Yet....

A child that hasn't grown yet.

A journey that hasn't started yet.

A thought that isn't complete yet.

A life, that hasn't been lived yet.

The wait is not over yet.

Ideas

Ideas only exist inside the brain. The only time these ideas exist outside it is when they reside in someone else's brain. The reason most people don't realise that ideas are just mental constructs, is because they live among a group of people with similar ideas. It is quite obvious that if an idea exists in everyone's mind then it must be real. I remember when on our honeymoon we made a stopover at Chamba, a small town in Himachal Pradesh. It is located in a valley and if you ignore the crowd and the chaos, the surrounds and specially the Shiva temple are quite beautiful. While walking back from the temple we stopped over at a shop to buy some shawls for our mothers, and a conversation started with the shop owner who was a lady. She started telling us about how lord Shiva came and resided on the peak near the town once a year and how there was a big fair conducted during this period. Her excitement was quite infectious. Now, no one has ever actually seen lord Shiva sit on that peak and it is just an idea. Even if we consider that lord Shiva represents the cosmic entity not the personified form, then it can be argued that He exists everywhere and not just on that peak. But this idea or folklore was so widely accepted in the town that I believe the woman thought it was real. Even if the woman thought that it was just a myth, the fact that the whole town celebrated the myth shouldn't seem surprising to an outsider.
I once had a discussion with my colleague, who was once a Hindu and has recently adopted Christianity, and as is with any new convert, his beliefs are very strong. Now it is widely accepted that the Bible was written by different people at different times. I just asked him whether it ever occurred to him that the Bible might not actually be God’s own words and be just written by well-intentioned human beings. And he said he believed the Bible is entirely passed on to humans (he uses the word ‘man’) by God himself. Faith and logic are so completely contradictory. Similarly, no one can ever know whether the Koran is Allah's will. And hence the fact that you never see anyone actually sit on the peak, is something no one in the town notices, should not sound out of place even to westerners. After all many of their kin believe that God created light and then He created the sun. The sequence might seem wrong to most people but the belief in a God that takes care of them is so comforting that they choose to ignore these small aberrations.

Pirsig in his book Lila wrote that if we don’t see something it does not just imply that it does not exist, but also that maybe we have never been looking for it. Most people have ideas of how the world is and will only see things that confirm to that idea while totally ignoring things that don't. I have made a journey from being an idealist atheist to a skeptic agnostic who wants to be a believer. Ten years ago I would have dismissed that shop lady as being stupid and superstitious. Today I see her as an equal, just distinct from me. Because I understand that I think in a certain way because I have experienced life in a certain way. Had I been living in that town and selling shawls, maybe I would have thought exactly like that lady. I now understand that what genes we inherit is not in our hands and what experiences we will have is to a large extent beyond our control. In claiming credit for a success or blame for a failure this thought should always be at the back of our mind. And also remember that any idea in our brain is just an idea, how much ever passionate we are about it.

Ideology of blame

I am an avid reader of news on the internet. The advantage you have is that you get to read different points of view. So when there is an India-Pakistan conflict, you can find out what people, journalists and politicians on each side are thinking and saying. What I often find, and this is particularly true about the subcontinent, is that people love to blame their politicians for their woes. There is a five hour a day power cut, we say the politicians only care about their votes and not basic needs of the people. We see filth on the street and we say that if only the politicians spent more money and time in building and maintaining infrastructure rather than filling their pockets. I remember that scene from the movie 'Swades' where Shahrukh as Mohan Bhargav gives a preachy dialogue to the villagers as to how we all keep blaming each other for our woes.

But more than it being a sub-continental trait, I think it is very much a part of the human psyche. You see, if you are not responsible for your problems you don't feel guilty and then you don't have to do anything about it. So when there is a bomb blast in Pakistan, they blame India and India does the same thing. The BJP blames the Congress for creating the religion and caste based politics while the Congress blames the BJP for being a communal party. The funny part is that both blame each other of using community based politics, of course supporting different communities. I wish at least one of them found out that the problem was not which community they support, but rather the whole concept of identity based politics based on religion or caste. It is a bigger problem because as long as you seem to represent your community, the community will vote for you, whether you do any work or not. But here again I am blaming the politicians for being myopic, while least realising that he/she is a politician. If we as voters stopped supporting such politicians, they would not exist.

Let me put it this way. A politician is a politician, not because he has strong ideals or is a good administrator or even has a honest character. He (please pardon me for using 'he', using 'he/she' all the time becomes tiring. Hence to make the better gender not feel left out, 'he' from hence forward refers to both 'he' and 'she') is a politician, because he can get votes. I mean ideals, honesty or good administration skills help, but are not essential. I recently read an article on the Pakistani newspaper site 'Dawn' which said that people vote based on emotion and as long as a politician can appeal to people's emotion, he doesn't need to do more.

I am reminded of our home grown Hitler, Mr Narendra Modi. During his election speeches he would openly talk about how bad the minority community was and how ineffective the Congress government has been. Now, if the minority community is bad, the majority community is good. And also if the minority community is to blame for all the problems, the majority community is exempt from any guilt and hence it makes the majority community feel better. I know, I know, that this feel good thing can't last long, and that is why we talk about the 'anti-incumbency factor' where it is assumed that all parties are equally ineffective in dealing with issues, and hence will loose the election after one term. But to top all that majoritarianism, Mr Modi is a good administrator with a clean character. And so people in a big way vote for him. What we have seen in Gujarat is amazing. The Congress and the old BJP politicians find themselves completely incapable of standing up to Mr Modi. But would Mr Modi have been such a formidable leader had he not appealed to the majority's emotions? I doubt it. I know that most of the rhetoric he makes is bullshit and I believe even he knows it. But I guess what he has understood is that bullshit can win you one election but to stay there you have to make people's lives better. I guess BJP should also realize that opportunism by compromising on ideology is not a long term fix. I talk about BJP only because I think Congress is to a large extent beyond redemption. And I don't even want to talk about the Mayawatis, Laloos, Mulayams, Amar Singhs, Karunanidhis, Jayalalithas, Mamata Banerjees, the list is endless. I have better things to do.