On Empathy

A miserable and sick situation of physical abuse by a known individual towards a kid that I'm acquainted to, popped up in my life recently. Still continues to haunt. I needed to talk to someone, and of course, what do you do mostly, you turn to your partner, turns out she had a lot of other things to handle. My mistake. Well, in the first place, it is right what she said. I was the one who took up this work of helping children who had abuse issues of any kind at the NGO. I was the one who said yes, when somebody approached me from the NGO. And in that world even if there is a lot of cheer and extreme amounts of satisfaction about matters that bring a smile to a few people, there is always this lurking danger scenario. The monsters of the world, humans of course, not to be mistaken with Hollywood identities, they seem to lurk at such places looking for the eternally damned ones, I reckon, because these children do not have anyone and hence can be harmed without many questions being asked or may be the law does not have that kind of tentacles. Whatever, anyway that answer was pure, untrammeled and without an iota of doubt the best, 'cause, she did not sugar coat it. If you enter war and complain about shrapnel wounds that would be pathetic...

I still prefer silence or just a just a conversation as a much better alternative to snapping reality. But that is my preference, so hence I may have expected that kind of a response, and that's the reason of my dissatisfaction.

Next person, a friend of mine, she started eulogizing about empathy and her office matters. She talked about people with physical disabilities. Politically correct terminology for that would be differently-abled people. So she talked and took me to some place else. That was nice. Considering she is a world renowned consultant on matters of financial and economical importance for companies and an extraordinary friend for more than 25 years, and I just began my journey in the forties, what she was doing was being empathetic yet taking me some place really worthwhile. She was saying that empathy is an extremely difficult emotion to be in because only the person who endures something would be really able to understand the depth of that. She elaborated talking about two of the accidents that I faced, the other miseries that I endured and also about the wonderful things that I have experienced in my life. And what she said made sense, because we have shared almost all stories and the story was hers to partake in and enjoy or be miserable and the same other way round. But she had a different take about the differently - abled people considering she had the privilege of working with some of them and they had their share of problems but one thing they hated was the sympathy of all the son's of guns around. She said that it can be taught and it can be experienced to a certain extent.

I am still not in favor of the last statement 'coz the everyday pangs and the mental torture that we go through on our pains is our own experience and even if shared at length you may get a few cry baby's around but empathy could be a very difficult thing. I was at this institution once, brilliant place, and they had invited a person of repute who was differently-abled and this lady enjoyed the privilege of being there, the reception and the infrastructure of the institute being completely friendly towards every kind of people, in this case, differently-abled-friendly. Before she was supposed to deliver her message she wanted to go to the washroom and there was a differently-abled friendly washroom and after she came out, she met the big boss of the joint and told him quite categorically that everything was fantastic but there was not a mirror in that particular washroom, which somehow did not go well, because it was almost like differently-abled people do not need to look good. Slight mishap, lot of learning.

That depth of empathy is very difficult. I have been to the misery joints from World War II era of Germany and Poland. I even went to that New York place of similar nature. I felt bad, very bad for all them the millions of Jews who got killed and the places did have an eerie element surrounding  or within them. These are museums telling the future generations of the utter disaster that the regime of Hitler bought about to a race. I felt it quite deep and in an extreme way. But I can never ever get into the shoes of an old man or woman (now) who lost their complete family then when they were just small kids. That is difficult. I have been to Cambodia looking for answers, the south of America looking for connections and answers to the pains endured in the past. Nope. I could come home and feel the pain of losing my world when I lost it. That was when I kind of understood how it felt.

The answer does not lie in being completely aloof, or being absolved of such matters about our friends or people we know. It is purely about listening and sometimes in complete silence between both the parties, yet listening, that makes empathy special. Empathy is important for human nature to understand the wonderful need of sharing, caring and being completely non-judgmental. It may not go far and deep into the intricacies but if we can at the least touch upon the surface that would make the world a better place.

Lastly,  word for the differently-abled, it is not our fault that we feel the need to give sympathy. It is by default that we are all good people to feel the need to give that sympathy. Nobody needs no sympathy but the ignorance can be excused with a smile instead of disdainful rhetoric.But, I guess that applies to the whole lot of us...

And about that kid who was physically abused, she is fine of course, lost in her little world and silent since that day. The man who committed the crime is behind bars, but I don't know for how long and we have all been sitting silently in the room where she is being kept a watch on and the slow creaking sound of the fan and the sweat from the afternoon Sun's crackle seems to be telling a lot of stories to all of us.....

Echo Chamber, Marketing and Diablo in the details

We live in a world surrounded by a new kind of wall. I am sure there have been many a kind of wall surrounding the earlier generations. For us, it is different, but there is a wall. Media, bombardment of information and the steady flow of thought from people whom marketers call "influencers". And that is what surrounds us every waking hour, among everyone that we know. I do not know where it begins I mean, is it the morning newspaper or is it the twitter updates that popped in the night before, or was it the feed on 'Mention' or innumerable local videos on 'Periscope', or the lure of photos, quotes and material objects on 'Pinterest's' divine-equaling  lengths, or is it one of the million videos on 'YouTube' or 'Vimeo'. I can go on and on because even my own 'Pocket' has a list that seems to be never ending. Where did that conversation on the road with fellow travelers get lost? I am not being nostalgic as most of what I remember of the conversations with fellow travelers have been highly immobile and completely used as an excuse to  move time on a journey that was taking too long. But I do remember that conversation with friends used to pique curiosity and that was one big reason to gather information. Of course, the other one being to showcase intellectual capabilities to members of the opposite sex who loved the attention harnessed as well as the information shared.  I do not know what for people use the information that they find these days, but I know this much that there is so much information that they are continuously gathering that they do not have the time to share it with someone. There is a massive tilt towards envy and perception on other people's happiness, other people's knowledge betwixt all this without a clear idea about the depth of neither matter. These perceptions are being created from the bombardment of photographs and regular updates that swarm around us. All of them being an enactment of cheer or delight that burst out purely because the camera seems to be at hand for every little detail to be saved for one more hour of posterity.

Going back to the surrounding walls, it's a world filled with advertisements and enticements that excite, tingle and seems to get in touch with  any of our sensory organs and thus create an aura about a brand which we consciously do not need to spend our money on and about a product that we never ever thought of before the onslaught of visual cues and jingles began to enter our deep senses. Most people I know of, on meeting over a mug of beer, do end up talking about a brand. If it is beer we are having then the conversation, obviously moves towards 'Hoegarden', 'Miller', 'Brahma' and others that they have found lingering in the vicissitudes of his or her mind and needed to throw at someone at the first sip of cold brew they could lay their hands on.

They build these walls around us and then they have all these screens that keep flickering for our attention and we are bound to watch it and we do; it flows into our daily conversations, if any, it clouds our insights, our acuity and when we see the product with the very similar shade or color our sub conscious tells us to satiate the desire and may be the cloud that hangs inside would float away. But nope, they know of our attention span and they manage to keep regularly attending to that. They also know the kind of people that are attracted to similar things, have similar tastes, eats and drinks akin, wears alike and so on and so forth so they create a loop in the virtual world. Haven't you been witness to the line ' Parag, Louis, Julie like Kentucky Brew - what about you'. If any of those mentioned friends or acquaintances are worth their while; Boom! you also 'Like'. That begins your journey with the flood of updates on anything the 'Jack Daniel' world wants you to witness. It is called an echo chamber, trapped within these walls you slowly become a pawn to the advertisers whim and fancy. As the constant assault of updates would create that little corner in your subliminal state purely for this brand. A seat of regale temptations that shall poke you as and when desire needs to step in for the green to be exchanged hands.

Marketing is interesting. It is psychology playing its brilliant games the best possible way. Digital marketing is much more interesting since it entered your pockets and your daily hour. Earlier, the barrage was on the billboards when you are travelling, reams of information when you open that magazine or newspaper at home and also when you are watching TV, but there were limitations to the reach, now it is different. The ability to enter every aspect of your waking hours excited the brilliant people who helm such marketing endeavors, they got excited and they molded their ways and technology was induced in such a manner that in every little turn you take, every little nook you pick, every little notification that you seek is filled with a product, service or brand that wants to tell you a story. It is inspiring the way they want us to be part of the journey. But at the end of the day it is all about getting you to reach your pockets and spend so that they can get that return of investment (ROI) going well so that the incentives can be explained and the money these multi-billion dollar enterprises or even the small players can partake is improved day in and day out.

From a cultural and sociological point of view, we have lost the way we feel. When I was in school things were a lot different. Television was attractive but it was not something for which I found me or my dad or for that matter anybody go back home to. I was not stuck inside a cocoon browsing the internet at web parlors or hangouts, I wasn't sending messages to people or listening to music on gadgets or applications or watching a trailer on the umpteenth gadget that I found interesting. I was not checking my watch for an update on how much I ran and how much more I need to do so to get to a target that would make my muscles bulge. I was free, I was boundless, We all talked, listened, thought about a lot of things that may have been trivial but it was sharing of the kind which was more real not a smile that was not there, not a quote from Emerson that defined how to live and not a visual carnage from another part of the world that makes sense there but not here where we are. There was no tirade of advertisements and content to seek and enlarge my scope of unnecessary knowledge. Now there is pressure, I could be shot at from anywhere because I do not have a place to run. I can switch off my gadgets, I can stop the TV, but I am so induced into this vacuum that I feel lost if I switch off. My need to be needed, my want to be patted on the back, my need to be acknowledged takes over and I am back again, reading, watching, listening, seeing, sharing things which do not have any deep sense of meaning to myself or others. I'm stuck within these checklists of things which I need to complete everyday. I'm stuck to a few electronic gadgets which make me think in a way that somebody else wants me to think. I'm bound by my 30 GB of music which I do not align in a manner I want to listen to, I keep it on shuffle and sometimes it grabs my attention and other times it is lost in the whirlwind of notifications. I'm aligned to the search strings of Google to read what others think of the world the way it is now and may be in the future.

I'm stuck in this rigmarole, a daily grind within four walls which seem to grow higher and higher and someday I feel I might not even look up at the sky I might just be wedged somewhere watching images flicker on some small goddamned screen and I would not even realize the essence of life which my youthful exuberance and the milieu imbibed in me.

Now, I am busy eating my Nestle Maggi noodles, with a hot and crispy Chicken from KFC, a wonderfully brewed coffee from Starbucks and watching my Samsung phone flicker with Android updates and notifications from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and a few messages on my WhatsApp groups. There is also the Ipad on the side which continuously demands my attention but my family is busy with it playing Angry Birds and Candy Crush, while an ad popped up about the new Temple Run which is a paid app but has some really difficult running scenarios. My TV shimmers with IPL reruns where the good old sixes in cricket is defined as 'Yes Bank Maximum' and the game is bought to you be 'Vivo'. My Panasonic refrigerator is in anticipation of TGIF for me to open the cans of Carlsberg beer and the lone bottle of Jack Daniel's is awaiting for the night cap to be poured. My partner says that Fab Furnish is a nice place to linger upon for furniture fantasies to be fulfilled. My Toyota care representative reminded me that I need an oil change soon and it could be Castrol or Mobil. The prestige pressure cooker has been dysfunctional so a change over to Hawkins could augur well and the air-conditioning from the Hitachi 5 star is not soothing enough and the new Whirlpool ad with 55 degree centigrade promise to keep it cool with a beautiful belle seems alluring. I looked at my Moto watch and found that my walking is not up to the mark and decided that it is the shoes and non-sweat absorbing T-shirt may be the hassle. Hence, Nike is out and in comes Skechers. and Jerzeys out and the new Nike absorbers get in.

While I ponder on such matters of extreme importance, why don't you move away from this Lenovo- HP-Apple-ASUS screen and move to a smaller screen of importance and take in the delights of the Mcdonald's burger or the Dunkin Donut that has been waiting for its salvation in your salivating oral cavity....

The feel that Talking gives

One of the things that talking a lot does to a lot of people we all know is that there is a feeling of accomplishment. I was in this meeting, like the many other meetings that I have had the privilege of attending and turns out the one person who is most satisfied is the one who talked. You can see that very vividly in the way the person steps out of the room. There is a certain kind of fulfilled air about the individual. The person took over most of the proceedings, felt encouraged to cut off other thought processes, did not hear a single whimper of any other person and felt proud of the points that he felt he has manufactured out of thin air and expressed in a manner that was commendable to himself and the rational that he has done what needs to be done in the best possible way.

Others in the crowd mostly feel awkward to express their opinions because of this enormity of fighting out that one individual who craps all around.Then there is the regular perception about talking among the crowd, that it means the person knows his stuff and can express it delightfully and the articulation skills makes his content beyond reasonable doubt an almost expert. The crowd feels that he has displayed his skills once more, and then settles into their menial everyday tasks only to find out in about an hour the amount gas they have consumed in the name of articulation skills and the ignominy of the fact that a load of the bullshit that was communicated now needs to be re-drawn because nothing in effect which is do-able was even minutely lingered upon.

It is an everyday affair, the one or two individual with their baritone, or skill of language takes over a completely decent exchange of ideas (mental masturbation in Jack Welch's language) and creates a vacuum of sorts which is totally hollow in its nature. The halo that such individuals carry among circles of friends, family, professional associates etc; is enormous and when dug deep the dirt exposes itself to showcase nothing but skeletal remains of words of high order which the 26 letters can converge into after convoluting them in multifarious ways.

For once, lets listen it is just too good to comprehend, learn and just leave it all like that....

It is the way we are..

Almost on a daily basis; there is some kind of line that is thrown down at us from all these media elements that we are stuck on.
A line about FEAR, about SUCCESS, about FAILURE, about LOVE, about WISDOM and the million other things that we love to get a line for. What amazes me is the sheer sarcasm that almost all of them seems to roll in. At least the bunch I am connected with on whatever medium, Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc all of them seems to have an edge for sarcasm and related buoyancy.

May be it is me. What is interesting is that even that line popped up due to a memory that has installed itself inside of me because of a line I read someplace. All things you read, watch, listen or speak are manifestations of who you are, propagating itself at the precise moments so as to carry yourself further in the stories. So a writer may write something incredible and someone may have expressed their total commitment to have read the details and found it harmonious. But the deeper essence of the harmony is purely based on ones own experiences interspersing with the story and creating an aura that is commendable to the cells that adorn ones memories and detailed past experiences. Hence, Oh Yeah! and Yeah, Right! may seem simple expressions of acknowledgement but in the grander visualization if I am to elaborate, my friends, family, the inner circle that I correlate with seem to only see one thing and that is sarcasm. In both these expressions there is an enormity of sarcasm that is writ deep and we all enjoy it when that comes around to profess itself.

So after this long dirge I feel it is me, and I reckon the people I follow are purely based on that echo chamber element that we all seem to be stuck inside all of these mediums.

There is a lot more to this earth than us and our brains....

"The fact that jelly fish has survived 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people."

I got this mail first thing in the morning from a very esteemed colleague. I am sure the idea was to point out in a politically correct way that there are assholes in this world and all around us and that they have survived and that hope floats for them. Nice little chuckle. But a few minutes later I was thinking of how we humans are, that we measure everything in accordance to us. It is all about us. I mean all other beings on earth are of no good and are dumb the way they are purely because we are top of the food chain now. We believe that what we do and what we are is the right thing and what we have become after the long journey of development from simians and I dunno from where all, is the ultimate development of anything that moves naturally. Or anything that can be called natural.

There is a tree in our backyard in my hometown. My dad used to mention that it was older than most people he knows. It has been there for a very long time. Nobody even knows the exact time-frame. I mean we do not have biologists measuring that in our backyard. But it has survived many a problematic situation and it has survived well, 'coz it still jingles in the wind, drops those fruits and shines bright green in the spring. Isn't she smart and happy and somewhere in its core it knows what is to be done to survive. I dunno how but it does. I mean it may not have a brain, a central nervous system and that extraordinary bullshit that is propagated called intelligence among us. It has its own way and guess what it survived and keeps shedding, and surviving.

The jelly fish example is absolutely stupid. In fact, we should be thinking that may be it is us who need this thing called a brain to survive, mebbe organisms do not. I was watching a program on Animal Planet about how bacteria takes pains to survive and how smart it is at reaching that place which allows it to survive and thrive. It was a brilliant insight on how things work or how nature has a mechanism to get things in order. This particular bacteria can only survive inside of a cat, so what it does is that it searches for the rat and anything that the rat eats. It gets the rat to do that and then mold the rats brain to loose its one primal control which is to stay away from cats. The rat would make sure that it attracts the cat and then easily fall prey to it. All this because of the bacteria functioning inside of it. The bacteria reaches inside the cats body and all is hunky dory for it after that.

Now in human terminology it would go, bacteria has brains. Hahahaha...

Jelly fish has survived 650 million years because it knows how to survive. It has the necessary skills to survive. Nature has endowed it with those skills. And it is way better than us. Even for a motivational speaker who wants to go sarcastic at times this example does not augur well because survival with or without a brain is the most important skill. All the intellectual capacities and brains in the world does not allow a lot of us to manage our relationships, time, energy, inefficiencies, professional life, simple tasks etc etc etc.... But if we manage to survive and work our way through life with the varied perceptions of success each one of us has and at least achieved some of it partially, I reckon it has never been because of the brains. I reckon it is because of our ability to react to situations in accordance to the needs of the occasion. That has brain coming in between, but mostly that has experience, understanding of things as we grew up, the enormity of situations that we have faced continuously and it has nothing to do with the part of the brain that allowed us to read, write, learn and become masters of the universe through creating things which are mostly destroying our primary way of life.

Anyway, the primary attempt from my end was to state that all beings in their state whichever way they are; are brilliantly smart. They do what they do. They eat shit, they eat raw plants, they eat plastic created by us and sometimes they fail to live and sometimes they succeed to live. But to say that they are dumb that they cannot differentiate between what we can differentiate or have to come differentiate is not a thought worthy of someone with brains.

Amen...

Eric Clapton - BB King -Crossroads 2010 - Live

On Passion

You have to take a stand if the music is too loud for you to take. Facing the music is tough sometimes you may run but that’s not guts and what’s guts is to take that stand and face it, for at least you know you can face it, at least you can say you faced it, at least all things being the way they are - ain't not that great or good, so what the hell- better face it and die a strong one with passion rather than a weakling who ran away. Sometimes you may but I'd prefer all times you stay and face it.

Passion is embarking on something that’s difficult, that’s the reason why it’s called passion because it involves all your senses it takes you out of the delirium of life and place you on a pedestal were you would feel that the Damocles sword is hanging over you. Its inert, its within and it unwinds and brings forth an energy that’s unforeseen and that’s the reason you feel you have two choices either to run or to stay, and its due to the energy that it unwinds from within sometimes you feel weak and from deep inside each of us, a pressure seems to build which does not let go and we fear failure which is again an emotion that we term as Satan : when it manifests itself into something other than the defined basic morals and values  and the winners term as 'the losers’ or as people who could not take it &c.. and we run and we hide forgetting were we began - losing the energy that catapulted us to this level.

At this stage we feel the comfort level of having lost all that energy and it makes us sullen from within withdrawing away into nothingness - the state which is most pleasant, as we are not answerable to anything and anybody- except ourselves, but that phase it is quite easy because the questions that demand attention gets muffled by the calm breathing patterns that ensues in the outer core. But this hangs on our neck for forever and we feel helpless as days move into months and months into years and we loose ourselves to the world of least inertia.

Now the choice is ours again as always, which is better - the inertia-less existence were we do what natural circumstances pushed us to do and loose our own self to the withering masses, or the boundless freedom of seeking what we intend to do with ourselves and enjoying the freedom of failure, of trial and error, of judgment, and at last of eternal peace and success, Amen.

Passion is within all of us we have to keep disturbing it all the time and it would challenge us with multitudes of corners which are unappealing to the senses but we got to try to love those corners that’s all life is, simple...I guess that’s what makes the world such a beautiful as well as pathetic place at the same time. It's because of people with passion. All of us who go about their business in a manner which affects other's lives in a good or bad way have ardor. That’s where I appreciate some of the movies that Hollywood comes up with. I've never been exposed much to movies from other cultures except may be Indian, Italian, some Akira Kurasowa from Japan, some French and a lot of Malayalam and Bengali. But almost all movies, which affect us in some manner, are really based on passion. That’s the base pattern. The movie's character has passion - we love it, the movie's story-line has passion - we love it. In fact, everything we do, we say, we enact on, we react on, we conjure up in our mind; all of it is based on the the fervor we have in our innards. That’s why we tend to do it and then redo it again and again until we achieve some semblance of having reached a crossroad which looks more welcoming.

A lot of my conversations with friends, family, acquaintances or strangers are instances of listening to anecdotes and yarns from their past. And they keep repeating these tales or reaching the very same stories again and again and each time they narrate its always mentioned in a different manner trying to make it more attractive than the previous time, but at the end of the day we do get bored of it because we know its the same story. But look deeper and you would find that that’s the thing they had passion for. In fact that is the one thing, if followed religiously with extreme vigor, without worrying about money, society, family, circumstances and all those things that stop us, the person would have achieved heights hitherto untouched and the happiness that accompanies such simple passions is beyond a lot that we tend to experience.

They keep repeating these stories because the intensity of the passion that they tasted and the absolute exaltation they got familiar with during those few days that they did those things. They remember every tiny detail so picturesquely, precisely and their eyes widen and the lips move faster, and they want for us to respond similarly, they are on a high; a raise that even the best psychedelic drug cannot deliver. During those few days of their monotonous existence they had forgotten almost every other thing of this world. Nothing mattered then and when they are telling you the story nothing else matters to them but to seek the very same ecstasy and enthusiasm and share it with others.

A friend of mine went for a two week mountaineering program. She has told me that story at least 50 times. In myriad ways with multitude of emotions and it was almost a lesson for me on understanding human depth and sensations. She would talk about the difficulties of terrains, the beauty that awaited at the end of the road, the small hassles of morning chores in the open mountains, a majestic horse that suddenly came out of nowhere in a misty morning, unfurling its heavy brown mane between the flow of the fog, the haze lifting itself for the regal animal. I could see it and I could visualize everything she spoke of. I had felt a tug in my heart, a heavy brimming within me: it was not sadness in the fact that she is corporate honcho who busies herself in the everyday muddle but because of the force of the sentiment she was sharing I was moved at the exhilaration that she was infecting. The achievement of reaching the top, her team, the teamwork they enjoyed, the camaraderie with the instructor, the stories of small issues and small delights : all coming together to form a brilliant anecdote of  extreme passion. I reckon she never had anything as exciting as that ever in here life. Many a thing may have passed her by were she was happy and thrilled: a promotion, marriage, kids, the dream job, an awesome salary &c but nothing compares to that particular elation.

There are stories that would make one weep, and there are stories of brilliant souls that took the jump and came out smiling; which by the way, is always.

That’s what passion is about. Its about wherewithal freedom in your life.. When one has passion one does not have to really think about thinking out of the box or looking beyond to come up with something extraordinary. All those philosophical gaga goes for a toss as these are natural ingredients which are within us and permeates itself outwards when the nature of things you do are obsession and zeal bound. The deep rooted human need to do something special, to show that we are important and that we are to mean something with our birth is extreme and the outward expressions of those primary requirements seep out only when you follow your deep endemic purpose. All the self-help books in the world would have lost their relevance and value if we found what we wanted to do and followed it without any fears, inhibitions or hangovers that make us chained to the paradigm of safe existence.

I would like to quote one of favorite authors Mr. Charles Bukowski here "We are all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."