My long confession

Disclaimer: The terms "attachment" and "detachment" that I've used here may or may not convey the same meaning as they do in spiritual books.

It was some time around my mid-college times that I realized I was missing something in life. How is it that people live through a moment so much? I moved my clock to the past. My name was in the local newspapers for securing some material rank in the school board exams, but I was not elated by it. I think I was not "attached" to the result of the exams; my parents enjoyed the moment more than I did. Then the dilemma between medicine and engineering, I just didn't have any preference, for I was not "attached" to either biology or maths. Off I joined college, students missed their home during their initial days of hostel life. But I don't think I ran through those emotions as well, for I think I was not "attached" to my home.

And then expressions. I believed that what exists in the heart is worth million times more than what is expressed. "All the best", "Congratulations", "Have a nice day", "Happy new year", "Happy vacation" - all these were mere formalities to me, for I was fairly convinced that they're words wasted and will not control any outcome in this world. Some of my friends still make fun of me for giving a nil-reaction when they told me I had got through a job interview during the campus season.

That was when I forcefully decided to slowly "attach" myself to this world. I thought I would be able to understand people better this way. But I didn't know that once I get in, the chain would take care of my entanglement and I will forever be lost in the illusion of "attachment". It started with people first. By the time I passed out, I got myself attached to my closest set of friends that I remember crying many nights for having to be separated from them. After college, I attached myself to my job. Success in getting something to work motivated me to achieve further. But minor disappointments arising from small expectations affected me. I even started to show my outside frustrations at home. Sometimes there were conflicts of the attachment priorities too, say, when my people were unhappy about something, I was not able to concentrate at work.

I started to realize that today it could be my closest people or the dearest things, but tomorrow it could be any Tom, Dick and Harry that could throw me off my equilibrium. The chain of questions started. Since when did I start getting disappointed? Well, since when did I start having expectations? I started tracing back since then and it was not until recently that I root-caused this to the experimentation I had started a few years ago. Phew, I became a prey of my own experiment. It became such a progressive process inside me that even I didn't know when it started and how it coursed itself through.

After my ISB battle, I was upset for a few days, but I think in a detached life I wouldn't have got affected. I am able to confidently say this because I am going through something similar right now. I am loving my house construction just as I love my MBA aspiration, but then there's a difference, I am less attached to the house. The construction is waiting on the bank loan. Thanks to a human error made during the conversion of housing authorities, my loan has come to a hiatus at the last moment. I've been trying for the last two months, but thanks again to all the politeness and sincerity I got to witness in government offices, the struggle might take longer. But I'm definitely able to handle this better; my parents are more disturbed than I'm.

So, has all this experimentation deteriorated my journey towards things beyond life. May be true, but I personally don't think so. I have surely learnt so much during these "attachment" years. The most prominent of those is my belief in what I don't understand as God. It might take more than a life's time for me to understand, but then I know what has changed in me. I've also experienced the greatest of my delights and celebrated the happiest of my moments. But I've also suffered the worst of my disappointments.

What concerns me now is, was I "useful" to anyone during those phases of disappointments. I think to be "useful" to anyone including myself, without attachmental prejudices, I need to be in equilibrium first. If attachment is going to throw me off it, I don't think I need it. Frankly I don't know which way to go, but if my love to people will not reduce, if my hunger to achieve something in life will not mince, if my dedication to my actions will not subdue, or in short if my commitment to life will not suffer - I think I should make every effort not to stay "attached".

I'm sorry, one more on relationships

Again a TV show, this time a debate - "Whether it's love or friendship, you give your 100%. If the other person is giving only 70%, it's he who's losing the 30%". For a change, it was not a guy and a girl arguing, but they were two guys, who are long-time friends in real life.

I can definitely see the truth in it, at the same time, I can argue with myself against it too. You give your best, you'll gain the most; you don't doubt, you'll derive the maximum bliss, agreed. But how do you handle when your expectations are not met. Expectations are the cause of all disappointments, but then can you really lead a life without expectations? When you give 100%, it's very unnatural not to expect 100% back. But thinking laterally, I think these expectations and disappointments are a little malformed because according to the laws of probability if not the laws of life, we would ourselves be failing to meet the expectations on the other side by the same amount.

I think a relationship, as one of my friends puts it, is like a flowing river. It goes through an amazing journey, but the true test comes when disturbed. You throw a stone, you'll know how clear the bed beneath is. The muckier it gets, the more rotten the relationship is. But the quickness and longevity with which the muck is cleared will demonstrate the purity and the strength of the relation. Flood and drought, well, they're part of the package too.

I've nothing to opine, nothing to conclude, so I leave it open.

Stay selfish, Stay foolish

That's a title inspired from Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford on "Stay hungry, Stay foolish", but it suits this discussion. Of late I've been having funny conversations with friends on the concept of marriage, to see how they react, and of course with a selfish interest to learn.

I would start like this - When we're one big happy family, and no one has "vested" interest in a different family, where'll there be problems, who'll think about God. So, marriage is a concept invented by God to divide and rule us. Marriage by itself is not the only problem, we create more problems around it, the most prominent being our children. We solve this new problem that we create by growing the children. Finally we get them married so that they can also create more problems and solve them. In all, we don't solve any existing problem, but convince ourselves that we're doing a great job. I would go on speaking more nonsense.

Finally, the discussions would boil down to one argument. When's the best result achieved - when everyone's selfish or when everyone's selfless? If everyone's selfish and takes care of own and the family, isn't the world taken care by itself. Well, most management concepts will tell you so, but is life another capitalistic playground? Help yourself, help your family, help your friends - be selfish, why care about the rest of the world anyways? But then if everyone keeps the house clean, who cleans the street? Well, it'll be someone who's paid for it so that he can take care of his own family. The argument would mostly stop here.

I included helping friends also in the list of selfish acts above. That doesn't mean I advocate charity as the most selfless act. I personally am not a big proponent of charity. But I am a big fan of communist ideas like bridging economic inequalities, reservations, etc. if they are rationally implemented. Recently I heard someone, who I remember once spoke so vehemently against caste-based reservation, come out openly in support of reservations for women. I didn't quite understand that though. Anyway, that's not relevant to this discussion. Let us hope that some day reservation becomes clean, and it takes suppression, economy, exposure, and everything else other than caste into account. May be when we reach that stage, reservations might not be required at all?

Coming back to our discussion about marriages and children, I am still having such funny conversations and still learning. If you've something even funnier, let me know too.

Raise your voice, Get your share

My "halli" only had Reliance Wimax connectivity when I came back to Bangalore. I was disappointed because I was not confident that Reliance will give me a satisfactory broadband connection, for I knew Reliance is known for its over-subscription.

True to my assumption, the connection was pathetic. But I convinced myself that this was the best possible and that I had only a few more months to leave Bangalore anyways. Now that I didn't go anywhere, I complained and got my antenna position shifted towards a new tower. I'm now getting a real cool connectivity of almost 1 mbps most of the time. Just in case any of you is using Reliance, I think you'll not get your share until you raise your voice. I think this's true about many things in life? Let me wait till this new tower gets over-subscribed.

Trust vs Loyalty

After the "glimpse" of a megaserial, now it's about a "glimpse" of a movie. A millionaire, after an accident, is pretending to be blind to learn about some frauds happening at his home. The heroine, the only other person who knows he is not blind, is in his house as a nurse. The hero, who also works in the house, happily flirts with the heroine every now and then and even in front of the millionaire. After one such flirting episode, the millionaire tells the heroine "I'm really impressed with you, you've not even disclosed the truth to your boyfriend".

But does this happen in real life? I knew a friend who wanted to shift teams within her company. She just enquired about the role to the new manager and asked him not to tell her old manager before she finds the right time to tell. Even if the new manager wanted to get some feedback, he could have just waited for her consent, but he didn't do that. Now she can't face her old manager. I was discussing about this today with a friend to whom I go for such enlightenment, for she's an excellent scholar of Hindu philosophies - "I tell you something and ask you not to tell your husband. If you tell him, you break my trust. If you don't, you break your loyalty to him. What'll you do?" She said "I'm not sure if the latter is true, but I for sure know the former is true, so I'll not tell him".

Truth vs Gain, Peace vs Truth, Duty vs Peace, Loyalty vs Duty, Trust vs Loyalty, the chain can go on, but I think in all of the above, I would want to "rationally" choose the former whenever I can. But yes, I agree that exceptions can be made for a "selfless good". There would surely have been a few instances in my life, where I might not have practiced this, by writing it down I want to make sure I practice it. If you're my friend and you expect me to uphold loyalty to you at the cost of breaking someone else's trust in me, I might probably decide to resign from your friendship rather than breach the trust. I'm sure I will run into a quandary with my wife on this, I will use this to tell her that "I'm sorry I'm following this from Jul 8, 2009." ;)

I will just end this with a verse from a Tamil epic, Thirukkural -
Poimaiyum vaaimai udaithu puraitheerndha
Nanmai payakkum enin.
Even falsehood has the nature of truth, if it confers a benefit free from fault.

Still they remain

Truths that disdained my beliefs
Discords that wrecked my resolve
Events that shook my strength
Losses that crumped my confidence

Comforts that solaced me
Stories that grained me
World that endured me
People that shaped me

All that I was yesterday
All that I'm today
All that I'll be tomorrow
All that I was born for

Stored in memories that I forgot
Stacked in papers that I lost
Stocked in discussions that I drowned
Stashed in disks that I erased

Over the last three years as carnations
I put them in the networks
Still they remain
Me, myself and Naren

Not another denouncement of megaserials

I try my best to match my dinner timing when mom's not watching one of those daily TV serials, but it's not always possible. I don't try to do it very earnestly though, because now and then when I peep into those megaserials I definitely learn something. I would say the popular anti-megaserial sentiments emanating from public ridicule is a little skewed. Sure, they're funny and so slow that you can follow even if you watch them only once a week, but I bet you'll "learn" more from watching 16 episodes of a good 30-min megaserial than from watching an 8-hour game of one day cricket. Sorry for such a poor joke, but megaserials surely deserve some respect for being the only form of entertainment to the millions of housewives in India who are worn out from years and years of household chores.

I would like to document one such "glimpse" of an episode that made me think. I right now don't know the answer, but I will come back to this post when I know more. There's the usual "good" heroine of the story who's faced with persistent cruel obstacles to her career and life from a villain guy. The heroine finally gets exasperated and tells "He's got all this time to cause so much havoc in my life because his business is running fine. I think I should create problems in his life, only then my life will be saved and he'll learn his lessons." I didn't watch the episodes after that, I'm sure, she would only practice moral hinderances for the "good" heroine that she is. Nevertheless, this made me think.

By creating problems in his life, is she commiting the same mistake that he did. Yes, but then does she have any other way out? Probably no. Has she done enough to maintain harmony till now? Yes for many years now. So, is she justified? I think yes. Even Bhagvad Gita asks us to fight against immoral acts done against us, even if it means being "violent". May be I shouldn't have taken Gita here because I don't know anything about it, but it at least suits the context.

I right now leave the argument open. I myself have been in this dilemma many times only to have ended up practicing non-violence. But I think I've been a coward trying to do that. I'm slowly starting to put up fights when I feel I'm being taken for a ride. But I'm doing that without full self-consent. I need to quickly find answers to help me surf through such continuing situations at least in the future.