Some more in the spiritual vein

What spiritual outlook do I have on life?

I have sided with large overlapping parts of stoicism and Buddhism for a long time. I like and want to believe in God, but try as I might I have not been able to put much sustained faith in a watchful, loving, protective personal deity: indeed, like Tagore, I have only grown more agnostic with age. I don’t understand the Buddhist idea of anatta (the soul is an illusion – if we are told to believe that both the body and the soul must be regarded as essentially illusory, aren’t we actually wishing the whole existential problem away?), so I’d rather hold with the stoic belief that a sensible and at-least-partly rational mind with some agency in the real world (which is not, for all practical purposes, an illusion) does exist, though both philosophies more or less agree that the soul/mind (without quibbling too much over the distinction between mind and soul) must train itself through long, arduous and disciplined effort if we are to find happiness, or at least some peace and stability while we pass through this world.

I agree with both that suffering is real and in the final analysis unavoidable, whether that be through toothache or heartache, and that happiness, if not entirely illusory, can never for ordinary mortals be more than very occasional flashes of joy in a fundamentally dark world. Also, those occasional flashes make the darkness that follows even harder to bear, which is why this world has been called ‘a vale of tears… a bridge, do not build upon it’. Several thousand years of material and social engineering should have convinced mankind that no amount of trying to change external conditions, whether that involves repairing damaged heart valves, or abolishing slavery, or predicting floods, or air conditioning and social media, can make all people substantially and lastingly happy: I hear that in the most ‘advanced’ and peaceful countries in the world, a great many people commit suicide simply out of depression and boredom. So the finest teachers in both East and West have insisted that there will never be paradise on earth; if anything faintly approaching bliss is to be found while alive, it must be through inner engineering – learning to bear the burden of living as lightly as we can. And learning to do that is by far the toughest of all goals; very few of us succeed. I haven’t, not by a long chalk. And of course, a very great deal depends on individual character: the same irritations and catastrophes seem to affect different people very differently, and to a much greater or less extent than others.

Finally, even if you are not a very committed practitioner of some specific code of ethics, I am convinced by now that you really cannot find anything like happiness for yourself or your loved ones if you follow some kind of livelihood and lifestyle that involves lying, cheating, coveting, envying, violence and avoidable cruelty: you must have a coherent and stable moral compass, whether that be the code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, the ashtasheel or the gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

Most people do not need to dwell upon such reflections – certainly not in a continuous, serious, lasting way. They manage, more or less well, to carry on through life ignoring the hauntings of the spirit, keeping themselves intoxicated with worldly things of one sort or the other: drugs, shopping, family ‘demands’, the pursuit of money, power, sex, tradition, or even that much-glorified thing, knowledge (I want to discover a new species of butterfly, a new polymer, another version of the string theory, a technique for building a million-tonne ship…). Many would in fact claim that these preoccupations keep them too busy to bother about such ‘wishy-washy’, hi-falutin’ things. But not everyone can do that. My type can’t. My deepest, and indeed the only real question ever since I began thinking, has been – is it possible to be happy, despite ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’? If yes, then how? This is as far as I have come yet, and that too, only in theory, not in practice. Was Camus being silly or profound when he wrote ‘Suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem’?

[Just back from a nice two-day trip to Mukutmanipur. Had nearly finished this little essay before leaving, so I concluded and uploaded it immediately after returning home, over a cup of tea.]

One more pujo past

I have a diary where I have been writing down all the significant events of my life, year on year, since 1969 – the year I was admitted to kindergarten. Makes interesting reading, if only to me, because the long list often reminds me of things that I had forgotten, or at least forgotten the exact years when they happened. Now that it is October, I have begun to wonder what I should write about this year. It’s important to think ahead, because I write down only those things which will seem to matter, say, thirty years later. Not that I am planning to hang around for another thirty years…

Well, yet another pujo is behind me as of today, Bijoya Dashami. Hopefully the honking of an endless stream of cars will stop from tomorrow. I spent part of this pujo in Kolkata, in a very silent neighbourhood (such things still exist!), so I am on the whole thankful. Missed the usual holiday trip owing to unavailability of train tickets, but had a fun birthday party instead, which several people young and old and close to me happily attended.

The winter, as I noted, is coming. My most favourite of all the stories I have written, as my best readers know, is If winter comes. So this time is one of great anticipation for me – the long night’s sleep, sitting out in the garden in the mellow sunshine and shivery breeze, the good food, the several holiday trips, the light work schedule, old boys (and the very occasional –girl) dropping in for a chat, they all work together to make it a delightful time. Of late my creaky bones and COPD combined with all the dust in the air have made things a tad less enjoyable, but still.

I have been playing with AI of late. I made it create a picture of mine with a shock of wavy hair, and it was hilarious: made me look at least twenty years younger, and rather intriguing, if I say so myself. Next, it suggested that I try creating a Roman-style statue of myself, and that worked interestingly too, not least because the inscription and the books and temple it used for background was its own doing, based on all that it had seen and read on the internet. Fun can take so many forms! AI is going to make the biggest change in the way humans live since the invention of mechanical engines, that’s for sure: if we handle it without self- destructing.

Another batch of students will be leaving in a matter of weeks. This was a good one: I’ll miss them for a while. And this is always the time of year when I begin to wonder how much longer I can, or even want to, go on like this.

This is precisely the type of writing that I call ‘musing’. No one has to read it; as I have often said before, I write primarily for my own pleasure. No one needs to respond to it, but of course I shall be glad to have some empathy (not sympathy, mind you: I never needed that). And that tiny number of sick people who write in only to say, in a great variety of ways, ‘I hate you’, rest assured that I never see your ‘comments’, because after anyone like that sends two or three inane, stupid and vulgar messages, I mark them as ‘spam’, and thereafter I never even get to see them at all. Enjoy spitting upwards, if you can actually enjoy that, knowing that your deepest desire, namely that I acknowledge your existence, will never be fulfilled.

A book and a movie

I have finished reading Patel’s biography. I shall not write a review, simply because it is so detailed and immersive a book that writing anything but a very long essay will be doing it a grave injustice. I shall only urge my readers to go through it as mindfully as I have, promising them that (if they are the inquisitive and thoughtful sort) they will not be wasting their time. However, I must quote two lines from the Preface to the new edition: ‘What should we make of continual attempts today to misuse or exploit Patel for political purposes? It is hurtful to encounter bids to use the Sardar to promote a politics of Hindu supremacy and Muslim subordination.’ That should well enough indicate the overall tone of the work.

Yes, I have discovered that Patel was, indeed, a ‘strong man’, and so, in a vexed and tumultuous age when so many diverse interests and urgent needs were clashing so repeatedly and so violently, he naturally, while doing very great things, also made a lot of critics and enemies. Such enemies continue to exist in our own generation, often deliberately misunderstanding things that he believed, said and did. Let us leave it at that. I should only like to add that I find it an unspeakable tragedy that so many great leaders who were contemporaries could agree so little among themselves over so many fraught issues – if they could, our subsequent history might have been very different.

However, I cannot resist the temptation to quote a paragraph from the penultimate page, where the Iron Man, old, tired and dying, his life’s work done, was leaving the capital city for his beloved native Gujarat for the last time, probably knowing that he was never going to return. Here, Gandhi has waxed lyrical, and the historian has been eclipsed by the poet. As the aircraft flew up, ‘Behind him receded his life, as colleague to Jawaharlal – a touchy and at times contemptuous colleague, yet always loyal; as the Government’s helmsman and the raja of the rajas, as watchdog, welder and policeman to India; inheritor, along with Nehru, of the Raj; Congress’ decision maker, displacing the Mahatma, on the eve of freedom; as a lion pacing restlessly in the Ahmednagar cage; as Quit India’s indefatigable organizer; stern boss of a party and of Premiers; prisoner and defier of the Raj; Bardoli’s brilliant general; Gandhi’s rocklike lieutenant, caring friend and merciless leg-puller; the one who smilingly stepped aside for another, for Jawaharlal in later years and for Vithalbhai earlier; the rough, haughty, fashionably attired conqueror of the Ahmedabad Bar who yet thirsted for greatness, the adult London student wasting no breath on dalliance, the lawyer feared in Borsad and Godhra, silent husband of young Jhaverba – sad, dear and wrapped in mystery; as the youth who was severe on himself and upon those taking him for granted, the lad with a chip on the shoulder, the neglected fourth son of impoverished peasants…’ it brought tears to my eyes, and I could only think of the exquisite way in which Irving Stone describes the passing of Michaelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy. Yes, read the book.

Oh, and I just finished watching a movie titled Juror #2 on Netflix, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. It is a very interesting variation on the theme of one of the classic movies of all time, Twelve Angry Men, but it is definitely not the same story, because here the said juror, sitting in judgment over a man’s life, is himself (unwittingly-) guilty of the crime. I shall not give spoilers, because it is an eminently watchable movie, and it ends on a very tense, uncertain and disturbing note.

I am happy to find that several old posts here have gotten back to the most-read. As I have said more than once, nothing that I write dates quickly. It goes without saying that comments – sensible, relevant comments, even queries – are always welcome, no matter how old a post might be.

Winter is in the air, I can faintly sense it now, and I am thrilling to it. You still sweat in the sun, yet the water is cold already. Soon it will be time to pull out the jackets, pullovers and blankets once more. What comfort there is in the endless cycle of the seasons!

Tomorrow is another Mahalaya, start of Devi Paksha, the tithi I was born on 63 years ago. I am too old to wake up at dawn to listen to Biren Bhadra’s Mahishasura Mardini on the radio, as I did for nearly fifty continuous years. Just wish me good sleeping.

And yes, Episode 16 is up there on Spotify as of today. Many of you have not yet visited the previous one, which was a small compilation of ‘nonsense’ poetry, a genre that I like to say I am particularly fond of, because it dispels the false notion that I am a sourpuss. Do listen and get back to me: I love to hear (or read) all those lovely comments.