Seeking the Unknown, part 2

The seeker is never satisfied.  Therefore a seeker cannot be committed to a path of action. To be on path is always to aim for the known. For all his confusion, Jiddu Krishnamurti was right in that Truth is a pathless land.

Karma yoga and bhakti yoga, and the whole system of yoga is for the ambitious, not for the seekers.

Anyone who tries to decide a path for a seeker sets him up for resentment.  A seeker's true guide is life itself. Unpredictable, challenging, never the known.

A seeker feels happy only with a fellow seeker. Ambitious people find him unbalanced but the seeker sees death in the balance of the known.

Often a seeker can become disillusioned with the search for perfection. In that jaded frame he wants to dull himself with what he knows is not going to satisfy him.  But if we believe in the essence of the seeker, he will always have a faint sense that he has betrayed himself.

The ambitious man is afraid of failure while the seeker is afraid of getting stuck.  For the seeker the journey is paramount while for the ambitious it's the destination. The seeker is happiest when untied and free to explore. The ambitious man is happiest when in sight of his goal.

Entrepreneurs and social reformers are usually ambitious. But writers and philosophers, the non-royalty kind, are usually perennially discontented and therefore more likely to be seekers.  And there are many philosophers and thinkers who aren't good at writing and whose thoughts and discontent remain unexpressed.

(to be continued)

Seeking the Unknown, part 1

Could one say that there are essentially two kinds of people in the world: those who seek the known, and those who seek the unknown?  Ambition is another name for seeking the known.

Those who seek the known are the worldly-wise.  They understand what it takes to succeed in the world.  They not only understand, but accept, the rules of the game.  Their aim is to play the game well, so as to emerge a winner.  These are the go-getters.  These people know what they want, and how to get it.  They may succeed or fail, but they know what to aim for.  They respect the respectable, they bow down to authority, and they are never lost or at a loss.  They are seeking to be young forever, to be pretty forever, to be wealthy forever, to have power forever.  They see eternity as an endless series of satisfactions.

The seekers of the known are drawn to novelty, but within the constant sphere of their knowledge.  A new smartphone, a new cocktail, a new vacation at a famous beach, a fast sports car, a grand mansion, the latest bestselling book, ...  They are drawn to fine things and light and luxury, and they do not wish to think of darkness, pain and longing.  They might often say: "This is life.  This is it."

Those who seek the unknown are the misfits, the maladjusted, the maniacs.  These people seek too, but they do not know what to seek, or how to find it.  They are not satisfied with what satisfies the go-getters.  They are not entertained by what others say should entertain them.  They see the hollowness in the respectable, they rebel against authority, and they wonder and wander.  Though they might momentarily enjoy the sensation of a hot bath or a perfumed beautiful body, a constant drone of disdain and mockery of all that is achievable feeds their disenchantment.  They are seeking something which should not be attainable by mere effort or by mere mortals.  They are seeking an experience such that they would willingly and happily have no more to ask of life. 

They are seeking absolute perfection.  They seek transcendence beyond the mundane, and to these people, every thing is mundane.

The seekers of the unknown are drawn to uncharted territory, to off-beat art, to desolation and wilderness, to deeper and wider exploration.  But wherever they go, they eventually have to say: "This was wonderful, but this is not it."

They are drawn to aberration, absurdity and randomness with the hope that in that mess, perhaps there will be found something implicit and strange and un-wished for.  They are drawn to pain more than joy, because for them the pain of their thirst is constant.  They are drawn to silence more than words, because to them words are very solidly in the realm of the known.

Is it possible for these two persona to exist in one individual, or for him to be one or the other at different times?

(to be continued)

The Permanent Visa

This news item today about a youth who, unable to get his money back from a services firm, is heart-rending:

He said to his colleague that ‘mera pakka visa lag gya hai, main hamesha lyi jaa reha haan’ (I got permanent visa and was going forever). After that we could not contact him again”, claimed the uncle.

The lack of contract enforcement has chilling effects on society.  Add to this the brutal economic conditions for the youth of Punjab which makes them desperate to go abroad.

To add insult to injury, he was robbed of his possessions after he consumed poison.

Are the policy makers and politicians who have looted the land and  stalled economic and judicial reforms not responsible for this senseless, tragic death?

Some Notes on Tourist Photography

I recently returned from a world tour, having traveled to Turkey, Greece, Italy, India and Japan.

Especially in Italy (in the museums) and in Japan (at the temples and shrines), I couldn't help but notice the hordes of tourists with their cameras trying to capture everything.  I recognize I was a tourist too, but I did notice a curious fact: most tourists seemed more interested in capturing a picture of where they were than in experiencing the place and the feelings it evoked.

Say, we are at the Golden Temple in Kyoto (the Kinkau-ji).  It is a breathtaking and ethereal place, with the reflection of the temple in the small lake creating a dreamlike atmosphere.  One could keep watching the scene for hours.  But many a tourist would click a picture, and then immediately stop looking at what had been captured.  It was as if they were saying to themselves: Now that I have it in my camera, I can move on and capture something else.

It baffled me.  What's the point of clicking pictures instead of experiencing the place?  Are there not enough pictures available on the internet of that place already for one to enjoy and show others?  Why is it important to capture the picture in one's own camera?

I can still understand the narcissistic urge to capture a selfie or to ask someone to take a pic of oneself with the scene as the background (to show others that "I was there"), but to simply take a picture of a place seemed very irrational to me.

I felt it was very disrespectful to take a picture of something and then lose interest in the subject.  Is it better to enjoy something through one's camera than through one's own eyes?

In one of the outstanding museums in Rome (the Villa Borghese Gallery), I was happy to note that photography was prohibited, but I was quickly dismayed to learn later that only flash photography was disallowed. 

(As an aside, the Villa Borghese Gallery, apart from the marvelous scultptures by Bernini, was showcasing a great collection of fashion art by Azzedine Alaïa.)

I don't think it is realisitc to expect that in our lifetime, major tourist destinations will disallow photography.  In fact, as tourism is a major source of revenue for governments and private sector, any tourist-unfriendly rule will likely not see the light of day.  I am an aberration in the mass of tourists and I have no hope that my preferences will ever become normative.

If someone is a photographer and it is a unique scenery, by all means take a photo and showcase the scenery to the rest of the world.  But otherwise, why not just select one of the thousands of photos of that scene already available on the internet?

It is also more of a problem now that taking pictures is free of cost.  In earlier days, the cost of film and of developing the film gave some pause to photographers to be more discriminating in their activity.  Now, with digital photography that is supremely affordable, it is open season!

Class and Love in Bollywood

Indian mainstream films have come of age when it comes to portraying romance between a man and a woman from different social classes. 

In general, a higher-status man finds no problem marrying a lower-status woman because that is a "dream come true" for the woman (ref the story/fantasy of Cinderella).  The problem arises when a lower-status man falls in love with a higher-status woman.

Due to socialized hypergamy, it is considered a grave affront by the man.  If not the woman herself, her family ensures that the union does not happen.

The factor of class in love was brilliantly handled in Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda  (Shyam Benegal, 1993), but that film was more about how the lower classes can only dream of love talked about in poems, while the reality is more brutal.

One of the earliest films I remember seeing is Hero (Subhash Ghai, 1983), in which the hero wins the girl only by protecting her from a big bad evil man and his gang.  Typical of the era, but still the middle portion of the film is quite entertaining.  The ending is a happy one, of course.

In all of the following films, the ending is tragic.

Let us consider four recent films which tackle this kind of a romance:

Love, Sex and Dhokha (Dibakar Banerjee, 2010)

In the first segment of this film (Love), a lower-class man falls in love with a middle-class woman in North India, and the atmosphere quickly turns dark and tragic.

I found the juxtaposition of love (as a fantasy) and brutality (as a reality) remarkable.  I am still haunted by the final sequence.

Rockstar (Imtiaz Ali, 2011)

A talented young man, curiously named Janardhan Jakhar (Indian heroes in mainstream films almost always have upper class surnames), falls in love with an upper class college-mate.  Once again, the turn of events is not a happy one.  Though the acting of the female lead is atrocious, the films has an outstanding soundtrack and I enjoyed the depiction of the male lead's social background.

Raanjhanaa (Aanand Rai, 2013)

The best of the lot, this film contains a stand-out performance by the south Indian actor Dhanush, and not only does it tackle the class divide between the man and the woman, it defies convention and political correctness by showing the female lead as unapologetically and brutally hypergamous.

Highway (Imtiaz Ali, 2014)

Hackneyed in many ways, the worst of the lot.  But still, the fact that the ending is again tragic is a sign of the times. 

Indian films are becoming more realistic and the bombastic wish-fulfillment of the 70s and 80s is a thing clearly of the past.