A week or so ago, it was a weird time in my life. I was at the verge of depression, clinical depression. Which is bizarre because I have a very cool job, I work for/with wonderful people, I have a very supportive family, I have awesome friends, I am in no financial difficulty. But there it is, I was going through what is very close to clinical depression.
In fact, thanks to my research training, I do not/cannot say anything that is not verifiable using independent measurable parameters. So tho I knew that something wasn’t right with me, I had to go to the Beyond Blues initiative to first figure out what is depression, you know, just in case I had it?
I came across a diagnostic manual which I am not reproducing because of limited space.
But I basically fit in with what they expected…
Well, it wasn’t 2 weeks really but for a while I had been depressed-like, I am not really sure how you define it… and yes I was lacking interest in a lot of things… My mind was racing nearly all the time and I thought people didn’t really want to talk to me… they were all just being polite, because they did not really want to hurt me.
I also satisfied conditions mentioned:
1 – depressed mood… CHECK
2 - less interest… CHECK
3 – weight loss… well it was definitely appetite loss partly CHECK
4 – Sleeping difficulty… Oh Goodness CHECK!! I was walking up 5 times a night with a startle.
5 – Tiredness… CHECK
7 – Feeling worthless… CHECK
8 – Difficulty concentrating… Again a BIG BIG CHECK! I just couldn’t work!
9 – Thoughts of death… not there totally, not more than normal… so I don’t know if I am always close to depression or I was normal at this front…
But you get the idea, right?
I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating and I wasn’t getting work done because I just could not concentrate and I was feeling quite useless because of that!
Anyway, this turned COMPLETELY around one evening as I lay/sat in bed and I saw the head lights from a car in the street pass thru my room. Just so that you can visualize it, when I am sitting in bed my back is towards this big window. In front of the window is a fairly quiet street and only a couple of cars pass thru the night. Anyway, I had the blinds open, so when the car passed the light reflected against the white walls and flashes right on my face as I sit or lie in bed. Or something like that, you know, a car passes quite quickly.
Anyway, I am sitting in bed, thinking that there has to be some way to pull myself out of this depression, because there is no reason to be depressed really! And this light flashes on my face, and in a flash (quite literally!) I get it!
You see, this light totally woke me up but before I could even see how on earth does the light flash on my face, it was gone without a sound or a trace!
The car lights had been waking me up in the middle of the night, by the time I woke up they would be gone! I obviously was sleeping bad, which meant that I was also losing my appetite, which also meant that I couldn’t concentrate, which meant that I felt there was something totally wrong with me, which totally made me feel useless!
Ah people! Such is life! Needless to say, I ensure the blinds are totally shut now.
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
On why somethings work?
I just finished reading Rajmohan Gandhi’s biography of his grandfather, Mohandas. What a page turner it is! Enjoyed it very much, tho at over 700 pages, it took me fair while to go thru it.
One of the trivial things I brought home from the book was about how impressive Rajmohan Gandhi’s own lineage is – his grandparents included Katurba, Mahatma Gandhi, C Rajagopalachari; his father, the youngest son of the Gandhis, was the editor of Hindustan Times. Disappointingly, there is an unnatural silence about the author’s mother in the book. Btw, am I wrong in guessing that the author could have gone to no other school except Modern School in Delhi, perhaps it was even his father who was instrumental in starting the school? Anyway, I don’t really know.
But there is an interesting question running through the book, quite obviously, why did satyagraha work? Or really how did MKG make satyagraha work? In a world where, law of self-preservation is the first law, Satyagraha should not work. The satyagrahi should not perpetuate it, and the oppressor should not be bothered by it. In fact, I personally believe, most of the times people try to do stuff like satyagraha, it does come across as a joke. I am not sure what is more surprising, whether satyagraha (or peaceful resistance by the physically weak) worked at all or that it has been made to work by only a handful of individuals in the world? Let us not be fooled that the British were any bit more soft than any other race in the world, we are talking about self-preservation of the empire here – and the individuals personified the empire, they believed themselves to be the empire, killing people for the empire was nothing personal for them.
So, why did it work? Was it the pragmatic, the sharp intuition that MKG had about how people would behave in any environment? That explanation is completely realistic considering that MKG would deliberate when and exactly how and who was going to be a satyagrahi as much as he could. Also, MKG understands that for most non-violence was not a Truth but a policy; and he justifies it even as that. He says, once the violence against the actual oppressor has ended, will it not naturally turn towards others from whom one has perceived oppression. Is it not natural that a ‘WAR’ of independence should ALWAYS lead to a civil war? But then MKG also says that he knew that the soul must act on another soul? So is that second statement bull shit; or more accurately, since India is perhaps, paradoxically (is it paradoxical?), one place on earth which at least till recently managed to stay open to any religion and yet every aspect of lives of the majority population, Hindus, is governed or at least touched by their religion. In such an environment, is it that the only solution that MKG had was sublimating the religion to ground realities of the country? So, my question is, was MKG cloaking a pragmatic approach, pragmatically applied, in the only cloak the general populace would see it, that of religion? The question, dear readers, is, was ‘insistence on TRUTH, satyagraha’ a cloak?
Depending on where you stand it is just as tempting to say yes, as it is to say no. Of course, I do not know what to believe either.
In the above section, I think, I have presented the argument for it being a pragmatic approach. But an interesting argument for it being a spiritual/ethical* tool is that only an ethical/spiritual tool, a tool in tune with the most fundamental realities of our existence, in tune with LIFE itself, will be something pragmatic enough to work. Having said that, lets get back to the perceptible realities of how satyagraha worked. If we look at people who could make Satyagraha work, if we look at MKG, we see a large part of why it worked, was MKG’s intuition, his uncanny sense of how most people would respond to a certain environment. Another reason, I think, was that he would not give up his cause; he had the commitment and the patience to keep at it. The question perhaps then is slightly different. It is not whether satyagraha was a cloak on something pragmatic, something far more hard nosed. The question perhaps is, what is the source of human intuition? Commitment? Patience?
*By ethical/spiritual tool, I mean, any tool that aligns itself with the idea that all creatures are all expressions of Life and thus interconnected. To serve them is to serve ourselves; to hurt them is to hurt ourselves.
One of the trivial things I brought home from the book was about how impressive Rajmohan Gandhi’s own lineage is – his grandparents included Katurba, Mahatma Gandhi, C Rajagopalachari; his father, the youngest son of the Gandhis, was the editor of Hindustan Times. Disappointingly, there is an unnatural silence about the author’s mother in the book. Btw, am I wrong in guessing that the author could have gone to no other school except Modern School in Delhi, perhaps it was even his father who was instrumental in starting the school? Anyway, I don’t really know.
But there is an interesting question running through the book, quite obviously, why did satyagraha work? Or really how did MKG make satyagraha work? In a world where, law of self-preservation is the first law, Satyagraha should not work. The satyagrahi should not perpetuate it, and the oppressor should not be bothered by it. In fact, I personally believe, most of the times people try to do stuff like satyagraha, it does come across as a joke. I am not sure what is more surprising, whether satyagraha (or peaceful resistance by the physically weak) worked at all or that it has been made to work by only a handful of individuals in the world? Let us not be fooled that the British were any bit more soft than any other race in the world, we are talking about self-preservation of the empire here – and the individuals personified the empire, they believed themselves to be the empire, killing people for the empire was nothing personal for them.
So, why did it work? Was it the pragmatic, the sharp intuition that MKG had about how people would behave in any environment? That explanation is completely realistic considering that MKG would deliberate when and exactly how and who was going to be a satyagrahi as much as he could. Also, MKG understands that for most non-violence was not a Truth but a policy; and he justifies it even as that. He says, once the violence against the actual oppressor has ended, will it not naturally turn towards others from whom one has perceived oppression. Is it not natural that a ‘WAR’ of independence should ALWAYS lead to a civil war? But then MKG also says that he knew that the soul must act on another soul? So is that second statement bull shit; or more accurately, since India is perhaps, paradoxically (is it paradoxical?), one place on earth which at least till recently managed to stay open to any religion and yet every aspect of lives of the majority population, Hindus, is governed or at least touched by their religion. In such an environment, is it that the only solution that MKG had was sublimating the religion to ground realities of the country? So, my question is, was MKG cloaking a pragmatic approach, pragmatically applied, in the only cloak the general populace would see it, that of religion? The question, dear readers, is, was ‘insistence on TRUTH, satyagraha’ a cloak?
Depending on where you stand it is just as tempting to say yes, as it is to say no. Of course, I do not know what to believe either.
In the above section, I think, I have presented the argument for it being a pragmatic approach. But an interesting argument for it being a spiritual/ethical* tool is that only an ethical/spiritual tool, a tool in tune with the most fundamental realities of our existence, in tune with LIFE itself, will be something pragmatic enough to work. Having said that, lets get back to the perceptible realities of how satyagraha worked. If we look at people who could make Satyagraha work, if we look at MKG, we see a large part of why it worked, was MKG’s intuition, his uncanny sense of how most people would respond to a certain environment. Another reason, I think, was that he would not give up his cause; he had the commitment and the patience to keep at it. The question perhaps then is slightly different. It is not whether satyagraha was a cloak on something pragmatic, something far more hard nosed. The question perhaps is, what is the source of human intuition? Commitment? Patience?
*By ethical/spiritual tool, I mean, any tool that aligns itself with the idea that all creatures are all expressions of Life and thus interconnected. To serve them is to serve ourselves; to hurt them is to hurt ourselves.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
there is a book on Orwell
... which was written some 6 years ago, and I just read an article about it.
Why Orwell Matters? by Christopher Hitchens.
Dont know much about Orwell and Hitchens but the article is good. More on it, soon, hopefully!
Why Orwell Matters? by Christopher Hitchens.
Dont know much about Orwell and Hitchens but the article is good. More on it, soon, hopefully!
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