Out of the mouth of babes…

So much truth in this saying… 

This morning my daughter sent us a msg saying her little 5-year old cannot find a book in her bag, but can spot a Baskin-Robbins in a super crowded mall from a mile away!!! 

Huge lesson here…..we forget the wonder of life as we grow older…we, carelessly, without thinking, allow all the dross, all our cares (imagined or real), hassles, and unhappinesses to crowd out the wonder of life…. Takes a little one to point us in the right direction…. We would do well to heed these pointers coming to us in sweet baby packages… As adults we have an amazing capacity to hang on to stressful people and in stressful environments… why not just look at life through the eyes of a child. No child will ever stay voluntarily with either stressful people or in stressful environments. No child will stay unhappy for long…the child will find her or his own corner, devise her or his make-believe game, or recreate an environment out of her or his head. Even if punished, a child will not stay ‘punished’ for long…the little one goes into her or his world and creates her or his own happiness. They never let the punishment rankle…neither do they hang on to the issue, nor do they wallow in either punishment or unhappiness…

I am 71…

and it is the going on ahead which I am thinking about. Here are some of my thoughts:

We are older and not so agile. There is a lifetime of mental, emotional, and physical wounds to deal with, illnesses to bear, financial constraints to work through and around….But, this is OUR time. Our chores and  responsibilities are over, and now, older and wiser, battered and tired, we are on the last lap….Now is our very own time to do and be just what we want to do and be. OUR TIME…and we need to enjoy this time, celebrate our small achievements, and let go of all regrets, enjoy the things we liked but didn’t have time for, be responsible for ourselves, now that responsibilities for the family are over. It is a time for enjoying our grown children and the grandchildren as they come along, and be of help as and when needed. We need to look at life, not thinking about things to be done, but as gifts to enjoy. When we needed it, we had the energy to do what needed to be done at that time. Now we only need to do what we need to do for now. But, and this is the catch, now, we need to wake up and use all our mental, physical, and hidden inner energies to celebrate and enjoy life as it happens to us now…in these moments of every day…

When we are young…

we go by what our parents teach us, and exhort us to do, and we absorb the intangibles of our home environment. We live our lives the way our parents teach us, and go by all the norms of our family. We have our place in the society our parents belong to. And so, as we grow we add to ourselves, building on the foundations our parents and society have laid for us. 

But, then, as we grow up, and have experiences of our own, our life view changes and then we try to align what we grew up with, with what is happening within us in the present. I think this is where the conflict begins. Some of what we grew up with works in our present context, some may need a little tweaking, but some downright don’t work. We tend to fail to realize that we are different people now….the environment is different, most of our ‘usual’ habits have changed, often even our focus has changed….what’s important and what’s not has changed. The old is still there, but the new overlaps it. Some of us can reconcile the two, but some find it difficult and then, very often, an insistent voice whispers in our ear - but this is not what we are used to…. Or….. this is not how it is supposed to be…. Or…..this is not how we knew it to be done….. and many such incidents which may well stop us in our tracks. This is our growing up experience, and it is not age-specific. We then find a way to work on what is happening to us (‘something not usually what we were used to’), go ahead and do it, and when the outcome is positive, we feel good about ourselves and more confident in our skin. If the outcome is negative, we are still loth to go back to the old ‘usually done/thought’ way, and so try out new methods and forge forward. However, should we flip backwards and go back to the ‘usual’, then, as persons, too, we go back trying to find refuge in the old. And this never ever ever works out. This is when the dangerous words ‘I’ve always thought/done this like this’ become a trap and take us down into the depths of depression. 

This is a life process we all go through. And we need to look out for each other…

As I grow older…

by the day I’m learning the beauty and power of words. Not only words, but the intonations, choice of meaning in words that have more than one meaning, the punctuation…the entire landscape of words that form the pictures of our minds. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” And language is all about words. The connection language has with music and math becomes so clear. Words, like notes in a piece of music, or numbers in a math problem can be positive, negative, or hurtful (language)/discordant (music)/a mistake (math). 

One never stops learning how best to use words. Language is so alive that it keeps growing and if one is to make sense of this life then one cannot stop learning words. We want to describe to ourselves how we feel, we want others to understand the workings of our mind, we want to share….and all of these need not only words, but the best use of them…

Talking about the minds…

that have impacted the world, in an article I read yesterday, ‘Shared luminosity’, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, has talked about 5 powerful minds that have influenced the world’s thinking: Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1939), and Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Not too far apart, and with some overlapping, these minds have left a legacy we cannot ignore.

I’m mentioning only two of the thoughts Gandhi has written about…..deep thoughts that often trouble us. The first one is relevant in the Ukraine-Russia war which might just spill over to the rest of the world….in fact, it is relevant to every country, as there is some kind of conflict in every corner of the world….it has to do with our humanity—something we tend to forget when looking at those who are seemingly different from us….and yet, in fact, are as human as we are. The second has to do with the power of our minds and how we use that power…

‘Days before he died, Einstein signed, along with Bertrand Russell and nine others (including Linus Pauling and Joliot Curie) the ‘Russell-Einstein Manifesto’ of July 9,1995, which highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called upon world leaders to renounce war and seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. Towards its end, the text ended memorably with the words, “Remember your humanity, forget the rest.”

I do not doubt when Einstein pondered these words, the words from the author of Faust (Goethe) resounded in his mind: We are our devils; we drive ourselves out of our own Edens.”’

The rest of this wonderful article can be found here:

https://www.telegraphindia.com/amp/opinion/shared-luminosity-context-shapes-even-the-most-brilliant-of-minds/cid/1887299

So much is being written…

about the Queen’s passing. But what I am finding increasingly intriguing is how in her passing the Queen has brought the whole reality of colonisation into focus. Quite unwittingly. Historians, thought leaders and influencers are pulling out all kinds of data on colonisation and are analysing how it has affected and impacted on people and, in fact, still does. This one sole lady has, somehow, caused people to reflect on the condition of the world. She did her bit to help deconstruct and dissolve the British Empire, but it is as if a Pandora’s box has been opened with discussions and debates on the British Empire, leading to discourses and debates on other colonising powers….So many man-made and man-created empires pillaged and looted and occupied lands not their own, created so much turmoil in the lives of ordinary people, spread so much fear and grief…. Colonised nations are still trying to rebuild themselves even after years of freedom… Thing is, we are all human beings, all created in God’s image—black, white, yellow, whatever, bright, genius, not-so-bright, challenged, SLGBTQ, of various faiths and denominations…the differences are many…and yet we are all human with all of a human being’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, concerns, fears…This may sound simplistic, but it is the reality—the simple true reality which we are so busy trying to complicate. There has been huge pain in death, holocaust, partition, tortures… Can we not try and put the past behind? Can we not concentrate on the aspects of life of our countries that connect us - music, sport, literature, technology, to mention some… Can we not allow our human-ness and humanity to link us…and look to the future which comes with its own set of problems that need to be solved… that need us to work together….? 

Some people…

are like shooting stars. They appear on the firmanent of our lives, brightening up our own personal universe for a bit, scattering stardust on our quiet moments mundane lives.

Legendary Vietnam War photographer, writer, and counter-culture documenter Tim Page was one such star. An Australian friend and fellow photojournalist, Ben Bohane, described Page as one of the great war photographers as well as a “real humanist.” “He always said it was more important to be a decent human being than a great photographer,” Bohane said. 

One of Page’s famous lines was, “The only good war photograph is an anti-war photograph.”

Page covered the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the 1960s and '70s. Later he covered the conflicts in Afghanistan, Solomon Islands, Israel, Bosnia, and East Timor. His images were iconic and featured in top news agencies. 

Page also worked as a freelance photographer for music magzines including Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy from the late 1960s. 

Page wrote a dozen books about his war experiences and music. 

His was not an ordinary life.

I have often wondered what makes people like Page famous? They don’t crave fame….they just live full lives, not trapped…nor allowing themselves to get trapped…in the narrow worlds made by man. Their world has no boundaries and their mind soars unafraid and untrapped by the confines we usually draw for our minds. 

The most beautiful aspect of Page’s life was that he believed in the inherent decency and dignity of man, and he lived this belief…

Some of Tim Page’s quotes:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

They say: Belief is important. I say: No, actions are important. Judge by deed, not by creed. 

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn — the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything. 

I leave you with this question. How many of us will truthfully be able to say what Tim Page says:

Go where you will; commit what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; you can never commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, or my heart to you. As long as I live you shall have one sincere friend. 

In the light of my last blog on the importance of detail…

I want to put down here an article I came across by Prasenjit Basu, eminent historian and economist. 

I was troubled by the villification in some quarters of the Queen and realized that what was being said and written had a lot of gaps and falsification. I scoured the net to see where I could get clarity, and found it in this piece:

QE I was a feisty queen of a small island nation (with 1/30th the population of the world’s largest economy at the time, India’s) but gave the royal charter to establish the English East India Company in 1600. England had defected from the mainstream of Christendom during her father’s (Henry VIII’s) reign. The charter for the EICo marked the start of England’s (and Britain’s) global ambitions. 

QEII, on the other hand, was a gentle monarch who presided over the empire’s dissolution. The jewel in her father’s crown, had already gone by the time she ascended the throne, although her uncle Dickie Mountbatten had ensured that Nehru and Gandhi agreed to keep India a dominion—betraying the Congress’s pledge (since 26 January 1930) to accept nothing but Purna Swaraj. The British had no interest in giving India even dominion status at the end of WWII, as was clear in a white paper produced for the British government in May 1945 by the British army Chiefs of Staff. This spoke of steps needed to keep iron control over India and the Indian Ocean area for the next 15 years (until 1960!) regardless of any “constitutional changes” in British India. At Simla in 1945, the British basically offered the Cripps plan rejected rightly by Gandhi in 1942—partial self-rule by Indians, albeit in a Balkanised nation, still supervised by a British viceroy and provincial governors in accordance with the GoI act of 1935, with slight modifications to its federal features. 

It was QEII who was to reign over the dissolution of the rest of her empire. After Suez in 1956 (when the absence of Indian soldiers showed that Britain was a paper tiger in the ‘Middle East’), Pakistan became a republic, Malaysia and Ghana became independent soon afterwards, Iraq threw out its British-puppet monarchy in 1958 and Singapore got self-rule in 1959. African colonies (Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania) and Kuwait declared independence in the 1960s, other Arab protectorates (UAE, Qatar, Bahrain) in 1971 (the year Sri Lanka became a republic), and Hong Kong was ‘returned’ in 1997 to China (although its Central island had been given to Britain in perpetuity in 1842). 

The two Elizabethan Ages thus bookended the start and end of the British Empire. 

(Our grouse and hatred is for what the East India Company did to our country and our people, and which British government added to and continued till our independence. The monarch was merely a figurehead with no real powers. And so, as a human being how she impacted on us (or not) is, I feel, important.)

The importance of…

being factually correct in the details of the topic we are writing about, as well as in how we express ourselves. It is easy to read a bit of an article or of any source of knowledge or information, and write on it filling in the blanks the mind throws up with our own expertise and play on words. If questioned, we are able to come up with answers and more words to hide behind, or we deluge the other person with so many words and ideas that the topic itself is lost. How much easier it would be to read, refer the dictionary or thesaurus, and learn more about what is exercising our mind, and then write about it or speak about it. We need to be honest to our intellect, honest to our source of knowledge and information, otherwise we run the danger of not being taken seriously and worse, not knowing anything about anything at all…

Queen Elizabeth…

Deeply saddened by Queen Elizabeth’s passing. We didn’t know her. Indeed she belonged to another universe but her influence was great. She was the one steadying factor through the years. The world experienced - and still continues to experience - the turmoils of war, illness, hatred, divisiveness, and what have you, but somehow this person sitting in faraway England remained a constant. She lived the values that were inculcated in her as she was groomed to rule. Regardless of the love-hate relationship Britain has with the countries of the world, this one lady held the imagination and respect of everyone. Her steady presence was the one sure factor in a world, totally fragmented and pulling in a thousand ways. She struggled too within her own family, in a differently evolving England, in a world rapidly changing for better and worse, and yet never lost her equilibrium on the world stage. 

One needs heroes, and for me, she was one. 

May her soul rest in peace.

A strange but…

very real phenomenon we have here in India is how we manage to ‘Indianize’ everything. No matter from which part of the world the influence is, if we like it, or if we find use in it, we take it in, Indianize it and make that version our very own….!!! For instance, English—-we speak it, but in our own way. We love western wear, but we Indianize it in our own unique distinctive way. In Education, the International Baccalaureate programme, and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education programme are deeply interesting and we want to incorporate them in our schools….so we do this, and then promptly go about Indianizing them….. And Music! Dance! The biggest changes ever have been made in these fields because of the western influence. And so, whether it is planning a buffet, or a getting ready for a plane journey, or choosing the decor for our home, no matter which area of our lives we look at, we set our criteria keeping western standards in mind. But…….they are all very, very, very Indian….. very desi….. and somehow we force the world to accept this…

Dani Blum…

has cleared a huge doubt in my mind. This morning The Telegraph, Calcutta, has an article, ‘Life as we know it’, and Dani Blum clears the confusion between ‘burnout’ and ‘depression’. While both show many similar symptoms, they are different and we would do well to understand this so that we can ask for the help we need. 

Burnout: while we usually connect this with the workplace, increasingly it is being found out by researchers that there is parental burnout, where caregivers feel exhausted all the time. There is also the burnout that’s been brought on by working out of home. After the initial feeling of comfort of working from home, and maybe even increased productivity, people are realizing that because they are working from home, they are tending to put in longer hours. Now, psychologists are warning of burnout happening because workers feel like they don’t have control over their day-to-day lives, often getting bogged down by a thousand little tasks. 

The symptoms of burnout are feelings of depletion, cynicism, resentment, irritability, and ineffectiveness. 

Healthcare workers, workers in the service sector, and those in retail industry, who suffer burnout start to lose empathy.

There are also physical symptoms to deal with—insomnia, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues. 

The World Health Organisation includes burnout in its diagnostic manual as an ‘occupational phenomenon’. 

Depression on the other hand is a clinical diagnosis. Activities, books, and movies, among other things, that a person enjoyed start to seem tedious, and downright hateful. 

While with burnout you don’t have energy for your hobbies, with depression they seem unpleasant and not fun anymore. 

While the initial symptoms of both may seem the same, a person can bounce back from burnout by taking a day off or with small changes in lifestyle, but depression causes people to think they are worthless and life is not worth living. 

We also need to start putting the ‘screen’ be it of the phone, ipad, computer, laptop, or tv, in its rightful place in our lives…give it the importance it needs, but not our lives… periods of quietness away from the light of the screen help regain equilibrium. 

Both issues need help and it would be best for our own sakes to get the help we need and not try to fix these issues ourselves. 

I lost a dear friend to depression, and I would not wish anyone to go through this. I was headed this way when my daughter hauled me out…..

At the slightest hint of fear either from burnout or depression, we need to reach out for help. 

A hideous experience…

18th August, 2022,  we had this experience at the Telephone Exchange junction on L.B. Road, Chennai. My daughter who had come for 5 days had rented a car to take us to Mahabalipuram. At this particular junction, thanks to all the happy noise the family was making, she missed the red light, and we were stopped by the police. There were 3 of them. The older one walked up to the car, saw us, and my daughter, who immediately got out of the car, apologised to him. He told her to be careful and as she turned to get into the car, a second policeman very rudely spoke to her about having jumped the light. She apologised but he kept shouting at her, told her he would cancel her license, and then asked her for her ATM card. My daughter explained she was here just for 5 days and she was sorry this had happened but the man using his raw brute force kept talking to her very rudely enjoying the spectacle of her child crying and all of us stunned by this exchange. ATM card? Crime? The older policeman then told him to let her go. He told her to get into the car but he called another policeman who was standing there, whispered something to him and asked him to go with her to the car. At the car this third policeman who was carrying a portable cash machine asked her for Rs 1200/-. She took it out to give it to him and he asked her to hold it below the machine, which she did. The money was hidden from view. He then slipped the money into his pocket surreptitiously and went away. The strange thing was that none of the policemen were wearing name tags. I get that they had to stop my daughter for having jumped the light but I absolutely fail to understand the horribly rude tone of voice and words that were used, as if she was a criminal and this was a major criminal offense. I also could not understand why her ATM card was being asked for. It was a hideous playback of the Raj days when the natives were bullied by native policemen. 

 

I decided to go on the Net to find out what the responsibilities of police should be. And in this link - https://lawtimesjournal.in/who-is-police-what-are-powers-duties-of-police/  I found these statements:

 

Every police officer shall behave with the members of the public with due courtesy and decorum, particularly so in dealing with senior citizens, women, and children.

 

 

The police should always be courteous and well mannered.

 

 

Integrity of the highest order is the fundamental basis of the prestige of the police. 

 

My family has always admired Tamil Nadu-the culture and ethos. This was a rude awakening to the grim reality of corruption and rudeness among those who are meant to protect the people.