Going down the drain

Last week, I travelled all the way to Kolkata and back by train to spend a few days with my daughter. This was after a very long time ... I have been shuttling between Durgapur and Delhi since 2018, and for several years before that, ever since the Volvo bus service started, I had given trains a miss. This time it was re-living an experience that was a round-the-year affair forty years ago, but much has changed since then. I journeyed all the way in air conditioned comfort, which would have been a pipe dream in my youth. The Howrah-Esplanade section of the Metro having become operational (albeit only on a very small scale, with just two rakes running, which is causing an enormous passenger load), I went home from the station in less than an hour, despite all the escalator rides and walking between concourses, for just thirty rupees! It was also pleasant to see that some things haven't changed: both the Coalfield Express and the Agniveena Express follow the same time schedule as they did in 1980, and they serve the same jhaal muri as they did so long ago.

But I didn't start writing this post to talk about train rides. What irritated me no end was the (bad-) manners of some co-passengers, specifically the way they let their little brats misbehave all through, despite the visible and barely concealed discomfiture of many others. These children, well beyond infancy, judging by their volubility, played noisy video games or raucous music on mobile phones, grabbed toys from other, less ill-behaved kids, got up on seats with shoes on and danced on them, literally picked things up from passing snack-vendors' trays, and nagged and screamed for every little thing they wanted right now, from a cold drink to a seat by the window. Their parents (in their thirties) and even in one case grandparents, did nothing beyond cooing and wheedling and occasionally tut-tutting at them, or at best urging them to pipe down in a way which made it obvious that they expected to be ignored, which of course they were. One father (I am ashamed to use this word, being a father myself) loudly told his child not to take a toy from another, offering to buy her an identical toy at once. While what these brats needed was to be immediate cuffed and ordered to apologize in such a way that they would learn a very valuable lesson in civility for the rest of their lives, they were instead being clearly encouraged to grow up to be (well-heeled) chhotolok, rowdies and guttersnipes. And mind you, all these people were clearly part of that section of our society which fiercely insists that they are educated bhodrolok. I, for one, have seen far more bhodro people among our much poorer fellow citizens, who have not enjoyed the dubious advantage of an English-medium education. I wonder how many of my readers can see themselves as in a mirror while they read this, and shamefully admit, at least to themselves, that they have been either brought up like this or have become parents like this. And I was also wondering why some people still pretend to be shocked to hear that a drunken minor driving his father's Porsche without a licence recently killed two bike riders in Pune, and brazenly told the police  that his father knew all about what he was doing! How many innocents will have to pay dearly before our public rises up in a countrywide revolt against the growing cancer of a belief that money can buy up everything, even justice and civilization? Do read the previous post again.

This is the section of our society, too, which most passionately believes that we are very rapidly 'progressing' as a society and nation. God help Bharat that is India, as she fills up with such scum. And if God is really watching, may He quickly bring down the dictates of our time-tested Chanakya-niti upon the worst of us.

Worry... but don't worry too much!

I was deeply interested in, and enthusiastic about, science and technology in my high school and college days. I have observed that the older I grow, the more tired and bored I become about them. 

Oh, there are older people than me who are constantly 'excited' about the constant march of technology - Tim Cook and Bill Gates prominently among them - but that is very easy to understand: they expect, with very good reason, to  benefit greatly, materially from it in the short and medium run. I would probably have pretended to have been the same in their place (and privately admitted that I hated it, as Michael Jackson is alleged to have hated pop music!) Millions of others pretend to do the same, simply because they believe they have no other way to make a living. In the context of my present ruminations, they don't count. What I think about the constant 'progress' of technology I have written in passing in numerous posts, most notably in Technology in a demented age. Read it, slowly and thoughtfully.

It irks and upsets me no end when I read teenagers, asked to describe the world they imagine twenty years from now, writing almost exclusively about how much more spectacular progress technology will have made by then. Then I forgive, telling myself 'They have no idea of anything better, anything greater, anything more desirable. Neither do their parents and teachers, so why blame them?'

I, on the other hand, dream more and more of a world where people would be nicer, kinder, more considerate towards one another, and at the same time (one cannot happen without the other) less materialistic, less grasping, less selfish, less full of insecurity and fear and jealousy and greed and fascination with novelty for novelty's sake. There is no other way to make a better world - of that I am now convinced beyond persuasion. Without that, ever growing wealth and ever advancing technology is bound to make an ever ghastlier, less liveable world. God knows I have known and heard and even met a lot of clever men ... it is for good men that, like old Diogenes, I have been looking for all my life. I am lucky indeed that I have actually met a few.We too easily forget.

In connection with the last three comments on my last post... Subhanjan was saying wistfully how nice it would have been if all my writing could be digitally preserved for wide circulation. I smiled to myself. Most of it is digitally preserved anyway, on this blog, isn't it? And it has already seen nearly a million page views while I am still alive! As for wide dissemination, I don't really care. It's not how many people read, but how much they understand, and appreciate, and remember, and apply in their own lives. Besides, who says you need digital technology for wide dissemination? There was a carpenter's son two thousand years ago who spoke to a mere handful of mostly illiterate peasants and shepherds about making a better world. One or two remembered, and wrote some of his words down. Few other men have had a deeper, wider, greater impact on humankind, and few, once touched, have been able to forget. That's 'influencer' for you.

Tanmoy was feeling sad about pompous, overbearing know-it-alls. Remember, Tanmoy, it has been well said that silence is golden, not chatter. 'Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit'. And all our wise men down the ages have insisted on 'satsang' - the company of decent folks - as second best only to nihsang ... learning to be quietly, contentedly alone with oneself. 

As for the young man who asked about the future of language in the age of artificial intelligence, I shall reserve comment, beyond pointing out that artificial intelligence is a gross misnomer: there is no 'intelligence' about a computer program that merely bulldozes at eye-watering speed through millions of pages written by human beings, picks up a few phrases here, a few lines there, a memorable paragraph or two, and patches them together into something apparently new and meaningful but actually no better than a very sophisticated version of mindless cut and paste. I don't know about language, but that is anything but literature. No AI will ever write a decent book, because - and every real reader knows this - a book can be born only from deeply felt human experience, and/or deeply visualized human imagination, which only other humans can truly appreciate. 

Neither Google nor travel makes you wise or civilized

I am glad that my 2011 post on Bibhutibhushan's little novel Debjaan has come into the most-read list once more. It deserves multiple readings, if I say so myself. 

It rained very heavily twice this week already, so the weather is blessedly cool right now. As I noticed someone commenting on his Whatsapp status yesterday, it is tragi-comic that people forget about the threat of global warming the moment it rains.

I mentioned global warming and its effects in passing with a bit of scepticism  in my last post. Someone else I know a little berated me for not knowing much about the subject. I'd like to mention just a few things in this context:

1) Most 'educated' people these days obviously cannot recognize any kind of humour except the grossest sort, accessible to middle-school goers: I was writing in a joking mood, meaning tongue in cheek;

2) I had clearly mentioned that I was only talking about how the weather has (or has not) changed in and around Durgapur, where I have spent most of my life, not talking about the whole planet;

3) My critic, who boasted of having travelled far and wide and therefore knowing much better how real the issue of global warming is compared to old stuck-in-the-mud me, and claims to have read all my posts, clearly has no idea not only that I have written again and again about the growing menace of environmental pollution and degradation here on this blog, and indeed I first wrote about it (in connection with the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth 1972 report) in a national newspaper forty plus years ago - several years before this person was even born; also, this person has no idea that people who stay physically stuck in one place all their lives often know far more about the world than those who hop around it all the time ... witness the examples of Bibhutibhushan himself, Premendra Mitra, Tintin's creator Herge and Satyajit Ray's brilliant creation Sidhu Jyatha;

4) I shall go on record with three assertions which I have come to believe over forty years of learning and reflecting about the way this world is going. Firstly, while environmental damage threatening human life itself is a very real and dangerous thing indeed, global warming is only one dimension of it, and it is backed by a lot of poor science and hyped propaganda ... but of course to know that you have to spend thousands of hours reading, understanding, thinking and remembering, besides knowing what genuine science is all about, and 'who has the time for that?' Secondly, too many people screaming themselves hoarse over this issue are either ignorant of their own position or what we call bokodharmik in Bangla - I haven't see too many crusaders giving up on their cars and air conditioners or taking trains or ships instead of flights just to save the environment. Thirdly, I don't even much blame those people - except for their stupidity and rudeness, of course - the world we have made, and grown to be entirely dependent upon, is so complex and essentially pivoted on a few basic things (like near-total reliance on fossil fuels, still, and a hyper-consumerist lifestyle, aspirational if not real) that unless we become determined en masse to change not only our most basic technology very quickly (I don't know whether that is even possible) but our very way of living, all that talk about fighting to save the environment is sure to remain pure time-wasting nonsense - picking up plastic litter by the roadside just to have it all dumped somewhere else! Fight the real fight to have all production of single use, quick-disposal plastic stuff permanently banned - and fight that out on the streets, not as internet warriors.

Anyway, those who are reading the post on Debjaan should know I am not exactly ignorant nor facetious and superficial. So when you write comments, better be sure you know what you are talking about, and whom you are talking to. Otherwise, not commenting is the safest option, really. Also, as I repeat ad nauseam, among civilized people, courtesy as well as gentleness and moderation of discourse is absolutely essential. To me, at least. My life, my blog, my rules. And if I cannot, in my station of life, live by my own rules - within the bounds of the law - whose rules should I live by?

Remember, finally, that Google can at best give you information and guideposts to knowledge, and that too only if you at all know how to search. And it certainly cannot make you wise and civilized. They don't even profess to try!