Random Reflections on a Tragic Week

                                         Random Reflections on a Tragic Week

It has been a deadly week for humanity.  A hat-trick of plane crashes caused by Nature’s freakish fury and Man’s inhumanity has accounted for the loss of nearly 500 lives. Israel’s pounding of Palestine has resulted in 823 deaths as of today. ISIS which seeks to establish Islamic caliphate is reported to have issued a fatwa asking all women between the age of 11 and 46 in Iraq to undergo genital mutilation in addition to killing five thousand Iraqi Shia Muslims. Nearer home, the IAF chopper crash has taken way seven lives of our Air force personnel, the bus –train collision in Telengana has caused the death of 16 young children and 20 more injured with 11 of them in serious condition. Murder, rape, car accidents, building collapse etc - these make the news headlines on a daily basis. It is difficult- rather impossible to find any logical or rational explanation for these tragic happenings.  At the same time it is still more difficult to accept or meekly surrender to them taking refuge in Shakespeare’s philosophic stoicism: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, / they kill us for their sport.”

Life with its irrationality, uncertainty and illogicality can be best described as absurd. All the aforementioned calamitous happenings that are not man-made constitute the tragic absurdity of human existence. Even those that are engineered by  perverse men have caused irreparable loss to many thousands of innocent people. The religious minded may scoff at Shakespeare for his veiled attack on the gods as being whimsical. But their scoffing at Shakespeare does not provide an answer to the illogical, irrational and unpredictability of our existence. “Why” and “wherefore” cannot be explained by “because” and “therefore”…  Human mind bristles with impotent anger at human tragedy which in simple terms is the colossal waste of the human potential.

The concept of the Absurd emerged in the writings of Nietzsche and Keirkegaard in the second half of the 19^th Century and following them in  the philosophical treatises, novels  and plays of some of the major writers of the 20^th century like Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Harold Pinter etc. The term  “absurd” means that which is meaningless, beyond rationality and understanding. Birth and death, are the two dots on either side of life. We are as uncertain about the origins of birth as about the end of life. Things happen arbitrarily beyond human understanding and we move through life from birth to death without figuring out its meaning or its purpose. Camus compares the absurdity of man's life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. Beckett also wryly mocks at human efforts to wait for a Godot who they believe will solve all existential problems. Godot never appears as he is an imaginary figure that each one of us erects in our minds to give us some form of illusory comfort and waiting for him itself provides an alibi for being occupied to pass the time between birth and death. Sartre looks at the existential absurdity as a given fact of life. He defines existentialism as existence preceding essence, contrary to the traditional belief in essentialism that held essence preceding existence. The fact that we are born and we exist, that  we have no knowledge prior to our existence, that  we are thrown into the world, that we have no choice of the world we are thrown into, affirms the choiceless  choice given to us to live in the world into which we are born.

Absurdity of existence is not only a 20^th century phenomenon. It was there before, and it continues to be present today. The present century is no less uncertain than the previous century; on the contrary it is a lot more perplexed and confused. What has added to life’s absurdity is the added cruelty of man on Nature and his fellow men. If Hitler had brainwashed the Nazis with hatred for the Jews in the previous century, Osama and the latest entry to fundamentalism- the ISIS- whip up frenzy against all those who do not believe in their religious fanaticism. But what is alarming today is the sudden surge of pent up fury in the man in the street who does not need a Hitler or an Osama to turn frantic with anger and violence. The tragic shootings of innocents in US in schools, universities and malls are replicated all over the world in some form or the other. At the slightest provocation one whips up a pistol and shoots dead the man in front of him. There is no effort to control one’s rage or dissatisfaction or frustration and the only possible dialogue among humans today is with pistols.

Still more frightening is Man’s losing battle with Nature’s fury. For the last three centuries- starting with the Age of reason in the 18^th century- Man has tried to dominate Nature. Nature had for the last three hundred years put up with human ingratitude for all the bounty she had bestowed on Man. Yet like the proverbial killing of the golden goose, Man has systematically destroyed Nature to satisfy his greed. Nature has now turned her back on Man causing havoc with sudden deluges, freakish thunderstorms, tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires and volcanoes and scorching summers and dreary winters. The two deadly plane crashes in Algeria and Taiwan and the chopper crash in India due to bad weather seem to be Nature’s answer to human excesses committed on her. When, how, where and on whom Nature will register her fury is unpredictable. Nature’s fury does not discriminate among men and women, among the good and the bad, between right and wrong. When Nature’s savagery strikes it sweeps away everyone and therein lies the absurdity – the uncertainty, the meaninglessness and the irrationality of human existence.

How do we cope with life that hangs by a thread- a thread that can get snapped at any moment? Living with tension and fear is no living. Living with a false wait for a Godot to come to our rescue is nothing but imbecilic self deception. With crumbling religious faith, turning to Gods and invoking their grace and compassion is sheer hypocrisy. Where can we find wisdom and courage to face life that withholds even a shred of hope to overcome the indefiniteness and incertitude that is characteristic of existence?

I am no sage or a saint to offer prescriptive suggestions. But I like to record my personal efforts that have stood by me whenever I experienced hours of weariness in which “the burden of the mystery and the heavy and weary weight of this unintelligible world had hung upon the beatings of my heart”( to quote Wordsworth).

1. Never keep the mind vacant for unknown worries and tensions to fill it. Whenever I am doing something- as mundane as dusting the house or cooking or driving or going on my daily walks-I keep reciting prayers. This helps me to keep away from unpleasant and disturbing thoughts. Prayers, contrary to what we generally believe in, are not meant just for seeking God’s grace but they provide mental discipline and concentration and increase memory power as well as  the basic cognitive process involved in obtaining and storing knowledge.

2. Cultivate a positive identity both for oneself and for others. Most of our troubles begin when we develop a negative outlook on people and life in general. Deepak Chopra says that India is facing a crisis of soul as a majority of interactions among the people swing too far to the negative. He adds that if everyday experiences of the majority are negative, they will impact wholesome human development. This is not India-specific as Deepak Chopra says; it is a global trend today. To develop a positive outlook, it is essential to think of oneself as a tiny part of a large system or organization called life. In other words, one has to accept the truth that one is a cog among many similar cogs in the wheel of life. If we recognize that each cog is very much like any other cog, and all cogs have to sail along the same boat, there will be no sense of superiority or inferiority that is the root of all negativity, of all human disputes and conflicts.

3. A corollary of the above helps us to give up a sense of doer-ship. We are specs or sparks from heaven( again heaven is the only available word to describe our unknown origin)  and therefore we bring with us some essence of that spark. What we do or what we achieve or what fail to achieve is related to the way we utilize the essence. We cannot pre-determine the essence that is given to us but we have the freewill to deploy it for our own good and for the good of other people. But the unalterable fact remains that we are only the channel for the essence to flow through. If we understand this, we will not claim the sense of doer ship but as merely the instrument for action in accordance with the essence that we carry forth into the world.  The no-claim to ownership of our actions frees us from egotism that fuels rivalry, anger, frustration and violence. This is Nishkam Karma or selfless or desire less action or detached involvement that arises out of giving up doer-ship.

4. The best way to meet suffering that is an inevitable part of life is to accept the principle of ricorsi – the process of a cyclical repetition of opposite states- happiness and suffering, light and darkness, the sun and the moon, day and night,s ummer and winter  etc. The Bible cites the example of Job who endures physical pain mental suffering and spiritual anguish for no perceivable fault or sin that he had committed. When he seeks an answer from the Lord, the Lord tells him that as long as he enjoyed health, wealth and all the good things of life such as the beautiful sun and the moon, the stars and the sky, the birds and the animals, he never asked why all this bounty had been given to him. But the moment he is denied all the happiness, he seeks an explanation for his suffering.  Job accepts his lack of knowledge, of ‘things beyond me and which I did not know”. Job is thus the early recipient of the long tradition of the existence of inexplicable suffering. Suffering and happiness are two sides of the same coin. Acceptance of this fact helps us to face suffering with fortitude. We in India despite all the wisdom of the Bhagavad-Gita mourn death with a lot of rituals that last for thirteen days. The painful process of these rituals adds to the misery of the bereaved. I may sound blasphemous when I say that these mindless rituals make death a painful and tearful event with no thought for the dead or the living. Death is not an event to be mourned, but has to be observed with gratitude as a celebration of a life well lived. We should be grateful for the quality time spent with the departed person and convert mourning to honouring and remembering the dead. It gives us the psychological strength to accept suffering with dignity and grace.

5. Last but not the least, I strongly believe in Seneca’s wisdom:

                                      Meanwhile while we live, while we are among human beings,

                                       Let us cultivate humanity.

This is to see oneself as a human being, bound to all human beings by human ties and to think and imagine what it is to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself.. While one’s loyalty to one’s own cannot be and should not be erased, it is essential to recognize the worth of other views of other nations and cultures and thereby develop an inclusive appreciation of human values wherever they may occur.

These are my panch-sheel – my five principles to guide me through life. They are not demanding and they can easily be adapted by every individual whose personal interest is intertwined with the interest of fellow humans.

Congress and the Concept of Ricorsi

                                                         Congress and the Concept of Ricorsi

If May 16 officially stamped the rout of the Congress, just about two months later, on July 14,it suffered a greater embarrassment when the Lok Sabha passed the TRAI ordinance with the support of Trinamool Congress, AIADMK and  NCP and a  day later the Rajya Sabha voice voted in its favour. This was a massive victory to the Modi-led BJP and a massive blow to  Congress  still licking its post-election wounds. Modi’s Congress-mukht Bharat  is now a reality,  for the 44 member Congress in the parliament does not count for anything. It is as good as being non-existent. When it rises to squeak and protest in the Parliament, it is heckled and ridiculed for daring to oppose the mighty ruling party, since it does not have even one tenth of members to pull down the ruling party. The media gleefully headlines that Congress is isolated in the Parliament.  And nobody wants to touch it with a bargepole. The media which has arrogated to itself the power of kingmaker does not lose an opportunity to lampoon the Congress when it speaks or when it sleeps. The media uses words like ‘pariah’ to state that all parties shun the Congress – words that are unofficially considered unprintable because of their derogatory slant against a community. Trinamool Congress is known for its prevarication. Its horizontal nod on any issue will turn into a vertical one and vice versa. Trinamool survives only by its unpredictability. It will shun an issue on a particular day and taking umbrage in the truth that a coin has two sides, it will embrace the same issue the next day.  This flip-flop is not the monopoly of Trinamool alone. All parties do the same at any given moment of exigency. That is the only way for political survival. The pre election rhetoric of the BJP against FDI and GST- just to cite two obvious examples- is turned on its head once it has come to power.  When the then finance minister P Chidambaram had raised the issue of FDI  in Defence with the Opposition in 2012, Narendra Modi had taken on the government for doing so. He had tweeted "Bharat Ko Congress party videshiyon ko bech raha hai" (Congress is selling away the nation to foreigners - we must oppose FDI)" in December 2012. Now the tables have turned. The Modi Government has enhanced FDI in defence to 100 percent, but after all round opposition in the country, has brought it down to 49 percent. AK Antony , the former defence minister told reporters in Parliament. "My feeling is that in itself is a dangerous beginning. Gradually all Indian private sector defence companies will be controlled by foreign multinationals. That will affect our national security.” Most of the UPA schemes that BJP denounced before the elections have been retained now when it is in power except for a change in the prefixes adding  Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya to them . Congress which had borne the brunt of opposition’s paralysis of the Parliament has resorted to the same game now that it is in opposition. So are the media hypes that oscillate between exaggerated promotion and demotion of a person or a party.

It is often said what is thrown up has only to come down. The entire universe moves on the concept of ricorsi-the process of repeating itself in a self-similar way. This is what Shelley refers to in his famous aphorism: “When winter comes can spring be far behind?” Gambittista Vico describes the history of the world as the history of cycles- the age of Gods(the Divine Age), the age of heroes( the Aristocratic Age) and the age of men ( the Democratic age). The last mentioned morphs into the age of Chaos  and the cycle will re-start. In our philosophy, this cycle is designated as the Satya yuga, the Treta  yuga, the Dwapara yuga and the Kali yuga.

So if Congress had ruled for the last ten years in a stretch, it is time for the BJP to step in. But  the media( hopefully BJP unlike the Media is intelligent enough to recognize) that lives from day to day cannot visualize the circle and therefore its current hype is for the ruling government. If it damns the Congress today as a “pariah” ( my apologies to quote the media’s vocabulary), it will damn the present ruling party tomorrow. It survives only by hype and exaggeration.

But the moot question is whether the Congress will prove an exception to the rule of ricorsi that is in operation in the universe?  After the humiliating defeat in the recent polls, the Congress party has not been able to gather itself up and stand on the strength of its illustrious founders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Rajaji who made the Congress a defining influence on modern Indian nationalism, committed to social reform and human upliftment. Today Congress is reduced to Hobson’s choice with th e only option of accepting the dynastic rule. The dynastic rule had failed to deliver and the blame was put on the ManMohan Singh’s government for its policy paralysis. The good work done by the previous government was interred with their exit and the follies of the dynasty are forgiven. It is time for the Congress party to face the truth squarely and say no to the Hobson’s choice of the mother-son leadership. It is a tough choice to make but it is the only one to lift the Congress up. Mrs.Gandhi has to make yet another supreme sacrifice of denying her prince the remote possibility of a return to power. She had denied herself the Prime Ministership in 2004. Ten years later, she should have the courage to deny her son the PM’s chair- in the interest of the Nation and the party. However well meaning Rahul may be, he is not a PM material. A country like India with diverse cultures, languages, demands and demographic aspirations needs a strong and dynamic leader who can understand and address this diversity with wisdom, compassion , concern and humaneness. The Congress has been for a very long time sheltered by the Gandhi family. To be fair to the Gandhis, they have nurtured it well in the past. Times have changed and demand new leadership. If the Banyan tree syndrome continues, no new shoots will emerge. It is time for the Gandhis to hand over the reins to younger people and there is no dearth of bright young men and women in the party to take up the responsibility. You can learn to swim only when you are in water. The Gandhis can now withdraw, having served the party for so long and thereby escape the discomfiture that the Steel man (Lohapurush) of the BJP is now being subjected to. The gratitude of the party and the nation will be in full measure if Mrs.Gandhi makes a second sacrifice.  The Congress should accept the ricorsi principle and bide its time. 

Political Holocaust

Political Holocaust

Tamil is a rich language remarkable for its proverbs and epigrams.  When I see the mauling of the Congress even after its humongous defeat, I am reminded of the apposite Tamil proverb : “the horse not only threw the rider down but also started digging his grave.”  The PM like the ex PM whom he  fondly referred to as  Maun Mohan Singh practises his predecessor’s maun vrat while his loyal lieutenants unleash their hatred on  the battered and bruised Congress leaders, almost like flogging a half dead arthropod.  The Modi-ists  in and outside his cabinet raise a lot of issues – issues that can be in the backburner till all the major pre-election promises Modi had made- that catapulted the ‘chappan ‘ inch ki chhati’ hero to the broad PM’s seat -are fulfilled. Modi had roared that what the Congress could not do in sixty years he would do in sixty months. His priorities were curtailing the inflation, curbing corruption and putting India back on its development rails. Five weeks are gone. This is the sixth week. No one had asked him to do what God had done when he created the world in six days and declared the seventh as the Sabbath day. But in PM’s own words he does not have the luxury of a Sabbath day- which in arithmetic calculations points to 4 Sundays of extra work per month-  i.e., 240 additional days in sixty months for him to deliver (i.e. 8 additional months more to work) reducing his 60 months target to 52 months.  

But his loyalists want to waste no time to prove to him that they will ensure his goal of congress mukht Bharat- decimate Congress from the face of the earth. It is like Henry IV,worried about the possible return of the incarcerated king Richard II  in the Tower of London saying: “Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?” Modi’s greatest asset is not even Amit Shah, but the evergreen litigant Subramanian Swami who to prove his loyalty to the PM in the saddle has filed cases against Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the president and the Vice-President of the much maligned, disliked, and humiliated Congress party. He has outdone Modi’s affectionate ‘Shehzada’  title given to Rahul by his vitriolic twitter reference to the mother and son as TDK and Buddhu( TDK is Tadaka, the witch in The Ramayana while Buddhu is  ‘imbecile’) who would be soon in jail on charges of embezzlement that he has filed in the court. His attack drags all the known faces of the Congress into mud that include Sam Pitroda, (the former technology adviser to Rajiv Gandhi and Chairman of National Innovation Council and National Knowledge Commission under ManMohan Singh) and Shashi Tharoor whose late wife was earlier referred to by Modi as Tharoor’s  “ 50 crore girl friend”. Going many steps farther than Modi, Swamy has alleged foul play in her death as a result of Russian poison( he is not just an economist, but a forensic expert) and has filed a PIL alleging Tharoor’s complicity in her death.  The breaking news now is CBI has been asked to probe Vadra’s companies and book him for malpractices. At least the Modi-ists are compassionate to ensure that Mother and son, daughter and son in law have each other’s company in jail.

The other Modi-ists  blame everything under the sun on Congress. If increased railway fares are announced before the Railway budget, it is to carry out Congress’ decision( why- no one can question because the Modi-ites enjoy a brute majority) . If gas prices are increased, freight charges are increased, they are done in keeping with the trend started by the  Congress. If there is a steep rise in inflation it is because of the Congress policies. So out of the sixty months ( rather 52 months) he had given himself, at least 12months have to be borne in patience as the unbearable heaviness of the heritage handed to Modi by the witchy Congress. This great act of the Modiparty(it is no longer known as the BJP) reads like the lamb and the wolf story from the Aesop’s Fables where a wolf comes upon a lamb and, in order to justify taking its life, accuses it of various misdemeanours, all of which the lamb proves to be impossible. Losing patience, it says the offences must have been committed by someone else in the family and that it does not propose to delay its meal by enquiring any further about the matter. The morals drawn are that the tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny and that the unjust will not listen to the reasoning of the innocent.

The Modi-ists rake up a lot of other issues such as the UCC(uniform Civil Code), return of the Pandits to Kashmir, use of Hindi as the official language( amended to Northern states only- which in essence means no south Indian officer  can serve in the Northern states without a mastery of Hindi for official communications and transactions), General V.K.Singh’s tweeting against the Army Chief-designate, linking him of supporting "dacoity" by an army unit that once worked under him-these  are instances of shooting their mouth at will unmindful and unconcerned about the fall-out of such controversies.

PM is a mute listener to the kind of noise his followers are making. For nearly five years of Man Mohan Singh’s second innings, the BJP kept paralyzing the parliament and the media gleefully joined in the political merry go round with the opposition and the ruling Congress engaged in ‘tu, tu mein, mein’ ( and the Congress getting the media stick). Now when the depleted and weakened Congress tries the same game, Modi-ists and the Media attack it saying that the public will teach the party a lesson for  its hubris. Congress is mocked at for seeking the LOP –which as per the rule book it does not have the number to stake its claim. Its protest against inflation and hike in railway fares are dismissed with scorn as childish and vapid. The Tamil phrase- the drum gets its beating  on both sides holds true of the Congress.

I write this not in defence of Congress. It is at this point of time a dead horse. It does not have the strength to protest or paralyze the government. Congress should realize its awkward position and act wisely, gracefully and with humility. It can counter the ruling party’s statements about coffers being empty, it can wait to see how Modi keeps his pre-election pledges and keep a low but intense profile to show to the youth and  the middle class that it is an opposition party with a difference. It is time for the party to end its introspection, face squarely the unpleasant truth of the vacuum in the party’s leadership in states as well as at the national level and its lack of communicability and take remedial action to reach out to the people that they are not as bad as they had been vilified.

As for the ruling party, instead of calling names and attacking the Congress as a hubristic party and seeking vendetta , it should be graceful in victory and seek a genuine P-P ( party to party) relationship, give credit to what ManMohan Singh and his men had done during their ten years rule( even the worst rulers  do have something positive about them).

Graceful in defeat, magnanimous in victory – is it too much to ask?