The Art of Balance

                                                               The Art of Balance

It was early in the morning in the 1950s around 5:30 and Chennai true to its character had fully woken up as one could hear the clinking of tumblers and vessels from different households and smell the pleasant aroma of quality coffee brewed and filtered in the kitchens and roadside coffee stalls. Don’t ask about smell of tea as morning tea in Chennai is an aberration and further the coffee aroma is so strong that it is the only smell that prevails.  We were a group of three- me, my sister and brother, all in the range of 6-10 and as we entered the dining room, laughing and joking about something that  had happened in school the previous day, my mother halted us midway and peremptorily asked us not to laugh loudly saying those who laugh in the morning will necessarily cry in the evening. We never argued back nor questioned the logic behind this remark but accepted it as we wouldn’t risk the possibility of a lachrymose evening. The Proverb (14.13) says: “even in laughter the heart is sorrowful". Years later I came across Samuel Beckett’s famous lines:  “The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh” 

There is no denying the wonderful balance that Beckett impishly refers to in the above quote, is present in the universe. Because it is a quotidian and omnipresent phenomenon, we hardly ever notice it. When the sun rises in the morning, it is curtain call for the moon and in the evening it is vice versa. Day and night, spring and summer, autumn and winter keep to a time schedule that is amazing. Maybe the clockwork precision gets a little disturbed now and then thanks to human activities, nevertheless the seasons never get jumbled or mixed up. Autumn can only come at the end of summer and spring cannot supersede winter nor can come in advance of it.

But we rarely wonder at this phenomenon of the universe that is built on balance, constancy and steadiness that is visible all around us and all time. On the contrary more often than not it is only our actions that are not on balance causing instability and disturbance all around. Life’s movement can be seen through the changes that constantly occur but they do not necessarily upset the applecart and disturb the balance of life. Changes are not permanent in keeping with Newton’s famous proposition that what goes up will have to come down but rarely do we recognize how our own actions contribute to the changes that impact us positively as well as negatively.. When our actions tend to go off balance, they result in throwing life out of gear. But ups and downs are not permanent; they come and go. This is nature’s attempt at restoring balance.  No one can be forever happy nor can s/he forever wallow in melancholy. Fortune does not smile always on the same person all through his /her life and it is incumbent on every one to come to terms with the sudden swinging away of good fortune at some point of time.  It is only the weak, uninitiated minds that erupt in ecstatic hysteria or in dolorous whimper as fortune swings from one end to the other. To take things in their swing is given only to a mature mind. This is what the Bhagavad Gita sums up as  Samatve yogam uchyathe(equamimity is yoga) . But in an egoistic way, we attribute good fortune to our own actions and the reversal of it to the actions of others. We lose our balance when we don’t understand that for the restoration of equilibrium we need to balance good and not so good (or bad) periods in our life’s journey.

This balance is pertinent for the society’s order and stability. It thus behoves on us to keep a balance on all that we say and do, act and react in respect of all issues. One of the basic aspects of generational change is the conflict between tradition and modernity. Both tradition and modernity have their positives and negatives. There is nothing absolute about the validity of one or the other. What is modern today becomes tradition tomorrow and the chain goes on till such time when what is modern is nothing but a return to tradition.  Fashion is the best example of tradition and modernity that satisfies the human desire for change. Modernity cannot claim for itself absolute originality as it builds on the legacy of tradition. The right balance is neither to make a mockery of tradition nor to eulogize all that is modern. The generational change between the old and the young is the tension between modernity and tradition. For the society to retain its state of equilibrium, we need to cultivate self restraint so as not to go overboard over the two conflicting attitudes and values.

In the modern times when there is a strong emphasis on freedom and individuality, there is often a clash between democratic freedom and the practice of religious faiths. Religion has the unique power to unite and divide people. Intolerance of faiths other than one’s own and imposition of unitary religion results in catastrophic wars. From as early as the 11^th century the 200 year crusade wars between European Christians and worshippers of Islam had resulted in humungous losses to life and property on both sides.  Leading a religious war without respecting other religious identities and national boundaries continues even now causing misery to millions of innocent people all over the world. Fundamentalists in a frenzied zeal to thrust their religion on the rest of the world have shown scant respect for other faiths and are equally opposed to principles of secularism. They spread hatred and violence against all non believers in their religion and thereby destroying democratic freedom that guarantees every individual the right to follow and practice the religion s/he is born to. Unless we balance religious sensitivities against democratic freedom, the 21^st century may run true to the popular and yet contested phrase “the clash of civilizations”.

Beginning with the Arab spring and the Wikileak tapes, to the rise of AAP(the aam admi party) in India, the political power equations  all over the world have drastically changed. Everywhere the political establishment is being challenged and democracy has taken a new avatar that gives power to the people-not just to elect a government, but to rise against establishment irrespective of whether it is a benign administration or a corrupt administration. In most cases this had gone bizarre as overthrowing of an establishment did not pursue the logical question “What next or what is hereafter?. The spontaneous uprising of people in humungous numbers has in most cases been unsuccessful for it has only replaced the democratic system with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Unrestrained power to the people has to be balanced with democratic principles where the rule of the elected representatives is a collective effort at governance. There is a thin line that divides power to the people from people’s power. The former is a proportionate mix of power and accountability where the power is exercised by people to elect those who should govern them and be accountable to them, while the latter confers absolute power on people with varied and divergent aspirations and expectations to exercise power without accountability.  The recognition of the subtle difference between the two alone can restore order and balance to our polity.

The people’s movement in the last decade has derived its strength from the social media. Social media has become a potent weapon in the hands of people, but it is a double edged sword. It can generate social benefit with its potential for effective, instant and interactive communication. It can be judiciously used for the benefit of humanity, to promote collective consciousness and make people aware of many life issues that impact them. But Social Media does not limit itself to bestowing benefits.   It lends itself to disseminate scandals and gossip, to spread rumour, for cyberbullying and to be used as a weapon of subversion of the establishment. Thus it has the power to create and the power to destroy. It can build and mar reputations, can catapult someone into instant fame and hurl him down to instant disgrace, can scale up and scale down any product or institution.  Unless we factor in the reverse side of social media, we may be unaware of its power that can destroy the qualities that make us social and humane. While it is able to percolate important messages to millions of users, it leaves little time for their critical examination. News and messages follow one another thick and fast and responses are generated at breakneck speed. The comments are hastily done on a superficial reading of the messages with no informed debates and discussions on them. The Twitter with its 140 character limit suffers most both in terms of what and how it is said. We have to reckon with the negatives of social media before strategizing ways to use it as the shaping agent of our consciousness for affirmative action leading to the crowning achievement of cultivating humanity-

Further yet another distressing aspect of the social media is the personality disorder it gives rise to among young adults. The abundant connections of social networking paradoxically bring forth a new solitude. “A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures...” is true of Facebook that boasts of companionship without intimacy!  Social networking turns people into ‘maximizing machines’ that respond to what it is thrown at them. Many blogs have turned into rumor mills, spreading misinformation that people tend to believe as the truth. We are as much overwhelmed by its capacity to trigger off instant exchanges as by its capacity to turn us into mindless nerds, socially inept and robotically obsessed with puerile and inane natter. The fearsome possibility of turning into social robots without forging one-on-one relationship will make us faceless in a faceless multitude. The Social Media can create personal, emotional, intellectual and spiritual disorder if not a total vacuum. We are at the threshold of the ‘robotic moment’ and it is essential to reaffirm our humanity by making a balance between what should go into and what shouldn’t in the social media.

We have to reaffirm the balance that nature exemplifies. This balance is at the core, one of accommodation as against one of negation. One of the great lessons I have learnt from Professors in England where I had gone for study is  is their willingness to accept the  student’s point of view even if it is at variance with their own  saying:”well that is also a line of thinking we can look into”   The French artist of the late 19^th Century, Henry Matisse wrote: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”
Lastly we have to cultivate Work- life balance  where work relating to our profession, career and aspiration is balanced with our life style that relates to our mental and physical health, our interests in things other than work , our enjoyment of leisure and pastime, our attention to family matters etc. If this balance is upset, even success at work will have the negative consequences on health, happiness and well being. Society today is afflicted more by stress and mental disturbance than by all other forms of illness. The clue to work- life balance is to replace the current fascination with narcissism and “selfie’ obsession to philosophical humanism , to the belief in the advancement of humanity  by collective efforts. Let us remember the famous saying of Rumi, the Sufi poet : “Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”

Three in a Row

                                                                 Three in a Row

Three major events of the week gone by raise a few important questions for the future of our polity and society. The first was the screening of the documentary on Nirbhaya- India’s daughter- by the BBC and the failure of the Government ban on airing it globally; the second, the lynching of a rapist by a 4000 mob and the third, the internal rift within AAP after its recent unprecedented victory in the Delhi elections. All the three have a significant bearing on the way we tend to perceive ourselves and the way the others (the world) perceive us. As things have unfolded, these events have cast a pessimistic shadow on our understanding and practice of democratic ideals.

It is unwise to write about the Nirbhaya documentary without viewing it. Whatever has been stated in the newspapers and on the TV channels have been by and large off the cuff opinions except for those of a small minority who had seen it. The heated exchanges between those who were for banning and who opposed banning of the documentary hinged on suppression of freedom of expression, the possible effect  on the Supreme Court judges who are yet to hand down their verdict on the plea of the convicts against their conviction, and lastly on the international reactions attacking India for alleged rape culture.

 India is slowly veering towards a fascist mindset that brooks zero tolerance towards anything alleged or perceived to be anti-Hindu/anti -Hindutva /and anti- Indianness. The only caveat is those who are in the forefront of destructive agitation against all forms of representation in art, cinema or literature that  are  even remotely suggestive of  anti-Hindu culture, lack understanding about the essence of Hinduism. Burning of books, vandalizing paintings aided by official banning of such writings and  denying entry permit to those writers and authors not acceptable to  small fringe groups for fear of their unleashing  hooliganism, lawlessness and violence on the streets- all these have become routine happenings in a country which has till now followed a written Constitution that gives the democratic right to every citizen to hold to his/her religious faiths, cultural beliefs and personal views and to express them without fear of  punishment. The loud cry orchestrated by our honourable politicians and a few angry feminists to ban airing the documentary has been in violation of the birthright guaranteed to every Indian citizen by the Indian Constitution. Everyone has a right to hold his/her opinion about the contents of the documentary, but that does not give anyone –least of all the government- the license to prohibit others from viewing the film and making their own informed judgement. The Prime Minister on his maiden entry to the Parliament after his election victory and again recently in his reply to the President’s speech in the Parliament had said that the Constitution was the sacred book to which he and the nation owes primary allegiance.  If in the face of such assertion by the PM, how is it that his Home Minister has called for a ban of this BBC production not only in India, but for a world-wide ban of this documentary . The lachrymose Minister for Parliamentary affairs Venkiah Naidu defended the ban as a fitting response to the humiliation inflicted on the nation by the erstwhile colonizers!  It is disturbing to note how the thoughtlessness behind the ban has made us a laughing stock in the eyes of the world. Not only did BBC air it, it had also gone viral through the You tube for millions and millions to watch it. The government had done a Don Quixotic act of tilting at the windmills of both the BBC and the all too powerful social media. Pandering to the opinions of a few loud women and misjudging them to be the whine of all the Dulcinea del Tobosos  of India , our well meaning Parliamentarian Don Quixotes  preferred to turn it into a courageous shout  of a victor! Can the Indian writ run in Britain or for that matter anywhere in the world? Today one learns that India’s Daughter has been screened in USA and seen by an audience that included Merryl Streep and Friedo Pinto among others. What does this say about our law makers who seem to be sitting in the ivory tower of parliament and behaving like King Canute who attempted to stop the waves? It is apt to quote Theodore Dalrymple referring  to Canute’s story,( without attributing to Canute’s arrogance) in the context of the British reaction to the Ukraine crisis (2014), saying “Political power or office often gives those who possess it the illusion that they control events. That, after all, is the reason why the story of King Canute retains, and will always retain, its relevance to the current political situation.” Little did our government  realize the power of the internet, its “unstoppable tide of information” and this cry for a halt to the documentary  has  shown us to be deficient in understanding while assuming an exaggerated opinion of our  importance and authority. Shakespeare’s Polonius in Hamlet said:” Give thy voice no tongue”- an advice that our elected representatives should have taken heed.

This takes us to the key question as to why voices were raised against the documentary.  The film was about the horrific crime against an Indian young woman as the title itself says India’s daughter But it is not just about an individual Jyoti Singh(who has now become a footnote in the annals of India’s shameful history),  but about one who represents many millions of India’s daughters. It is not about a weak, oppressed woman who was raped to death, but about a brave spirited young woman, who fought her way to a fatal end. Much cacophony has been made about the outrageous comment of the rapist in the documentary and it makes one wonder why such disproportionate importance has been given to a callous remark of a criminal mind as though an oracle had spoken. On the contrary if those comments are carefully analyzed in the context of the documentary, it will be seen to highlight the valiant efforts of Jyoti to fight those hardened criminals. She was a courageous fighter to the bitter end who did not go down with a whimper to remain unsung, unwept and forgotten. The rest of the film is an added  acknowledgement of the valour of the young woman as it mounts a rousing picture  of  the coming together of millions of  India’s daughters and sons,  India’s men and women,  India’s mothers and fathers , India’s brothers and sisters to express their solidarity with Jyoti and resolve to fight the criminal menace as she did. What has  been shown is a united India that raised its chorus against the dregs and thugs of society whose inhumanity is a disgrace to every man and woman in India and in any part of the world. Instead of looking at the documentary as a chronicle of inspiring moments we revel in grinding our nose in wretchedness, filth and sleaziness. By giving exaggeratedimportance to the rapist comment, we have committed an embarrassing faux pas and showed to the world that we are whingers, hypocrites and arrogantly foolish. Had we accepted the documentary as a fight for justice for the Nirbhaya woman, we would have gone high in esteem in the eyes of the world. In fact, we have been stupidly touchy on the rape issue. Rape takes place all over the world but there has never been a Nirbhaya who had displayed rare courage to fight off the assailants, biting three of the six attackers. It is always said that Indians are good at losing from a winning position. The hue and cry about India’s Daughter affirms our genetic trait of turning an hour of glory into an hour of ridicule. We seem to give into mobocracy mistaking it to be synonymous with democracy.

The lynching and killing of a rapist in Nagaland  by a humongous mob is another case of mob as a dominant force in society. This is not the same as the march of millions of men and women marching to seek justice for Nirbhaya. It underlines political and legal control usurped by the mob in violation of the Constitutional provisions that have set up institutions to protect and safeguard law and order, to hold up justice and to regulate discipline and orderliness in society. Democracy gives power to the people to elect those in whom they have trust and who have the talent and ability to govern. Democracy fails if people usurp the power they have given to their representatives and take law into their hands. The line that divides democracy and mobocracy is the line that separates rights and duties. People’s power is sacred when they use it to elect their leaders to govern them. It is their right to choose, but once the choice is made, it is their duty to follow the rules of governance. While democracy gives its citizens the right to freedom of expression and  freedom to follow religious faiths and cultural beliefs, it imposes on every individual the duty to allow others similar freedom to speak, write, voice forth their views and practice their faith. Rousseau’s magnificent aphorism “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” succinctly encapsulates the difference between rights and duties. The 2012 Nirbhaya episode exemplifies the human right to demand justice and to fight the social menace of rape and violation of woman’s dignity while the Nagaland episode shows the bankruptcy of citizens’ duty  to allow without interference the law and order establishment to follow its judicial course. The banning of the documentary (now restricted to Indian viewers after it had been viewed globally) is a close parallel to the denial of freedom of expression which is the fundamental right of every citizen. Democracy fails when it descends to mobocracy. It succeeds when duties and rights are given their assigned space in the functioning of the polity.

The third is the internal dissension in the AAP after their magnificent sweep in the recently concluded Delhi elections. AAP had sprung a surprise by its 67/70 victory reducing the two national parties- the Congress and the BJP to insignificance. This happened because AAP rode on the slogan “Power to the People”. But now with cracks surfacing, questioning the inner party democracy, there is the fear of AAP losing out the very ideal on which it won such a huge mandate. Suppression of the right to express under the guise of duty to serve the party loyally is a sure way of destroying the party. It is hard labour to build an edifice but if cracks surface, they have to be repaired and cemented for the edifice to standstrong and erect. AAP was built around honesty, transparency and inner democracy. It promised people a government that would listen to their voices and work to redress their problems. AAP wanted to win and they gave the people the biggest sop any political party could offer- the freedom to express their voice. Post- elections, AAP must have realized that it would be well nigh impossible to cater to different voices of the people and please them all. The strength of democracy lies in the power of the leaders to govern without being fettered by multiple voices often at variance with each other. The strength of democracy lies in  the right of the people to reject those in governance if they fail to act in the interest of the largest majority- akin to the Benthamite philosophy that seeks the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Power to the people stops at that point when the people transfer that power to the elected representatives they have chosen. To usurp that power back to themselves results in mobocracy. Will the rumblings within the AAP restore inner party democracy or will it lead to the stifling of the right to voice forth views and opinions not necessarily palatable to those who are presently ruling Delhi.

The three incidents -one following the other – are closely intertwined as they raise fundamental questions on the Constitutional propriety with regard to right to freedom and duty to abstain from that freedom when needed. The right to screen Nirbhaya, the duty to allow Constitutional authorities to function and  maintain law and order and finally the right to freedom and the duty to refrain from the exercise of that right are lessons we have to learn.

Racing against Time

                                                             Racing Against Time

From our early days, we were cautioned about wasting time and advised on making the best use of time. As a young child of five years, we were given the first lesson “early to bed and early to rise/makes one happy, healthy and wise.”  We were told to learn fast and beat time saying “what grows in five years cannot grow in the fiftieth year.” As we reached the adolescent years, we were asked to write essays on Chaucer’s indelible words “Time and tide wait for no man” or Shakespeare’s “make use of time , let not advantage slip.”

It has always been time that has remained a bugbear for all of us. Time to get up, time to get ready, time for breakfast, time to leave , time for this, time for that… finally leading to time for eternal sleep. We are prisoners of time.   We often yearn for freedom from this obsessive compulsion with time. However hard we try, time is the winner. It tames us truly and squarely. That is why when one reaches the grand old age of retirement, we look forward to timeless ease to dot our activities (or non-activities). But time is far too powerful and its ultimate stronghold on us is seen when it dictates a cessation of all our activities. In fact time stares us on our face when we have nothing to do.

But in a paradoxical way, we tend to compete with time even when we know that we shall never win. It is often a rare case of our beating time that makes us combat with time. The other day my brother told me how he had to catch a flight from Frankfurt after attending a conference in a small town three hours from the airport. His German friend assured him of driving him to the airport in time to board the plane.  He accepted his offer though he was not sure how a three hours drive can materialize in less than that time- and that too in two and a half hours! The famed autobahns made it possible for the vehicle to zoom to 180-200 kms and got him to the airport with 35 minutes to spare. All through the journey, my brother said that he kept his eyes closed and had the nervous apprehension whether he will be all in one piece by the time he arrived at Frankfurt. It was scary, exciting, adventurous but he could not get over   the possibility of fatal crash that was at the back of his mind. Can they really race against time and sing and dance like Michael Jackson to the score “Beat it, beat it” or will time have the last laugh?

Narrating this incident, my brother said that German technology evidenced in their sturdy roads and sturdy cars made it possible for them to beat time. Glad that he with his friend had a taste of victory over time that day, but the moot question remained: Was it worth taking this challenge? What if the car had a tyre burst while zooming at that high speed or  what if the road surface had  developed tiny cracks because of the powerful force of the car pressure calculated as mass into acceleration(f=ma²)?

The question for our modern age- an age of advanced technology -is about the worthwhileness of such inventions that compete with time? Very often while driving through the crowded pot-holed roads of Delhi, I have timed the difference in reaching my destination between driving fast at 70kms/hour and driving at a moderate speed of 50kms/ hour and the difference has always been a matter of two minutes or sometimes less than that. (it is another thing if there is a traffic hold up that one daily comes across in Delhi). I have often spoken about this to my young students that no one will be able to maximize his/her effort in those two minutes and therefore it is better to be late by two minutes than be late forever.
What do we do gaining that extra time-even if the gain is 30 minutes? We have 24 hours in a day that translates into 1440 minutes. And so the time lost or gained will be a paltry 2% of one day (if there is a gain of 30 minutes). It is foolish to race against time, the eternal winner when nothing can possibly be achieved except to experience the heart thud to keep pace with time.  If we can prevent the frequent rush of adrenalin in our attempts to outsmart time, it is possible to lead a life free of stress and strain. It has become highly fashionable to say that there is so much to do and so little time at one’s disposal. Remember Buddha got his enlightenment after sitting under the Bodhi tree while Newton got his eureka moment watching an apple fall from a tree. Neither of them would have got their knowledge and wisdom had they pushed themselves to a mad frenzy to discover the spiritual and the scientific truths.

I find young mothers today buying a whole lot of educational videos for their children to view and learn so that they learn faster than other kids in the school. The result is many of these upscale market house children look bored and listless in the class as they have learnt them already.  I am often reminded of the tamil proverb sarcastically referring to such children as “ pinjele pazuthadu= maturing and ripening while still young”. Does the green fruit hasten to become ripe and yellow before time? It takes at least a fortnight for the green unripe fruits to turn ripe and sweet. The Latin proverb says: “Take time; much may be gained by patience.”It is possible for a genius to create a work of art or musical score in one go but it is not given to all other lesser talented mortals to attempt it. The latter needs time to execute what is possible within their limitation. That is what Harold Bloom said:”Talent does not originate; Genius must”.

We all know the story of the hare and the tortoise. The triumph of the tortoise is that it covered the distance with its limited potential and did not race against time like its competitor. It did not give up half way through because the hare had overtaken it. It continued with its journey to reach the goal post while the hare slept exhausted by its race against time. The proper lesson from the story is to continue with one’s efforts rising up to one’s potential even if that potential is not of a lofty standard. The moral children are taught is “Slow and steady wins the race” but if the emphasis is on “steady” rather than “ slow, it teaches us to persevere with our tasks as the race is not between us and time but between our potential and our ability to rise up to that potential. In other words, one should compete with oneself and not with others and not with time.

In his masterpiece Waiting for Godot, Beckett’s powerful character who loses his sight as time passes, makes the wisest statement about our obsession with the adverb “when” that is directly related to time. He says: “Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.” Time has its own schedule and there is no point in trying to figure it out to conquer it.

In a more poignant manner, we have the Ecclesiastes that states: “ there happens a time to kill, time to break down, time to weep, time to die, time to cast away stones, time to mourn, time to hate, time to rend, time of war” and follows it with a positive prophecy that there is “ a time to heal, a time to build up, a time to laugh, a time to be born, a time to gather stones, a time to dance, a time to love, a time to sew and a time of peace.”  

Yes, there is a time for everything. Let us take cognizance of time as the ultimate winner and let us accept in all humility our smallness in comparison with it and make use of the potential we have been bestowed with to do our tasks rather than waste it in racing against time.