The Verdant Mind

Trinket, trinket, at the stall, You have competitors at the mall.

As I waited on the steps of the Ghat, it struck me that it is highly improbable for someone seeing the brevity of human life in such graphic detail to think that “Everybody’s going to die anyway so let’s have fun and make merry while we are here”.

I made a concerted effort to push my mind to entertain that piece of Epicurean thought I so often relish amid Stoic thoughts of simplicity and self-restraint. But there was no affimative response. This realization was accompanied by a slap of hot summer air that the dwellers of the Indian plains so reluctantly accept. No respite from that.

My cousin’s nani (maternal grandma) had passed away. She had been this grandmotherly figure in the extended family for sometime, filling the gap for me which was left by my own Nani who passed away when my mother herself was in senior school. Seeing a death in the extended family gave me some new lessons and reaffirmed my faith in those I held dear. The class was in session a short distance from the funeral pyre.

So instead of the usual Epicurean idea of have fun and make merry and surges of “do something good” I realized that my mind was asking me these questions:

Are you living the good life?

(And not “Are you cozy ?”)

Is this the best way to conduct your affairs or can you strive for better?

(And not “Should I push that task to tomorrow?” )

Of all the things that use your time, which ones are genuinely worth spending it on?

(And not “What new obsession should I waste my time on next?”)

The concluding questions were no different. Will you live well in the time ahead? Will the lives you touch be better than the way you found them? Or will it be in consonance with the usual animal ways to fill one’s own belly and seek one’s own good? You don’t have all the time in the world. Do some good. People are dust and ash in the long run, be them pompous heads of state or your next door neighbor. Time is not to be wasted fearing what the next person thinks. And frankly, if you live justly, you don’t need to. You are born your own birth and die your own death. Live a good life and try to create a good one for as many people as you can.

More importantly, it reaffirmed my faith in the idea that death is the greatest leveller and consequently all lives are undisputably equal. How can you discriminate when the terminus is the same?

Another precept dwelt on what is important and what is not. Don’t go overboard pondering over the minutiae of life. It is always great to enjoy the little things like sunshine on wintry day, some coffee on a tiring afternoon, a flower on the wayside. But obsession with things in a life that is fleeting is of no good.

Therefore,

Finding beauty in little things - Yes

Obsession over silly intricacies of life - No

Now it’s unquestionably true that it’s an individual’s prerogative to decide what kind of life one should live and what not. But when you allow your mind to be influenced by the latest and cringiest Bollywood tune, the picture of the pretty star, starlet or their progeny, how about letting your mind taste something more profound?

Give that thinking goo some chance. You won’t regret it. Move beyond what you already know. Good things await.

Latin offers a gem in this regard. “Et in Arcadia ego”. Death says that even in the perfect and most delightfully picturesque plains of Arcadia, you will still find me. Clearly that’s a message. Be wise. Make peace with death and accept the limitation of time it imposes on you.

Amid thoughts like these and more, the noise of men bickering over bamboo posts caught my attention. Workmen dismantled the crude bamboo stretchers used to carry the body, only to put them together again into fresh strechers farther away.

The cliche had substance after all. The cycle went on and on.

© Prashant

This poem talks about a peddler’s concerns and anxieties as he struggles for existence in a world of food courts, ice cream parlors and candy stores . In India and some surrounding countries, sellers go on foot selling various locally made sweets for children. The sweets are usually suspended on a bamboo pole and the fellow rings a little bell to announce his coming. You can liken it to the visit of the ice cream man in an American neighborhood, with the surrounding excited children, the dogs going crazy at the sight of a stranger and so on. People around the world are not that different you see.

As the country evolves, less and less of the peddlers remain as the profits shrink and they find themselves unable to capture the children’s fancies anymore.

The year was 2012. A young woman was brutalised and her inisdes were ripped out of her privates. We saw a shocked, outraged nation resolving not to let the same thing happen again. Promises were made. Oaths were taken. Marches and protests thronged the streets.

The challenge persisted still. Infants, teens, adults and elderly. The perpetrators chose such an approach of equality while choosing victims, it bowls me over that something so evil is so equalitarian. All age groups of women suffered.

Fast forward to 2018. A little child is voilated and drugged. It stands established that we did not learn from the past. Clearly, we did not move forward. Or maybe we are walking backwards.

With a deluge of opinions on what seems to be pushing a culture of rapes in India, I present five simple reasons why we are still struggling with this problem.

First of all, we are a sexually repressed society with sex being viewed as taboo. Don’t believe me? Check out the India trending list on youtube. You will find at least two sleazy videos somehwere in the list with titles that will either make you laugh out loud or vomit and millions of views on yet others. Clearly, we are not the way we pretend to be. Additionally, we don’t talk about safe sex or family planning either. So people, behind their outwardly prude views about sex are clearly fascinated with it. Add to it the absence of a healthy dating culture and you have the recipe for a sexually repressed young male who only looks at women for sexual gratification. And he will go all lengths for it.

Next up, an education system focusing on facts rather than the lessons and moral outcomes of the subjects, especially humanities subjects is gaping back at us. Good that you know the periods of history you venerable memory master. But did you realize why a particular civilization failed and why another survived? What mistakes did our predecessors make that we are still stumbling today?

When you are an education loafer like me, you have your brushes with arts as well as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects and it gives you a window seat to what is wrong, provided you are willing to observe. Humanities education here is fraught with age old cliches while STEM people look at it with disdain. And in some educational institutions, you find a number of academicians peddling different kinds of ideologies along with their lessons.

Furthermore, a legal process dotted with loopholes grants courage to those who want to use rapes for other ends. Can you imagine how vile one has to be to even think of that? They believe that they will influence the victim and her family and in extreme cases, pull some political and legal strings too. Additionally making legislation upon legislation is also not a solution. We have the examples of certain nations that have extremely brutal punishments for rape. Are they totally free of rapes? Laws are good only if they lead to the necessary end - impartial and insulated probes and convictions.

Lastly we can consider the over indulgence of the male child. The male child in India still stands much more socially entitled than the girl child. And please don’t bring me examples of successful women in the country supported by progressive families. I am talking about the majority. What is happening in the maximum cases. One must steer clear of cherry picking data as it lends power to our illusions. A lot of women are succeeding but a larger portion is suffering. Do you hold that after the success of ten we should close our eyes to the plight of a thousand? In Indian families, a silent malpractice is still alive. There is a tacit acceptance of the male child’s wrongs and in some cases we discover family members defending and shielding any kind of wrong behavior. Add to it the Dark Ages worthy statements of a handful of political representatives and the man owns a full blown sense of superiority, feeling he deserves it all. And through any way possible.

The question glaring at us is - Where did we go wrong? Were our conclusions fruitless and misplaced?

We did not focus on the realities of the human aspect of the rapes. These perpetrators are always people who are living, eating and sleeping in houses similar to yours and mine. Do they have horns on their heads? How do we identify them? Sadly, you cannot predict one’s behaviour or what one will turn out to be. Humans are humans. Sometimes you can analyze and predict them, sometimes you cannot, especially in the long run. But you can always teach people in a subtle manner. Mentor them. Parents and guardians did not talk to sons and daughters about what mattered. Considering the nature of our society and the so called “generation gap” between parents and children, I understand that some parents might not be comfortable with educating their children about it. But how about us? The young. Can’t you talk to your little brother and sister? Educate them a bit. One can always try. Start while they are young, telling about the importance of an individual’s privacy and that other people don’t exist to satiate our desires. At an appropriate age, talk to them in detail. There cannot be a blanket approach though. I am always wary of blanket approaches. Find what works according to the temperament of the people and the context of the situation. Start with the family and the chain can go a long way.

The challenge still stands. But good hope is not to be surrendered. Even polio has been eradicated and it was caused by a virus, something you can’t see with the naked eye and there was a point in history where people felt we would never be out of the throes of polio. Why aren’t we coping with the rape challenge? Because we view it very simplistically. It joins together a lot of factors, social, educational, economical and political. A multi pronged approach will be needed. And it won’t be done alone. Forces will have to be merged. The people have to work together with the elected. The society with the individual. The parent with the child. Each level has to overflow with intention and action. Something so deep rooted within the animal side of human beings that couldn’t be eliminated by millenia of evolution will take time and unrelenting effort.

We have to factor in fundamental human nature in our policies and realign them considering the events of the years between 2012-2018.

India needs to buckle up.

© Prashant Dwivedi