Balance

Today's I'd like to write about the concept of "Balance".
This little understood concept is probably the cornerstone of everything there is in this World, including us. I will attempt to explain what I feel with two seemingly contradictory examples, one being Order and Chaos, the other Life and Death.

As it is said "There is Order in Chaos and Chaos in Order."
This seemingly contradictory saying is actually expressing a great truth. Order and Chaos are symbiotic concepts. Without Order, Chaos has no meaning and vice versa. Popular literature has always portrayed Order as "Good" and Chaos as "Bad". It is thought that if there would have been no Chaos, there would be perfection. But, this is wrong. Without Chaos, Order loses meaning. A basic example of this relationship would be the creation of the Universe. This Universe, the ultimate symbol of Perfection (Order), was itself created due to a Big Bang (Chaos).

Life and Death.
From time immemorial, humans have valued and loved life and at the same time, hated and feared death. Immortality is supposed to be the greatest gift which a human can receive. But again I ask, if Death were to cease to exist, would there be any meaning or value to Life? Right now, many of the "good" things in our life, like Love, Companionship, Affection etc., are so valued because we might lose them. If they could never be lost, would they have the same value? We would be like those stone sculptures we can see in caves, timeless, immortal but utterly useless.
There is no Life without Death. And there is no Death without Life.

Every culture has tried to pass on this knowledge in some form or the other, be it the God Shiva in Hinduism doing the "Tandava", the primordial dance of destruction and preservation or the Yin-Yang concept of Taoism. It is all the same.
To grasp one side and to reject the other is foolishness. We need both to exist. Humans have a tendancy of focussing excessively on one aspect and completely neglecting the other.

When we disturb the balance of life, we go against everything Nature has set up. To correct the balance, certain changes take place which we name as "problems". We have to understand that this is just Nature's way of correcting the imbalance we are causing. The sooner we understand this, the faster those problems will disappear.

"There is no answer to any of these questions. It's a matter of time and timing, of seas and seasons, of breathing in and breathing out. It's a matter of balance."
- Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life in School--But Didn't (The Life 101 Series)

Some dark reflections . . . .

I'm sure many of you might have read the Johanna Spyri's famous book "Heidi". It's about a little girl who changes the lives of many people for the better with her sweet and simple ways. However, my purpose of mentioning Heidi here at this point is not for that reason. In the book, Heidi's grandpa stays in a simple little cottage at the top of the Alps, with only nature and his little granddaughter for company, living a simple life. He had no overpowering ambition to become the next business tycoon, neither did he waste his life pining for some other human. He had no such extra and unnecessary wants in life. He had no family other than his little granddaughter and he did not care. He did not bother about what others thought and how others lived.

Many a times in my life, I've envied Heidi's grandpa for his simple life and wished I could have a life like that. I've understood one thing: at the end of the day, each one works only for himself/herself. There is nothing called selflessness. It's just a useless concept, like gold for a dying man or glasses for a blind man . . . .

I'm sick and tired of all this politics of manipulation and double-dealing that goes on under the name of "human culture". In Hellboy 2, when the professor reads the story of the golden Army for Hellboy, a line goes as follows, "Man was born with a hole in his heart . . . ."
I cannot find truer words than this.

So, instead of pretending to enjoy company, we can live a solitary and happy life, away from others people's interference. For those people who can't live without taking advantage of others, find some losers whom you can leech off and spare the rest of us.

People might find my words venomous, but it's the truth nonetheless.
As a popular saying goes,
"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them."

Fidelity in Relationships

Loyalty or Fidelity is a quality that seems to have become quite rare nowadays. These days, boyfriends & girlfriends are changed at the rate clothes are changed divorces are given at the drop of a hat, extra-marital affairs are a common story in every neighbourhood. In the midst of all this, one sits and wonders, "Is this what relationships are all about? Is this the reason teens go all out to woo someone they like, just to dump them the next week? Is this the reason people get married, just to break the spirit, and body of the bride who comes expecting to be loved, cared and to find someone to love in return?"

Nowadays, the day of 'my one true love' is gone. It's 'my many true loves' now.Greater the number of girlfriends/boyfriends you have, cooler you are. And obviously you have to sleep with every one of them. People have forgotten that betrayal gives you a wound that does not heal with time for most, and even for others, the scars are always there to remind them of the pain.

There is a Hindi song 'Ehsaan' which goes on as follows "Ehsaan itna sa kar de, mujhe phir tanha sa kar de" which mean 'Do me this one favour, make me lonely once again'. Turning the famous adage on it's head, I say
' Tis better not to have loved than to have loved and lost'.

Dreams

Often we hear people say, "Oh, I had this dream last night. I am quite worried/ embarrassed/happy about it. Will it come true?"

What are dreams? One school of thought is that it is some form of ESP(Extra Sensory Perception) by which the human mind communicates with some supernatural intelligence and grasps knowledge which is normally beyond our reach. I would love to hear their justifications for the wet dreams that I guess almost every teenager has experienced.

At the same time, there another line of thinking. It is as follows: "Dreams are just a meaningless mish-mash of whatever has been running through our heads throughout the entire day. There is no meaning to dreams whatsoever. Ignore them. "

What I believe is, both points of view are somewhat correct yet not entirely correct. According to me, dreams serve two major purposes. One, they are something like a refresh function for the brain. Whenever we focus on one particular activity or thought for a long period of time, our brain gets overloaded. To clear our minds, we dream at night. These dreams often involve "a mish-mash of whatever has been running through our heads throughout the day". These dreams are quite a reliable indicator of what is currently occupying your mind. Analyzing your dreams will help you to understand yourself better.

There is another reason why we dream. Even when we sleep, though our conscious mind is inactive, our sub-conscious mind is still working. So the 'problem' which you were fussing on throughout the day is still being solved even in your sleep. Of course, the sub-conscious mind works in a very different manner as compared to our conscious mind.

Let me illustrate this with the well known example of the scientist 'Kekule' who figured out the structure of Benzene. In the time of Kekule, the structure of Benzene was a great mystery. None of the scientists of that time knew how to solve this peculiar problem as benzene did not conform to any of their known structures. Kekule was also working on this particualar problem. One day, after puzzling over this problem for quite a long time he went to sleep. In his sleep, he had a very peculiar dream. In his dream, he saw lots of snakes. After a while he noticed that these snakes were all arranging themselves in a particular manner. Soon the pattern beacame clear to him. It was the double bonded hexagonal structure which we commonly use for Benzene. As soon as he woke up, he wrote out the structural formula for Benzene and Voila! it was a perfect match.

So, did ET(or maybe 'Jadoo') come and give Kekule the structural formula for Benzene, or, was it just some stupid design that he saw in his dream which happened to match up?

What I think is, whenever we fuss too much about something, these thoughts seep from our conscious mind to the sub-conscious part too. Unlike our conscious mind which works in a very logical ordered and sequential manner, our sub-conscious mind functions completely opposed to it. However, sometimes this approach is exactly what is needed.

So, dreams are quite useful to us. They enable us to clear our thoughts, freshen our mind and occasionally even help us in solving our problems!

Keep dreaming!!

Fear of the Future

Will I be able to feel secure,

wherever I go, I hear the death's call,

"Die, die, die . . . . "

These are the lyrics of a song by the Doom Metal Band 'Grave Flowers', rather ironically titled "Fear of Future".

I fear these lyrics chronicle the way we Indians, and more specifically, we Mumbaikars have been feeling.

Everybody is scared and angry(Just read some of these smses being circulated). Seeing this mindless carnage, many of my friends have decided to join the armed forces and help the country.

I guess this is the mindset of the majority in this country at this point. I don't know whether this is right or whether this is wrong. Many will join soon to find their fervour ebbing later.

Do what you think is right, but think with your heads, not your hearts. And once you've made your decision, follow it with all your heart.

Will I be able to feel secure,

wherever I go, I hear the death's call,

"Die, die, die . . . . "

The Age of Innocence

"The age of innocence is fading like an old dream . . . . "

These are the lyrics of Iron Maiden's songs "Age of Innocence". I was listening to this song the other day and I was led to think about the relevance of this song to today's world.

Today, the emphasis is on growing up as fast as possible. Toddlers in kindergarden are taught how to hold a spoon and fork, how to say "Thank you" and so on. If this is not enough, there are the stories of child-soldiers. These children, who should be going to school and playing with friends are trained to handle weapons and to fight a war which was never their's.

Truly, the age of innocence is only a dream today. If only we would realize that the days of childhood once lost will never return . . . .

Mumbai University's Educational System

I chose this topic for today's post because of an interesting questionnaire circulated by some students of my college for the purpose of their PCT(Principles of Communication Theory) Report.

Some of the questions were:
"How do you find the examinations?", "How do you find the paper evaluation to be?" and so on.

Answering this questionnaire led me to think about the current educational system. My simple conclusion was, to put it bluntly,
"The current education system sucks!!"

The new syllabus developed by Mumbai University is much better, but they forgot one crucial point. The point is, most of the professors are not qualified enough to teach us. At least, when the old syllabus was being followed, they could learn things by rote and vomit them out in class. Now, even that option is not available. So, things are back to square one.

Now that I've said all this, let me add one more thing. One very close friend of mine, The Saiyyan(read his thoughts at http://saiyyan.blogspot.com/), always says something to the effect of "If you want to change the world, start the change yourself." Those students of my college who took the survey also want to start the change where they can i.e. their own classroom.

Similarly, if we start to change things on our own, the System will surely improve, though it might be too late for many of us :-(