The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.

Once while being interviewed an ebullient Salman Rushdie, my last post’s buddy, said that during his Oxford days he learned more from the Friday night shows than course books. It may sound unfounded to many but not me. I too can claim with conviction that in this case I have reciprocated him, infact I have even gone few steps further in embracing the first one and almost ditching the later. Once while taking one such learning filmy-session through a 2004 neosurrealistic classic ‘Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind’ directed by Michel Gondry, a brilliant exploration of human memory and relationship, I came across the above mentioned lines. During the movie when Mary Svevo, played by Kirsten Dunst, recited these lines of Alexander pope to Dr. Howard, though totally involved watching, a fascinated I paused to take out my diary and pen it down. Later, as habitually, while surfing through the wiki pages of the movie I came to know that these arresting 4 lines are a part of a 366 lines long poetic epistle ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, a terrible tale of a rebellious love (though the word terrible was unnecessary, love as always is, in any form terrible).

To fathom out the entire poem is a colossal task and will require an understanding far above my meager intellectual capacity. For the time being the uninitiated reader needs to know only this much that Eloisa while suffering from separation and realizing that now a helpless Abelard can never reciprocate her love prays not for forgiveness but forgetfulness.

As now there is no Mrs. Lizzy around to explicate me such enigmatic verses, a seeking me tried googling it out, and not to my surprise there were plentiful explanation by many generous souls. What I found is this that the above lines are in a sardonic tone. Vestals were the virgin maids of ancient times who were devoted to the services of temples soon after birth. They were held as symbol of purity and peace. Ordinary people tangled up in the blues, as man is inherently sadistic, envied them for their so perceived peace of mind. But here Pope doubts there happiness. He argues that what other saw in them as happiness was actually there ignorance. Since they were ignorant of the world around they knew of nothing, neither true happiness nor real sadness. There life was nothing but a hollow and futile existence, as to be blameless is also to be empty, meaningless and blank, without the weight of choice and consequence. If we want only what we're given -is that happiness? No. Sometimes change can be costly, and not always rewarding, but standing costs dreams and desires.

At the any stage in our life we are nothing but the sum total of our memories. We are happy when the memory we cherish dominates our psyche. Similarly unpleasant memories make us downhearted. In a way life is all about collecting good experiences, because we will all relive them umpteen times through our reflections. But the problem with human mind is this that it is more a RAM based device, where the secondary storage is lost in the piles of recent data’s. Sometime a small bitter moment takes over the years of togetherness, as all the sweet memories are buried in the sand of time. It is only in the afterthoughts that we realize the true worth of a relationship gone bad by a small clash, but then mostly it is too hard to make corrections as there always is the ego factor. When Friedrich Nietzsche quoted “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders” he too displayed similar attitude as a poignant Eloisa. He considered the forgetful lucky as they forgot even there bitter memories but then at same time they were also reduced as creature of the moment, with no treasure of past to live upon. At times when some recent experience troubles us we too urge for forgetfulness to get over the painful part but a mere reflection will suggest that how hollow life will be without memories.

The above mentioned movie approaches the same human dilemma in a splendid manner. It is the story of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), a couple as distinct as two extremes, while Joel is reclusive Clementine is vivacious, but both of them find happiness together. However once a small misunderstanding blows out of proportion and an impulsive Clementine had all the memories of Joel erased from her mind by a surgical process ( a liberty which artistic independence allows the storyteller). An angry Joel reciprocates her by opting to obliterate her memories. As if “Look at it out here, it's all falling apart. I'm erasing you and I'm happy! By morning, you'll be gone”.

But in order to wipe out the memories the operating machine first needed to map those particular memory cells thereby enabling the holder to view them one last time while in an unconscious dream like state. It is only when Joel revisits his memories with Clementine, he has afterthoughts; and he recognize that though few moments between them were bitter but majority of them were happy and he understand that it was Clementine who brought meaning and magic to his mundane life through her vivacity. The rest of the movie take place in Joel’s mind, and from here the neo-surreal part begins. Now onward it is shown how in his mind Joel with Clementine struggles to rescue few of their memories from being completely washed, and while leaving them again he realize that these memories are all that are left behind as their life together, and once they are gone a life once lived is gone as well.

The one message that the movie pass is that if only one can stand apart and watch his whole life from a distance than one can realize that how wonderful a life it was, inspite of all the so thought mistakes committed. A second inferential message could be about accepting people as they are because they are still the same wonderful person inspite of their imperfection and if you have found happiness with a person once you will find it with them once again. All you need is to wipe the dirty spots which come in a relationship and this wiping doesn’t needs a spotless mind but a pure heart. Because in real life there is no surgical process to clean dirty spots of memory it could be done only by defocusing from those spots and viewing the larger picture which requires an open heart. And hence it is more important to have a pure heart than a spotless mind.

Don’t tell anyone anything

“Religion is the opium of the masses” believed Karl Marx. I agree with him on this more than anything. People need stuffs like such to derive sense out of their meaningless life. I see no plausible explanation for why else man created God, if not out of this selfishness. But then as if it was not enough he started celebrating God, in order to fill his empty life with occasion to cheer about. And the more deprived a society was the more it turned towards this establishment called God.

Except for the Greeks I see no society who held theology on rational terms. Greeks idea of religion was a way of seeking elucidation for the inexplicable phenomenon around, with having men as the centre of creation. Be it Hercules, Aphrodite, Apollo, Atlas, Poseidon, Venus in each of their Godly figure you will see a human being. All the other civilizations have done the reverse. In them mysticism have overtaken rationality. Egyptian shaped their supernatural being in lofty monuments and natural phenomenon, Muslims worshiped the shapeless God, and Hindus outsmarted everyone by outstretching their imagination far too than simply excess.

We people just love crowd, be it of humans or of deities we just love them. When I look back to my old city Varanasi I find there was an incessant struggle between God and Man. In fact it was a city where the population of God challenged that of Humans. The more the numbers of Gods we created the more were our moments of celebration. You will hardly find a Godless week in our calendar.

Today too is one such day. In fact it is one of the tallest among such days, called deepawali. Most people all around with their fake smiles are at their phoniest best, cheerfully wishing each other success. I too received many such phony greetings full of promising prosperity and reciprocated them back too in same gesture. But such days of celebration are the saddest in the life of an atheist like me. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of being a nonbeliever. You just don’t feel the joy in all this; neither can you even pretend to be joyful properly. So at the end you feel too isolated and out of place as if you just don’t belong there.

I was never this down throughout this year as today. Tried calling few close friends, some too old some new and promising, yet just couldn’t speak my mind to any. Instead of what I intended to share, I just repeated those phony wishing and ended. All this is just taking over me. I wish if i could hide somewhere out of this. But man is a social animal anyway. No matter how bad I am at it, I too have to play my part. The guy Holden Caulfield, from catcher in the rye, was awfully right when he said “Don’t ever tell anyone anything. If you do you start missing everyone.” Holden, if only I had met you earlier to committing this mistake.

MONEY MECHANICS

Society today is composed of a string of institution from political, legal, religious, social class, familiar values and occupational specialization. These institutions have a seminal significance in determining our perspective. Yet of all the institutions we are born into, directed upon and conditioned there seems to be no other system as grossly misunderstood and taken for granted as the monetary system. How money is created? What policies administrate it? And how it truly affects us is unfamiliar to a majority fragment of society. With 1% of population controlling 40% of wealth and 50% of population leaving at less than $2 a day one thing is sure there is something wrong with the system.

Understanding the system is like understanding why our life is what it is. What is money and how is it created? Gone are the days when gold was reserved in exchange of money circulated. Today money is piece of paper, circulated by federal reserves of different nations, carrying different domination. These pieces of paper are passed on to government in return of treasury bonds. The government hands it to banks and other financial institutes where they become legal money carrying value. And thus money is created.

Treasury bonds are by design instruments of debt. When fed receives them they create money out of thin air. In other words money is not coming out of the assets of the bank. The bank is simply inventing it. Perhaps except them only God can create something of value out of nothing. The government actually promises to buy back the bonds and takes money as a loan. Thus money itself is created out of loan.

Now the banks pass this money to people, charging them interest on it. This interest multiplies the actual sum many folds over the future. Suppose for eg the bank sanctions a loan of 1 lakh at an interest rate of 10%. So ten years down the line this money is compounded into 2.59 lakhs, and it keeps on increasing. Thus this 1 lakh of real money adds 1.59 lakh of virtual value. In fact in U.S. only 3% of money is in physical form rest is the compounded interest and treasury bonds.

Now see it like this when bank passes money to market it passes principal. But when it asks for the Amount one needs to pay principal + Interest. But from where comes the money to cover the interest that is charged. Nowhere, it doesn’t exist. The only basis of money creation is credit loan so if all the persons are able to pay back all the loans and debt there will be no money in the market. In fact if there were no debts in our money system there wouldn’t be any money.

What it also means is that mathematically default and bankruptcy are literally built in the system as there always will be deprived receptacle of society that gets the short end of the stick. Physical slavery necessitates people to be housed and fed but economic slavery requires people to house and feed themselves. It is the biggest scam ever done and is an imperceptible war against the population. Debt is the weapon of bank and interest is its prime ammunition.

The Color of Money

Indian social order is one which is fundamentally classified into various intricate echelons. The foundations of these stratifications are plentiful. Broadly the society has been divided on religion basis, and then re-divided on caste root, then again subdivided on economical factors. The term ‘Broadly’ verbalize that the list is not exhaustive, and given the umpteen ramifications and scriptures of the segregation it could never be. The most despondent divisor had doubtlessly been caste system. There is nothing so unique in India, nothing as all-pervasive in India as caste. A great deal has been debated over its genesis, and even more on it’s dismantling. But we still lack the fundamental information on how and why it was introduced and we still lack the imperative knowledge on how it should be brought to a conclusion (read end).

The Hindu caste system is based on an assumption that lies at odds with the assumption of Western democratic ideals: that all people are created equal. According to classical Hindu perspective people are born with different intellectual and spiritual qualities and capabilities. These differences dispose different people to different sorts of occupations and responsibilities in society. There are theories illuminating how the Vedas advocated the division of society on the basis of work in order to effect specialization which later on was restructured on birth basis. If that is to be accepted then given razor sharp specialization of todays highly competitive world we don’t need it anymore and should shorn it off.

The only purpose which the caste system seems to dole out in the 21st century India is to serve as a decisive tool in the hands of the valueless demagogue to divert the flow of votes. The Mandal commission and recent reservation hullaballoo are shining example.

The societal is such that even in a well educated family where the head has been taught that racism is an immoral concept the lessons of this system are tacitly passed to the younger ones. One is straightforwardly or circuitously made conscious of his position in the social hierarchy. One is taught what he should lay his hand on and what Untouchables thing one should avoid. Given the narrowing economical gap between the different castes (due to reservations) one is confronted with situations where you have to play host to an untouchable guest, so people developed the practice of maintaining separate utensils to serve them.

Everything alienated to avoid any physical contact. One marvels is there something which is above these social boundaries. Something such, which is permeable through the walls of these social barriers. Something which is not minded even it is being transferred from an untouchable. Yes there is one thing in my observation. We just accept it happily. We may mind giving it back to them. No its not respect or submission from there part and not any other abstract object. It’s purely materialistic. In fact it is the pedestal of materialism. Its polish seems to over shine any shadow of prejudice on caste basis or whatsoever. Its color is so glinting and lucrative to let you care about any discrepancy. Such is the color of Money.

What's in the name?

I and one of my roommates who also shares my first name are cheek and jowl when it comes to confer on generally social/political issues and sporadically asocial/apolitical ones. Many a times this discussion goes ad nauseam and many of our dorm’s neighboring colleagues join us in it. My second roommate, a pure maggu, habitually engrossed deep in his books and often reluctant to these enduring deliberations, at times gets thrilled by the nature of the subject matter and jumps on the bandwagon to place his outlook. Among all the numberless solemn and silly issues which we thrash out we recently had a debate on the significance of a persons name in determining his success.

He declared that name matters a lot and in this matter he is in doldrums as his name (Saurav) doesn’t sounds resembling the name of a high profile achiever with too many feathers in his cap. Given my name (Saurabh) and measuring my aspirational dreams I had to disagree. He then asked me to name a single incredibly eminent personality with a name as silly as ours. I instantly replied Sourav Ganguly, thinking that the discussion was over and all. But he argued that the surname Ganguly worked for him and he is better known by that name only. Well, there was a point. I tried my hands on few other names but all in vain. Though I figured out few silly names among small achievers, but not a single one amongst the crème de la crème.

I placed forward numerous optimistic points in favor of my ideology but my words of wisdom were falling on a deaf ear. We sustained this juvenile talk for few additional minutes and then came to a full circle. Having a semester examination the very next morning and still not having been able to conquer half the colossal syllabus we decided to end the conversation and toggled back to burn the midnight oil. But however hard I tried I was incapable to confine my thoughts to the Xerox in my hand and kept on thinking back over our plausible contemplation.Then out of the blue I remembered the very famous lines from Shakespeare’s masterwork ‘Romeo and Juliet'.

To Quote-
--“What’s in the name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.”

I hadn’t reflected much over these lines when I read it for the first time. According to my roommate poor Juliet seems to be absolutely oblivious of the intricate complexity of the real world. Only had she not been born in an elite family. His answer to Juliet would be 'A Lot. Trust me.'

Anyway, I still take a sanguine view in spite of my name. Don’t worry Juliet, even Romeo may defer but on these lines I am with you.

Cultural hypocrisy

Yesterday while traveling back to college after durgapuja vacation, I once again encountered a malady universal nationwide. It was like this; I had one attractive young lady seated near by. She must have been in her early twenties and probably was a college student. She seemed decent and looked incredibly innocent. She was very expressive when she was along with her family at the railway station but right that moment she was alone and appeared bit nervous. She was the only member of contrary gender amid a herd of bachelors and few wedded middle aged uncle’s seemingly discontented with the women they had back at home and surely intrigued with this solitary lass. All eyes were gazing her and exploring each and every nuance of her body. Most fascinating admirers were a father and son each one constrained by other yet unable to relinquish her magnetism. I kind of felt sorry for her to be tangled in this awkward situation and a bit sorry for the bachelors around who were exceedingly excited by her presence yet unable to convey it. But I felt much sorrier for those discontented uncle’s for whom life probably had no subsequent chances. In such circumstances my policy is to act as if I am too engrossed in the journal or novel in my hand that I am totally oblivious of the scene around. But that was a journey long enough to confirm that I was a dumb imbecile, if I continuously trailed that policy of mine. So meanwhile I swapped my eyes from my book to catch her eyes and glinted mine eyes in a manner to convey her ‘Look miss I do understand the gravity of this uneasy situation you are going through and I am very sorry for you and also I hope you understand this that I am not in anyway involved in it. But at the same time I am not in any position to help it and I hope you understand that too’.

Finally after few apparently long hours for her and too short a time for her admirers the train arrived at her destination and she left. With her was gone the obligation of sham outward show of each and everyone present and all were back to their originality. Sooner people initiated discussing about things relevant to their life and then moved ahead to the irrelevant ones. Mostly craps, I tell you. Among all this crap some restless soul instigated the usual ‘U.S. superiority’ Vs the ‘Rest of world’ chat which soon turned into ‘Rest of the world’ Vs ‘India’ chat and which was finally diverted into the cliché ‘India’s rich cultural heritage’ Vs the ‘profane western culture’ chat. (It’s really amazing how much we love to only ‘talk’ about our true Indian culture and rarely pursue it). Now in order to keep discussions going on and to look modern and pragmatic thinkers few took the western side. One could tell by merely looking into their eyes how nakedly modern they were. While the loyalists were busy emanating their points and the moderns were busy pushing their meager modern knowledge, someone among the patriots brought forward the point how women always were and still are respected in India like nowhere else. Well at this juncture, I who was till now silent and appeared ignorant among those enlightened minds thought of interrupting them and to remind them of their behavior when that pretty young thing was around. But something inside me forbids me to do so. My inner intuitions were approved when even the pretending modernist espoused the idea of women enjoying respectful and dignified position in India like nowhere else. And thus I witnessed yet another Indian cultural hypocrisy

Overlooked middle class

That was a stage when dish TV was still a fresh experiment in India, and a rare commodity in small towns akin to mine where having a dish connection destined getting loads of undesired frenzied cricket fiend in your drawing room to track team India when they were overseas and no more accessible on Doordarshan (however watching gregariously helped to put up with the gloom of loses we consistently guzzled on foreign soil). I was privileged (still wary) to have it near the beginning. That was also the stage which I used up by and large watching no matter what on TV. It was a time when I was entirely eclectic and robotically followed the whole lot. Thus I have a reasonably first-rate experience of Hindi cinema under my belt. Though I am not proficient to keep track of it from past few years as for a while I was busy in preparation for highly demanding cutthroat competitive exams (though what I finally landed in makes me feel ‘Was that worth?’) and after that I was struck by Hollywood masterpieces (so you see, I take no lessons from life).

Now though I don’t watch them anymore, but few innovative and creative exceptions, still by following the trailers on TV and internet I observed that all most all the bollywood yield are either dealing with a same monotonous stories based in a high societies aristocratic backdrop or on underworld and criminals psychology. We have one camp of director, producer delivering feel good movies full of pomp and show illustrating all the exotic and striking locations, big mansion, costliest automobiles, sexiest and shortest attire, cosmopolitan lifestyles, latest trends, phoniest dialogues and exceedingly illusory characters (karan jauhar is a champ in this group). Then we have another camp delivering movie depicting criminal mindsets, filthy language, underworlds jargon, scrupulous politics, unwrap prostitution, intricacies of pervert system, crooked officials and one indomitable chap against all odds (Ram Gopal verma leads here). Then there are also some who are on the go creating senseless and irrational potboilers (Faraha Khan is the Queen in this genre).

If we leave aside some very rare exceptions than in past few years hardly any movie was made showing the simplicity of a common man’s life and the middle class way of affairs. Gone are times when a Hrishikesh Mukherjee touched the cords of entertainment with the fingers of an ordinary man to create eternal tone of art. Gone are the times when just an Amol Palekaer and Uttpal Dutt were all it needed to create a spectacular success of peerless comedy.

When I think why it is so that middle class has been omitted from silver screen in India I get few response. One is may be the geniuses of olden days have already exploited all the stories which could be possibly thought of as entertaining regarding this class. A second notion says may be the general mass itself is not much fascinated in paying to see the same melancholy of his day to day life on screen and perceiving this fact the directors are reluctant to make such ones. My third speculation is as mostly the filmmakers themselves are from the cream of the crop elite class and are not much sentient of the ramification and shade of life of middle class and are incapable to discover it now they vacillate to make a movie on it. Whatever the exact reason or reasons may be, indubitably (no may be) there is large interlude of absence of movies of this particular genre and thus creates a space which if proficiently exploited can ensure good returns to filmmakers. Now seeing that management gurus like Mr. Arindham Chaudhary and corporate houses like Reliance are trying hand in moviemaking may be someday they may realize this fact and we may be fortunate enough to witness few may be classics of this genre in our era and may reply our parents ‘See its not all crap, still we have lots of movies which make sense.’ Till then it’s only a lot of MAY be.

Small town boy

Today I read an awful chauvinism titled ‘’Small-town Boy” in editorial column of TOI by some bigot Ramakrishnan Sundaram. It proclaimed itself to be a discourse on rustic wisdom but happened to be a ‘prejudiced’ discourse on rustic wisdom. It started with a deliberate exaggerated perversion of a simple remark of Mahindra Singh Dhoni, accusing him to be an arrogant skipper fecklessly biased to his small town teammates and having a supercilious and scornful attitude for players displaying metro mores. Mr. Ramakrishnan considered it heavily disdainful of a small town chap trying to stay in touch with his small town roots by accessing news on it via electronic media. Mr. Ramakrishnan crosses the limits with the lines “Don’t be confused by the accent; thanks to his town’s engineering college, he was writing codes at back room in the bay area before the dot com bubble burst and he was benched again”. The writer feels compassion for those working in organization headed by a small Towner cause he believes the intelligent metro cultured worker their have to play a mediocre and have to abandon there dazzling ideas (ditched by the chief) and follow the mundane stratagem of the small town wits.

The article, altogether, is just another indifferent opinion of a snob for small town people. Or it may be the frustration of Mr. Ramakrishnan after some mere embarrassing incident with some particular guy from a small town but that does not entitle him to form a droopy outlook for all the small town guys based on few minor incidents. And what is more appalling is how an article in such a dire flavor was allowed by the editor to materialize in a newspaper of nationwide (including small towns) circulation and paramount influence. TOI is not like “Samana”, a space to scribe personal hatred of a chauvinist targeting a particular group. A newspaper like it cannot afford to reduce itself to be a channel for the flow of parochialisms.

And regarding you Mr. Ramakrishnan let me toss some light on your so called ‘wisdom’. Firstly you have no constitutional rights to tamper with the statements of celebrated personalities to serve your individual goals. Dhoni’s statement meant to provide prodding for new comers from small town facing the frenzy fan following and inevitable attention of global media. It was never like contrasting Sachin with Raina on the basis of their background.

Secondly, how can staying in touch with your roots be something one should be embarrassed about? It’s only cause of pig-headed persons like you that an average Indian feels no sense of National pride.

Thirdly, with regard to your haughty view on software professionals from small town let me tell you these are the people who have created a brand value of Indian professionals abroad. Mr. Ramakrishnan just find some time and visit few premier institutes of engineering like IITs and NITs and you will come to know the origin of the guys who are driving the cradle of technological leadership. And to add to your information database, Reliance one of India’s largest business organizations was founded by a small town boy from chorwad, Gujarat. And one of the leading business consultants, the mystic man, Ramcharan was once a small town lad. They are shinning example of small town boys making it big globally and more importantly they are not the few lonely examples but there is a whole legion of such Dheerubhais and Ramcharans.

And lastly Mr. Ramakrishnan I request you to ask your parents in which city were Ram and Krishna born. Or in case you are a non-believer (as you find it embarrassing to stick to one’s root) than at least search where were these religious characters emanated.

Hope you got it.