The plague called Optimism January 17, 2009

The title of the post will possibly raise many eyebrows, and I will try my best to send your eyebrows to Mars  after  you have finished reading it. Well, that’s an optimistic start.

The good thing about writing a blog is that you suddenly attain this position of authority, and yet  at the same time, distance yourself from the reality as if the situation in no way affects you. That possibly, you haven’t committed the same mistakes which you would like to point out here. It is so amusing to write,  to dictate, to prove the follies we commit, the fallacies associated with our lives and not be humble enough to accept our mistakes or rectify them.

For years I have wondered the state of mind of being “Optimistic”. What does it actually mean? And how is it supposedly superior to being “Pessimistic”? The Bear can make as much money as the Bull. Logically, the Bear will make money when the Bull will not. And vice-versa. But there is a counter argument to it, which says, even the Bear is “optimistic” about the bad times in market.

Human beings would always like to be optimistic. It is a good thing, to be optimistic, to hope that things will turn around, that there will be light in the end of every dark tunnel, to know what you are doing is always right and believe that it will yield results. But that is where the main reasons for debacle lie.

Look around you. Do you see good things? How is your life?  Does the future seem bright? No. No at this moment. No matter what status you have in your society, no matter how much you earn, no matter how secure your life is, the future does not seem too good.  But why? Why this is so, possibly lies in the instinct of human beings being  ”Optimistic”. The belief that things just cannot go wrong. The absence of humility that plagues us, erodes us every day, preventing us to believe, that we can go wrong.

This is not about always treating ourselves as failure. That is not the point I am driving at. The hindrance to development does not lie in the instance of thinking that we can go wrong. On the contrary, it might help us to reassess what we are doing or what we are about to do. This cannot be termed as second thoughts. But it is just giving us a space to look at things from a different angle, and to try to make all angles perfect. But our prejudice forbids us to explore.

We just cannot face up to the fact that we may be wrong, we may be incompetent and we may not possess appropriate skills. Sometimes, when we attain a certain age or status, learning is seen to be a matter of disgrace. I feel that the word “Learning” has some sort of a long term (equal to Economics’ terminology) connotations attached to it. This is absolutely not true. Learning is continuous. It happens every day, every minute, and every second of our life. This process of learning and replicating is so subconscious and so continuous, that we possibly do not even understand or stop to look at, or marvel at this process. But there are some things in life which need to be consciously learned, and replicated.

For that we need the humility. Humility, I am afraid, cannot be learned.

It was this optimism; that things just could not go wrong; which made people in US cash in on the Realty Boom. Everyone knows about the roots of this recession. But no one questions the Why. Why didn’t anyone anticipate the fall in the demand? And why didn’t anyone reassess the situation; how will things change if the demand fell? And why did anyone not act upon it?

It is not the Greed, that people so scornfully refer to, that has destroyed Economies after Economies. Greed, per se, does not destroy you. The fables of Ali Baba does not hold true in the age of Capitalism anymore. Rather, if you do not have the Greed, you probably will not explore potential areas of growth. And the importance of Growth cannot be overemphasized anywhere.

It is Humility of not accepting that Human Beings can go wrong, because they are humans.

It is Optimism, and illogical Optimism that, which makes us turn the blind eye to us being Humans.

Answers by an Unknown September 8, 2008

In the midst of a crowd, among the noises and the commotion, I try to sit quietly, and plan my next move. What should I do to calm my senses, to regain myself which I have been fast losing being amongst so many people at a time? I just cannot seem to find the answer. 

It is so easy to lose yourself when one is with so many people at a time. Who am I now? Where do I fit into this new scheme of things? How to stretch myself? It is so hard to find what I want. So many people telling you what you should do, what you should not do. How to approach a problem, how to solve it. It is almost like you are fast losing your identity, because the way you do things is what makes you. How can you even try to break yourself and build a new you? Prejudice stops you and so does your vanity.

 So, I sit back and observe the people around me. There are some who are constant sources of information. It is easy to read them. They are the ones who have issues which are trivial and they are continuously trying to cultivate it as an excuse to brood. Do I sound arrogant when I say this? May be yes, but I stop to think, why react to people who have no effect on you? Why react to situations which cannot change the way you get on with your life? Why not focus on issues which you have full control, rather than divert your energies to those which you do not have control upon?

 And then there are some people, who can be phlegmatic and unfazed by people as if they are not visible, as if their words do not reach their ears. People around them are unimportant, their actions meaningless. I admire these people, and I feel intrigued as to how they can make everything related to them, when in reality, for an outsider, he may well seem to be someone who sits in a corner and looks at everything with expressionless eyes. Nothing moves him. You may talk to him; say something about why things are what they seem to be. He listens, with those expressionless eyes, and then turns to whatever he seemed to be doing before, that is nothing. 

I feel flustered. When you articulate your emotions to human language, you expect a reaction, even a wry smile or a monosyllabic reaction. But then I stop, and I realize, what is the need to react to people? Is there a compulsion to always have a reaction? And that too for someone whom you don’t know? People have been forced into the relationships of acquaintances here, we all have been. But we cannot be forced into making reactions, to the people and to the situations around us.

 But it is difficult for me to inculcate that behavior. I find myself thinking a lot, about a situation which I have no control upon. So much so, that I try to force myself into believing that it is under my control. Everything around is under my control, and if it has to be out of my control, then that shortcoming rests with me. This clouds my mind, and I lose myself because such things make me weak. The fact that things are out of my purview make me jittery and I question myself. And the answers are hard to come by.

I wish again that I could look at things without expressions and without emotions. I wish I could learn how not to involve myself with lifeless things, just like the expressionless-eyed fellow. But then, I would become him, someone I don’t know.

Confessions of a Pseudo-Empath January 31, 2008

Somehow, today I feel that the language that I would be using while writing this post may not coincide with the actual feelings I wish to express. This doesn’t happen to me too often; rather it’s a case of rarity. But still, I have to continue writing this in English in hope that I am able to give shape to my actual thoughts.

 Its cold in Calcutta now. The chilly weather has been continuing for a week, with occasional showers which is bringing down the temperature furthermore. People here aren’t accustomed to the weather as such, and so for us the cold just seems quite tiresome.

 Even more tedious is the task of getting up early at about 6 to 6:30 in the morning, getting ready, commuting through the public transport and reaching the university on time. You can almost feel my disinterest and my lack of enthusiasm here when I talk about my daily adventures these days. The walk from the bus-stand to the campus is a long one, consisting of lazy, indifferent people walking so slowly through the footpaths that you can almost consider yourself to be standstill waiting for the “green signal” to allow you to move ahead of the human traffic. It is easy to get impatient and take the route by walking on the main road, but I try not to. Safety reasons withstanding, puddles of water are already present, an usual picture of Calcutta when rain has been continuing for some time.

 Everyday, I walk through the footpath, overcrowded with shops, big and small, with stalls selling magazines from PC Quest to StarDust, from local fruitsellers to small chaiwalllas. I notice an old man sitting on a stall, with socks and handkerchiefs among other things, shouting “Socks! Socks!” while people just quietly and steadily walking past him. Today is different, it is quite cold than other days. Rains lashed on to the city yesterday, and because of that the city was shivering more than usual. The man wasn’t there today, instead of his usual voice a shrill young voice shouted “Socks! Socks!”. I passed it, like everyday but not before I caught a small figure in red, a little girl, no taller than my knees yelling those words. When I had walked quite a bit, I don’t know why, but I had this strong feeling to turn back, to look again at the sight which I thought I had seen a few moments ago. And I did. I turned a bit while continuing to walk and I saw her. I met her eyes and in an instant, quite embarrassedly I turned myself again and kept walking, wondering why I had done so.

 Throughout the entire walk, I thought about her. May be her uncle or her grandfather was sick today and she was filling in for him. Did she miss her school today? Did she actually go to school? Will she actually manage to sell a pair of socks today? And on an instant, I wanted to move away from such thoughts, erasing them out as rubbish and extremely insipid or may be too immature. Even while writing now, I am constantly asking why am I spending such an amount of time and space writing about something which has got absolutely no relevance?

 Was it on my part to try and empathize? Or an attempt to try to understand people’s livelihood which is poles apart from mine? Questions such as these makes me feel small and insignificant. Who am I to judge other people and show compassion to them without even knowing who they are? Wasn’t it always me who kept on telling others that people are inconsiderate, selfish and deceitful trying to take every ounce of advantage they can from others? So, why was I trying to be different today?

 May be, I, like the rest of the people was behaving like the exact same way, empathizing with a situation with which I can never identify and only trying to camouflage this inability with my act, a fabricated emotion of showing compassion.

Lost November 21, 2007

An irreparable loss is not always about losing your loved ones, it is about losing your emotions, your memories – the moments you spent, the happiness you acquired. It is hard to reason with others regarding your loss, especially when you know that the sadness that engulfs you will never leave you. But humans, though they are the most most advanced species known in this universe, can sometimes be quite irrational. Nothing stops, no one stops for you. It even takes you with its waves, and you have no choice.

Each and everyone in this world has to come to terms with their losses. One may be stripped off their material possessions, you may be robbed or you may be careless enough to lose them. Then you buy them again, after a while and vow to be careful enough to not lose them. And you may never lose them again. But the things that you lost, they are here in this world. But they aren’t with you, they are with someone else. It is that same thing, which you had been gifted by someone, the same thing that has your human touch, a watch, a necklace, a book, a Singing in the Rain DVD which was borrowed from you and you cannot remember who.

You may think, that a loss of a material possession is nothing when compared to a loss of a person. A material possession can be replaced but not a person, not the emotions that you had and the experiences that you shared with them. But I think that it is not entirely true. I can go to a DVD store and buy the DVD again, all I need is the requisite amount of money. I cannot buy the same person, of course. But we humans learn how to stay without them. Time makes us do it. Since, replacement cannot be done, we move on, we try to forget the need that we had for the person. The experiences remain, the memories remain and we express our grief. But it stops after a while. Life, we call it, doesn’t stop for anyone or anything. And we do look for replacement, for others who can fill the void, the affection of a mother or the pillar of support that a father can be.

 But what can you say about the person who has lost his house, his profession, his security, and his family ? I cannot picture it. Disturbing pictures about killing people through point blank range or stories which I hear saying that there are far more disturbing things hidden from the public eye, doesn’t make me anxious. I cannot relate to them. To lose control on your life, may be the ultimate loss of all and may seem irrelevant to us and hence, we have considerable resolve to discuss such issues sitting in coffee shops.

 Yet, we never ask what makes us deserve a life like this and not like that?

My shortcomings June 28, 2007

How do you treat the deficiencies in you? When someone tries to hold a mirror in front of you and shows you the things that are your shortcomings. Do you treat them as shortcomings?  Do you work with your shortcomings? Or you just try to walk away from them?

Is solitude my shortcoming? The state in which I explore myself, the world and the people around me is my solitude. It gives me pleasure, the ability to see myself from a different angle, my loneliness is what goes with me, and I try and look at things through a different perspective. Thoughts overflow, and I grasp my food for thought which is there on the platter. I read, I write, I watch and I learn. Is it a shortcoming?

Are my emotions my shortcoming? When I react to people who try and judge me and possess preconceived notions about me? Come to think of it, my world would be much simpler without them. But somehow I don’t know why, I force myself into the circus. A good conversation, a pleasant outing is always welcome. But is it so difficult to keep it that way? Why can’t people be moderately polite and subsequently assertive and graciously do things which brings a proper closure? Why do people that surround me make things purposefully difficult? Why is there so much fabrication of truth, especially when the truth is about me?

The only wrong thing I committed, is trying to find out an answer to the Why. There are no answers. There are no solutions. I have been trying to mend things which are beyond my control, walking into world which isn’t my own, talking to people who aren’t my friends and trying to find the light in the dark tunnel, only to be disappointed, again. I shouldn’t do this, I hear telling myself. I can’t find anything that gives me solace.

It is just a feeling that I have which still lingers on, that I can never be what others want me to be. It seems hard but it is the truth. The paths that I want to walk on, do not lead anywhere.

I was me, but she’s gone.

I tried to find me in you.

May be that was where I was wrong.

Of Politics and Pirates. June 14, 2007

If I were to venture into a discussion one day about politics with people face-to-face that would spell trouble. And I find myself avoiding that, consciously.  

In normal circumstances, one would question as to why is it so difficult to enter into a discussion which is logically sound and yet open to differences in opinion. The answer would be that more and more people find it difficult to be tolerant of other’s opinions for reasons which are unknown to me.

  As I have consciously decided not to participate in discussion which relates to politics because it makes people ridicule your knowledge in the political arena instead of not countering your accusations in a productive sort of a way; I tried and looked for discussions on the Internet with people whom I suspect are more tolerant and intelligent. But that was not to be.  In a particular social networking website, I happened to find a particular discussion area comprised of members with a political opinion. Yet, to my disappointment, I find the discussion to be of the usual one dimensional type where everyone agrees with one another and never questions other’s line of thinking and their tendency to support ‘a’ particular party.   

This is where all goes wrong. Frankly speaking, being a descendant of West Bengal, and aware of the political situation within and outside the state, I have always been someone who has been against Communism. Even writing this makes me feel awkward since it exposes my political allegiances to those of my acquaintances who are unaware of this particular information. Why you would ask? Well, it is difficult to explain. Most people, whom I am well acquainted with, are firm believers that the CPI (M) has brought development in the state and their existence for such a long time has always been for greater good for the state. They tend to scorn at those who don’t support this particular party, since if you aren’t one of them, you are against them.

 

  Yes, I don’t support Communism. Most young people in the state believe in this concept, since the idea is quite appealing and romantic to them. That the resources should be shared by all in the economy and there is no distinction between classes; such an idea is absurd. Capitalism is not only rampant in UK or US; it is prevalent in India as well. No matter how we may try to hide from this fact, it is the blatant truth. While every year the government is trying to proclaim that India’s GDP is exemplary to say the least, the companies are busy trying to upgrade their profits by investing in SEZ’s and EPZ’s and young people all over the country are all flocking for an MBA degree for a high range salary; all of these point to the growing capitalistic mindset in India.   The funny thing is when people say they are influenced by Che Guevara and wear T-shirts with his face imprinted on it. I mean, what do they want to prove? The very fact that Mr. Guevara has found himself on T-shirts, caps, bags, key chains, coffee mugs etc points to the fact as to how companies have used Che Guevara to sell such merchandise to young people. That’s Capitalism in any language and from any angle you see, right?   

 Although we don’t have communism today, not even in West Bengal. With the IT upsurge in the state, the growing number of IT companies setting up their branches here, the communist party’s political agenda has taken a beating. What we have today is neo-communism, so more and more noises are being made about jobs and attracting FDI. Even though, they may still exercise their hypocrisy in the Centre and indulge in activities which are morally unethical, most educated and intellectual people seem to miss that. Or do they actually miss it?

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Now for some light coffee table talk.

I just caught the Pirates of the Caribbean on Monday, and well, it took me two days to recover from the film. I couldn’t help but notice how the storyboard seemed absolutely wobbly, convoluted, confusing and self-indulgent. After every scene, I felt like, yes the fun would start now, now is the time for those witty wisecracks of Jack Sparrow, but I am afraid they never came!

  

At times to my horror, I found myself bored and thinking when it would end. The character sketch, other than Jack Sparrow’s, are absolutely rubbish. Why oh why, does Elizabeth Swann keep on kissing every other male character that she can lay her hands upon? She kissed Sparrow last time, this time its Chow-Yun-Fat and Norrington and ofcourse Will Turner. Three different people in one single film! That’s weird.

  

The only thing good is the last 40 minutes of the film, which makes it worthwhile to watch. Otherwise I prefer not to gape with astonishment at the woman who suddenly becomes a super-size giant and breaks into infinite crabs which subsequently make their way to the sea.

  The best film obviously was the first one. Pure unadulterated fun, with the makers never really trying to prove some kind of a point. It was smooth and in its true sense, the movie was a swashbuckling extravaganza.  Johnny Depp as usual tries to hold the film on his own and succeeds to some extent. Most people would have liked to watch the film because of him and because of Jack Sparrow, and I would say he doesn’t disappoint. Especially with the hallucinations he is an absolute joy to watch. But I would still think, that the film was a disappointment.