different now man." This is what Patrick said to me as he drove me on his scooter from his hotel to my friend's hotel; I had my big suitcase in my lap while I saw Goa fly past me.
"We would walk in the fields, go fishing, people would pay when they liked, sleep when they liked... it was really nice. I don't know what you guys do in Bombay..."
"Work all day, no time for sunlight, no time for the waves, no time to spend the money, more money than is needed and everything is expensive there...".

A cabbie by the name of Ashok who drove me from Ashwem to Mapusa was saying the same stuff... "Every 5 minutes you have a traffic light, no place to walk... people from Goa can never live there and you guys can never live here."

An unknown semi-American dude told me, "Man, I was with my friends from Bombay the other day, they are just so adverse."

Ravi, the clothes salesman told me as we sipped on chai while seated on the stony floor, "You see this tree, this was a sapling when I put up my stall and I thought what's the use of cutting it... see how big it has become now." (He was speaking about a 3 year young coconut tree). "And you see that one, that is at least 7 years old."

I sat on the rocks at 7 am on my last day at Goa and I watched a few crabs hurry about.
I saw a bright orange and green comet/ shooting star as big as the moon one night.
I saw clouds merge over my head.
I saw a storm gather over the ocean in the distant.
And I said to myself, what a wonderful world it is, wasted as we stay in our concrete confines.

Needs, Morals and Questions

What would you do if you were to meet the 'maker'? God?
I would ask him to play chess with me, and if I win - I can be God. I'm sure I could beat him at Chess...

The outrageous amount of food that had infested my stomach did not allow me to make a sound while I lost control of myself while laughing, hence I had to reel from side to side and bang my fist on the table.

Well, I would have asked him whether the cow as a holy animal was your idea or was it the Hindu human's idea... coz damn, it's a sin not to have good access to good beef. Sigh.

So, what is it that we need?
Food, sleep, freedom, air.
Better roads would be good.
So would better people.
A walk away from the city would be nice too.
I have a problem with humans. I don't understand the unquenchable need for dominance which may be manifested in ways such as sex, torture, murder, molestation, disrespect, oppression.
One would assume that a human is just another creature that lives on the Earth but the nature of (hah, 'nature'!) our ability to control and influence sets us apart. I believe that humans no longer need hair, weak backs, nails, etc. Our rapid transformation has changed the way we use our bodies and hence we have messed with evolution.
In that process, we have not lost how the amygdala functions and that is just one of the things that ruins our behaviour in a very different world of the 21st century. May be it makes sense to be carnal and detached. May be it makes sense to be utterly selfish in a Galt sort of way. It makes sense to utilise our human resources towards more forms of research just for the fun of it instead of earning money which ceases to have meaningful utility beyond a certain point.

I want to travel. I want to write. I want to eat interesting food. Meet interesting people. Drink an interesting form of alcohol. Engage in an affair with an incredibly hot woman, preferably non-human. And yes, I would be OK with dying before I get to do any of that.

Why is it wrong to rape a woman whereas it is acceptable to see a dog raping a bitch? Raping female humans was not wrong 3000 + years ago. Marrying more than one female was also not wrong, not so long ago. Beating up women was also not wrong. Morals have changed.
What Hitler did is so ghastly even now for the Western world, but not so much for many parts of the Eastern World and I would think that many Africans would think of it as a much better way to die than in stories they have heard.
We tend to associate ourselves with certain forms of humans. If a woman was raped in a Middle Eastern country and a woman was raped in Sweden - the reactions to both stories would be vastly different even though both women are equally unknown to the reader in Indonesia.

Why are Saudi Arabians becoming obese? Why are many Africans frail? Why are women not interested in creating children? Why are men attracted to other men? What happened to all the painters and musicians? What is the utility of living life as a stock-trader? Why do some humans lose interest in sex? Why are some humans interested in having sex with children? Why do humans work multiple hours a day in less-than-contentment when they have sufficient money to live a good life? Why do people get married when marriage is a god-related institution and god-itself is perceived to be a myth by many humans? Why are there more temples/ shrines than public urinals in India? Why do we accept atrocities of the mental kind? What is wrong about breaking a human relationship? How does it matter if society does not see the good in you, when you know yourself to be fabulous? Why should we tip at the end of a meal when a tip before the meal makes more sense in terms of incentivizing the server?

I have many questions but I don't need answers to many of them. I have one life and I refuse to play along. But I secretly do.

Sense

"All you seem to be doing is enjoying life!" - She said this with contempt based on a social acceptance that one needs to struggle through life and 'earn' the good stuff. All I could think of in response to that statement was, "What else is there?"

Reminds me of a friend who is now dead; he always seemed to be on the move - doing something new or exciting every other weekend. When I see myself not living up to the same kind of life it hurts at times, although I am pleased with the gradient of my progress. Cocoons are for caterpillars. Humans are for the Earth. 

The Invasion

I saw the movie The Invasion and as ridiculous as the movie is, it is thought-provoking. Humans are, seemingly, the only creatures who truly appreciate colour, art, design, music, emotions, intelligence, discovery, etc. When I sit at times and stare at the world around me I see how improbable it is that humans exist, how improbable it is that we are such a dominant species and how improbable it is that all of this is real.

When I say that, I immediately think of, 'Does it matter?'. Does it matter whether everything around us is real ? Would we be different if we were slaves inside a matrix? See, we wouldn't know would we?
Why is this post here? Because, the movie made me think of what humans would be with their humanity stolen... everybody systematic, everything in harmony, no emotions. You see, pleasantness is appreciated when the unpleasant phase is passed through. Happiness is appreciated when bad times are driven away. It is magical to be human and still so disgusting.

We spend our time in atrocious ways and it saddens me deeply. I was happy when I spoke to my American friend the other day and he told me about his 8 day hike to the summit of Mt. Whitney in California. He works for ADM but he loves the rough life, may be it's a great escape to that which is actually real. I have written about the futility of life earlier and this movie reminded me of how precious humanity can be. I miss my crazy laughter. When did you last get out of your city and see something utterly gorgeous? When were you last truly alone?

The Tank Man

The tank man. After the division that had begun and was continued, through aristocracies, the capitalistic world seemed on its way towards greater prosperity. But off late, it seems to me that the division is growing wider.
The tank man stands as an anonymous hero representing the human spirit. I see the conditions under which ordinary 'urban' Indians live their lives; prosperity has been seen but infrastructure is woeful and it also seems as though we Indian really can't do anything to change the way the government is treating us. Isn't there something woefully despicable about this previous statement?

This article has been well written and it talks about the mirage that is the democracy in China.
I see the world moving towards a sorry brink. Nutrition, sanitation and comforts are being spread across a more gentle curve which seems to be flattening out a little more. It makes me sad and I hope we find a way around the upcoming brink.

Woman

The past is important and reading from the past brings us closer. Tagore had thoughts and these thoughts gave rise to speeches around the world. I am currently reading Speeches by Tagore in the book called "Race Conflict and other Speeches". An excerpt from a speech titled Women's Place in the World:

"A man's interest in his fellow beings becomes real when he finds in them some special form of usefulness or striking gift of powers, but a woman feels interest in her fellow-beings because they are human, not because of some particular purpose they can serve, uncommon talent which they may possess. Her exuberance of vital interest is spontaneously expressive; it makes her speech, her laughter, her movement, graceful and picturesque: for the note of gracefulness is in this harmony with all our surrounding interests."

...

"Woman has her natural power that penetrates through the surface to the heart of things, where in the mystery of life dwells an eternal source of interest; and therefore her love has not necessarily to wait for the excitation of surprising qualities. God has sent woman not merely to explore or exploit but to love the world which is a world of ordinary things and events. She is not in the world of fairy tale where the fair woman sleeps for ages till she is touched by the magic wand. In God's world women have their magic wands everywhere, which keep their hearts awake, and these are not the golden wands of wealth nor the iron rods of power.
Of late, with the help of science, civilization has been growing increasingly impersonal in character, so that the full reality of the individual is more and more ignored."

_________________________________________

Tagore wrote well and thought better. It's important for us to look back at what he wrote and from what I have read thus far, this essay has struck me most.

Find your call

A loss of passion and illiteracy describe our time. Machines we be and disillusioned we are.
We understand how to work on excel sheets and write codes; we know how to sell products and how to design buildings but we know very little of who we are, who our ancestors used to be and what the world used to be a mere 200 years ago.
Knowledge of that which is capitalistically useless is quite crucial. There is no crawl and no bewilderment. We are not amazed with new buildings, new machines or new infrastructure. We are enchanted by nature only to capture it in our small photographs. Conversations are restricted to daily chores and mind-numbing gossip sprinkled with the occasional 'knowledge' of that which is useful for success.
Success as a term has lost its relevance because we just cannot sit still. Just look at yourself when in a movie theatre or at home. Things have changed and society has become a glazed shadow of its glorious past when people worked for something truly mighty.