Experience in an Australian Room

I will like here to relate a little anecdote from my own chat experience which gave me a first hand knowledge about what generally white skinned people think about us, Indians.

It was early in chat days….yahoo was new and I went to “ travel” to an Australian room.

As I was sitting quietly there and trying to figure out what was all the talk about and the general ambience, I found an Australian male was holding sway in the room with his witty and sarcastic comments and women particularly were swooning over his every utterance.

Somehow my id caught his eyes and he checked up my profile and suddenly he asked me (in voice)…”Hey Mr. Sand (my id started with Sand), do you have camels in India?”

I was taken aback by the suddenness of his question and did not realize what he actually meant and I hastily typed “Yes, in Rajasthan.”

This created general mirth and snigger in the whole room and suddenly I realized the significance of his question .I could see people were visualizing me going to office in Rajasthan riding my personal camel and although I was going red inside myself a smile came to my lips.

As I was still in the process of collecting myself the man shot his next question to me…..”Hello Mr.Indian…can you tell me why do Indians stink?”

As I groped inside myself for a proper answer and the whole room was again reeling with laughter I felt like Draupadi while she was being disrobed  in the royal court in full view of raucous males .

I was silent for a second while perhaps Lord Krishna came to rescue me...and I typed this reply (I still vividly remember this)…”Indians stink to avoid monkeys like you Mr.Australian and you are ignored now.”

Suddenly the room went silent for a pause, and Indians who were sitting quietly inside the room until now voiced there appreciation for me “Well said, Sand.”

I felt like an Indian hockey player who , after receiving a goal scored a hat trick against Australia in Australia in front of the their own home crowd.

The Indians now vociferously doubted the legality of the birth of the Australian and so forth as I retired from the room with a feeling that I held my Indian flag high in a foreign country.

UNITY

Unity can be defined as following. When more than one living creature cooperates with each other sacrificing some of their self interest to achieve a common and greater interest, we may call them UNITED. The property by which these creatures stay united is unity.

To become united or achieve unity one thing is a must, and that is a desire to overcome an obstacle which is common to all the members of a united body.

We may call this obstacle the common “enemy”.

Let us take an example. A country may become united because it has a common language or religion or culture which the people of that country want to preserve and /or expand. France is a country where most of the people speak a language called French (although slightly differently at its different regions). They remain united because they want preserve their language and culture against all common “enemies” who want to overpower or dominate them. Without this external “enemy” or threat the unity of France will be in danger because people of France can do whatever they like without remaining united. There is no common self interest then to remain united. Different parts of France will become like small countries where there is more homogeneity of language and culture and these smaller countries will remain united in the common purpose of saving themselves from other small countries.

Modern India (not the prehistoric India) became united  for the purpose of ousting the British from their soil and remaining united because the people of India has a common enemy called “other countries”, most notably Pakistan and China. Should these “other countries” suddenly vanish there is a real danger that India will disintegrate to smaller fragments like Punjab, Bengal, and Gujarat etc. A Bengali, a Punjabi and a Gujarati works together to preserve and expand their common culture and heritage in order to overcome the common obstacle, that is, the “other countries’.

But the common obstacle is not “other countries” in all the cases.

Scientists, engineers and industries of different nature (sometimes at loggerheads at each other) become united at NASA to achieve a common goal like creating a machine like Curiosity which can land on planet Mars on its own. The common obstacle here is not a country but nature.

Unity is not limited to human beings .Little insects like ants become united in the common purpose of lifting and carrying chunks of food much bigger than themselves. Here also the common enemy is nature which will destroy little ants if they do not get their food in such a way. Fishes become united when they are in hunt of food.

That the obstacle or common enemy is essential for unity can be illustrated most strikingly by the following hypothetical example.

Say, suddenly some other creatures from other unknown planet attack earth .This will make all countries of earth united against these aliens. China and United States will share with each other their jealously guarded defense secrets in the purpose of defeating these aliens. India and Pakistan, North and South Korea will suddenly become friends. But as soon as the aliens are somehow eradicated the old animosity will begin again.

THE INNER VOICE

What should you do in your life? Life is nothing but summation of every moment you live .So the meaning of what you should do in life boils down to doing what you should do at any given moment in life. Sometimes it is easy to decide what to do. Like you should run from the house if it is on fire. Every cell, every instinct of your body directs you to doing that. No problem in choosing what you should do. But not at every point of life the decision making is so simple. Suppose you are attracted to two persons at the same time but you have to marry one. Or you have two job offers at the same time, and you have to choose one. Or the stake can be even greater. To marry or not to marry. To live and not to live.

You may or may not have time to think before you arrive at a decision. When you have time to think the general theory is that you should think about pros and cons before decision making. If the pros in one case is far greater than the other then the decision making is easy. But sometimes there is no time to think. Sometimes pros and cons are almost equal. Also sometimes it is difficult to judge what is pro and what is con. The reason is clarity of mind is not same all the time. When you are calm and collected your reasoning power is far greater than when you are not.

So what to do? The thing to do is to listen to your inner voice.

 Now what is this inner voice? Basically something in your consciousness will tell you to do or not do a certain thing. If you try to do something sometimes you will be filled with doubt. At first glance it may be the easiest and most profitable thing to do. But somehow you will feel bad if you try to do that. Suddenly your whole body and mind will be full of negative feelings, with negative vibes that what you are doing is not exactly right thing to do. On the other hand you may be drawn to do something very unprofitable and difficult at first glance but somehow you will feel good if you do that. Let me illustrate. Take the first example of choosing a marriage partner. It may so happen one is far more better looking than the other and far more well to do. You will perhaps be drawn to marry this person. However inner voice may tell you to do the other thing, to go for the worse looking and financially less endowed person. The right thing is to do what the inner voice says. Because although initially it may seem a wrong decision  in the basis of counting pros an cons, if you go by the inner voice suddenly your whole being will be lighted up with positive feeling, you will profoundly more confident and more at ease with yourself. Your whole being will begin to support your decision and the successful aftermath of your decision will be guaranteed. Subsequently at some point the hidden justification of doing that thing will become very clear to you.

It is hard to explain the inner voice. Actually it is the inner wisdom of every being.  It is the extract of all wisdom one has gathered through one’s genes, education, experience and thought process.

When you start doing a thing which is supported by that inner wisdom every part of your being starts to work in resonance and you feel happy in a very profound way.

I have said in the beginning that the thing to do when a house is on fire is to run away from it. Well, sometimes not. It may so happen that when the house is on fire some one else is trapped and burning in front of you. Your inner voice may tell you to rescue that person first even at the expense of risking or even sacrificing your own life. Even then you should listen to your inner voice. Because if you do not your life will become worse than death with remorse and guilt. It is wiser even to die than to live if your inner voice tells you so.

WHY I AM NOT SYMPATHETIC TO MAOISTS

In recent years I find people are sympathetic to Maoists .I am not. For one thing if it is ok to use power of gun to take hold of political power, then it is ok for somebody to kill you or your family or children for that reason. My experience in Naxalite era was terrible. I never heard of any person being killed by Maoists who were real big fishes (meaning who were really big in terms of money) .I saw only very insignificant people ( in terms of money once again) like a guard of a train etc. who had no protection of any sort being murdered in broad daylight. Once I was crossing a road and found a crowd of people watching two young men lobbing the head of a beheaded man playfully to each other. I found very honorable men like Hemanta Bose being murdered. People these days are particularly vocal against the how police killed people in fake encounters those days. No one seems interested to know what happened before that, what made police to act in such brutal way. I was in school (class 7) and I and a septuagenarian teacher were barely saved from being killed by a bomb thrown outside of my classroom. They stopped all schools and work to standstill. Ordinary people were fearful of treading outside home even in daylight. Home was also no safe haven because people were forcibly dragged outside of their home and family and killed openly in front of everybody else's eye. I heard two men bragging openly how many men they killed without slightest harm to themselves and found people appreciating them and laughing with them. I do not want those days to come back.

WHO AM I?

I was wondering whether we are really responsible for what we do.Are we really doer of the deeds we do? At first glance the answer is obvious,yes.But if we delve a little deeper we come to a somewhat different conclusion.We do what our brain or mind tells us to do.Our actions are results of our thoughts. But what we think is a result of the combination of factors for which we are not responsible.The first factor is our genes,with which we are made up of. What our brain cells are made up of depend on these genes.And the brain directs us to do what we do at a certain point of time.Now we are not the manufacturers of our genes.We are not responsible for it.We inherit from our parents,they again from their parents and so on.In effect  this chain goes back to the creation of life which is again dependent on some cosmic forces about which we are not sure .

Our thoughts are also dependent on our education and experience.We learn things at first which we are forced to ,starting from uttering the first meaningful word which are tought by others .We go to school and read books etc. which we are given to us to read.We study some things  because either we are forced to do it by others or we like those (which is again dependent on our genes and previous experience).So basically all our education is a chance happening.

So also our experiences. At every moment of life something is happening around us,in this earth and more generally in this universe.Each incidence directly or indirectly affects our experience. A friend comes,tells you something and that may alter your thinking drastically.Even those who are by chance reading this article may begin to think very differently afterwards. This changed thinking will change your way of action. In the next moment some brick may fall over your head which may alter your actions radically. This is a chance happening which causes your actions.If you consider carefully  everything is a chance happening,from your birth to death. The sperm which entered  the egg of your mother’s womb was a chance happening (which is responsible for your genes).You marry someone you chanced to meet and it changed your life.So is everything else.

So we can say what we do at a particlar moment is a chance happening ( because it is dependent on the three factors,namely our genes,experience and education which are all chance happenings).

We can go even deeper. The way we look ,the way our body and health are, are all dependent again on what our genes are and what we do ( like whether we exercise or not,whether we take such and such  drugs, whether we got some disease for some reason) and our experience  ( we  look diffrently at different times according to our moods or whether one has a deep scar on his face as a result of chance happening.)

Who am I? One would probably say I am a summation of how I look, I behave and and I do at a certain point of time .Whatever I said before suggests that all these factors are chance happenings and I am not responsible for them.In fact this word I seems to lose it’s value.Because when I say I am doing this we are actually referring  to a chance happening.Actually I can not pinpoint what I am, whether it is my eyes or nose or any physical attribute or my behaviour or my deeds.And nothing is controlled by this so called I.All are chance factors at a certain point of time.

So we cannot really define I.

LOOKING

When we go out in a street most of the times it happens that we are  preoccupied in thoughts of the work we have to do, many tensions and worries, or even walking in the street safely .We do not have time or mood to look at other people unless something is very conspicuous about them.

However sometimes when we go out and weather is good and cool and not too many worries bogging down the mind we look at other people find sometimes we are looked at. Our nature need that sometimes we are appreciated for our looks. Not everybody in the world is endowed with a very attractive appearance. However each and everybody sometimes has the good fortune of being looked at as God denies none.

Sometimes it so happens that you dress up and go out just with a purpose of being looked at. You feel good when you are looked at admiringly and disappointed when people completely ignore you and angry if somebody gives hostile look.

There are different kind of looks. The indifferent look, the admiring look, the surreptitious look, the hungry and animal look, the hostile look and also the no look.

The times we feel best when we find somebody rather attractive and suddenly that person looks back with same admiration. We are engulfed by a very pleasant feeling and sometimes it makes our day.

Sometimes we find that many people are noticing and looking at us and sometimes nobody does. We get a little confused about the attractiveness of our appearance. I tried to analyze why it so happens.

A baby looks almost invariably cute. It is fresh in the world, embodying all the innocence and naiveté. Its body is fresh. So we find them pleasing to look at. Also it has almost no ego, so we are not encumbered with thoughts how it may feel if looked at.

As we grow up the body gets older. The innocence slowly evaporates. We are encumbered with worries, tensions, ego and the simplicity in our eyes goes away. Also some of us are naturally more physically attractive than others. But as the years goes by our appearance is affected by how we lead our life, how much difficulty we face in life, how disciplined we are and in what mood we are. The happier frame of mind we are in and having good thoughts, more it reflects in our faces, our walks and general demeanor.

So at a particular time our look is dependent on not only our genetic composition but also the way we have experienced our live and what we have in our mind in that particular moment. The more grown up we are the more our looks are earned.

There is another factor .Whether you will be looked at depends greatly on the mental state of the looker. A person may be preoccupied with his or her own worries or feeling pleasant or angry, secure or insecure, filled with physical desire or not. Sometimes we feel that the other person is consciously trying not to look at us .That I feel is also is  some kind of look and it may happen due to any number of reasons.

Finally there is this heavenly look. We see the face of Buddha or Jesus or Lord Krishna and we are filled with serenity, compassion and ethereal joy. On very rare occasions we see such looks in a living person and feel the touch of God among us.

THE SOLUTION

You think you have so many problems?Well you should be thankful for those.Otherwise you will not be living.
Let us examine one problem,namely hunger.You feel hungry and that is your problem.The solution to this is to eat.For which you will need food.To get get food you have to buy it or produce it.For that you have to earn To earn you have to work.While working you will face so many problems.Ultimately you solve them and earn and buy food and eat.What happens? You will sleep work etc. and have a bowel movement.And then you will feel hungry again.So the problem crops up again.If suddenly this problem, namely hunger does not occur to you, you will not eat.Your body will not get food and ultimately will stop functioning and you will die.Then you will feel no more hunger.So that is the solution.From another angle if a bus runs over  you then also you die and do not have this problem of hunger anymore.
So is with every other problem.If you solve one problem another problem is bound to be created.If every problem is solved all activity will come to an and there will be no more life.
So the real problem is living.If you do not live there is no more problem.