Golden Mean

I was walking up the 3 floors of our apartment building. It was a lazy saturday morning. It had just rained. The scintillating smell of the wet earth still lingered on. "T, I'm home! What's for breakfast?", I asked, bringing in fresh supplies of bread and milk. T was still in bed, or so I thought.

"H, meet S...", started T, as he was laying down on the mattress in the main hall, in front of the television, flipping channels. S was a young man, dressed in a saintly orange T-shirt and a light blue jeans. "Greetings H", S saluted with folded arms.

"Hi... I have a feeling I've met you somewhere before, S", I continued. "Anyways, good to meet you. And T, did you think about what I had asked you? About science and religion?"

"No. I was watching the Bold and the Beautiful. Couldn't concentrate.", explained T, nonchalantly.

"You wanted to know the relevance of science and religion in an ideal world?", asked S. "You want to understand."

I nodded, rather confused. I wasn't sure when S had heard this. Or had T told him.

"Science helps Man. Science reduces time, reduces pain, increases productivity, increases comfort..."

"But war..."

"Well, that is inevitable. Because of the over-dependence on science. We find too much pleasure in losing ourselves in technology. Too much is as dangerous as too less, young man."

"Wait, you, you, remind me of ... ", I smiled. "You are the founder of one of the religions of the New World. He who preaches the golden mean. With the smiling face and the non-violent religion."

S opened his lips, sorry, His lips but only to be interrupted.

"Then I'm more curious to know the role of religion in the ideal world. An ideal world with happiness for all. Peace and prosperity. Where the significance of religion as a source of inspiration and support for those without happiness is superfluous. Where science will be but for the intellectual masturbation of the elite. Where everyone is born happy, lives happy and dies happy."

His open lips gracefully transformed into a beauteous and benevolent smile. "Yes. But I have two caveats. One, your ideal world is like the theoretical Carnot engine. It exists but in the mind of the unignorant. Two, every human being has the fundamental right to unhappiness. It is with that unhappiness that one gets to appreciate happiness. You can't quite judge that something is hot until you have touched something that is cold."

"Well, yes. But..."

"It's time for me to go. My flight is an hour's time and God knows (smiling), the traffic between here and the Bombay airport at this time of hour."

He came forward and touched my forehead with His palm, but it felt as though a warm breeze was blowing snugly on the temple of my face. I closed my eyes.

"Your colour is blue, child. You have much to learn. And T, that woman dies in the next episode."

"What!?!", shrieked T, spilling his popcorn and drink.

"Yes, and you are red. You are like me. You two have much to do in this world... things to do, people to see and miles to go before you sleep..."

H

What comes before...

Here I am again, sitting at the Café Ankh. The smell of beer permeates the atmosphere like the morning mist over the canal by the side. Beer so bitter and black that Guiness looked like white wine. I was thinking again; the Café Ankh always brings out the best in my thinking, the raucous crowd hollering along the latest about what the lady wished to do to her man, the buxom waitresses hinting at darker secrets, the mysterious, cowled patrons sitting off to a side by themselves and the harsh liquor squatting on my table in front of me, all contribute to the deadening of my brain enough to actually start thinking.

What comes before. What comes before. What comes before determines what comes after. I wonder if it’s that simple. To determine how a person would react to anything that you do or say, do we just need to understand the circumstances that come before? I was reading a book by a very good author, named Scott Bakker, and he seems to think so. The beer goes flat and I gulp it down to the chorus of `My mother was a farmer’s daughter’. Excellent stuff. The song. Not the singer. Not the beer. This is the Ankh, after all.

What I’ve also come to learn is that there are different types of people and that those types determine what they do. What comes before. Ah! very insightful stuff indeed. There are different people. And they do different things. Quite. There’s a brawl starting in front of the stage; looks like two of the sailors in here want to know more about the farmer’s grand-daughter. So, as I was saying, there are different types and if one wishes, one could provide a more grandiose name to it and call them arch-types and each of these arch-types has a core need to that they ache for with their very soul. There is a void that they wish to fill up, as it were and it determines every move they make. Freedom, Duty, Power or Knowledge and Self.

Who’s this I see? It’s the Hermit coming to sit at my table. Young, of marriageable age and, to my knowledge, seeking knowledge, the Hermit has fascinated many of the regulars of our little coffee shop. He drinks more than he can pee, he talks more than he can breathe and he thinks more than he can sleep. It doesn’t make sense to me either. As he drinks his beer down, I think about this latest trend he’s showing. Memory, sorrow and thorn. Clinging on, like Klingons, to the past. Is it to see what comes before? Is there some answer that this miserable creature in front of me sees in his ravings for the past? Or is he trying to clutch onto it instead.

I know not. He drinks on without lifting his head. The piano has begun playing in the background. The music is clear and lilting. This is the part most of us come for. After the beer has sunk has pirates, after the ruffians have been rounded down, after, for what comes after. The chords play slowly out reminding one happy times, of hopes and fears and of my sassy girl. The Hermit looks up and looks out of the window. He sees something in the distance and his eyes light up once again. The music soothes the storms in our souls and places them in tea cups. This is not profound any longer. I am jaded.

ADaSK

Blast from the past

I remember one Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin receives a letter from his past - warning him of impending doom (or school, I forget). I felt like that recently when I was mailed a copy of a note I had to write during my BAT (Business Analyst Training - glorified name for week of fun in Singapore). The note, which is supposed to carry my key takeaways (I am beginning to abhor all these jargons... grrr) from my training, was highly confidential and for my eyes alone. Guess what it said?

I must be smart. And oh-so-profound. For it flirted with some gibberish about feedback (no, you don't need to know). And it had two wonderful - nay, beautiful - pearls of wisdom.
1. Be yourself - You are you and I am I.
2. Always remember about happiness and slowness.

Sounds silly, but when I read thus, I was amused. Amused that this was so important to me then that I had to write myself a note - from the past - to remind myself of its import. Having reflected on this, I have decided to mail this back to myself of the future yet again - how do I do this though?

Which reminds me - einmal ist keinmal. Once is nonce. Rummaging through the multitude of abandoned books at home, I chanced upon a sepia-tinged version of The Unbearable Lightnes of Being. Probably my mom's, from the 80's or even earlier. Feeling victorious at striking gold in a coal mine, I read a few pages of Kundera's masterpiece. And then tried explaining the beauty of those three words to my grandmother. Either she was impressed by its meaning or the way she likened it to 2 vernacular names, she seemed to like it a lot. Oh, the everyday impact I have on people.

"Why don't we seem to enjoy the simpler things in life? Why are we so connected that Mush calling Emergency somewhere far far away should seem to affect us?" asked L. "No no, I am very much still enjoying the smaller things in life." I replied. Like crosswords and poker. The glorified past haunts us time and again. If there is one true obsession for every human, irrespective of caste, creed, language, country, religion, sex and age, it has to be our unified love for that repainted version of our past - the best days of our lives - that which is over.

There's nothing wrong in keeping memories snug in your mind. Or slightly colouring it a happy hue. But you must remember - einmal ist keinmal - and move on.

Recently one of my wiser friends (or so I consider him), compared me to Will Hunting from Good Will Hunting. I felt great. Will Hunting (and a few others from more obscure movies like Dazed and Confused) are truly legendary characters in my life - inspirations. They are kindred souls of a life that was not to be - or perhaps was, in a different dimension. They are the closest I can get to defeating Nietsche and Kundera at their irrepeatability of the human life. They are my closest parallels to immortality.

That reminds me - T, give me that book man.

Happy Diwali folks - and children, play safe but play. You'll want these memories later on...

Cracker,
H