Solutions to Human Problems

me:
failure is always good as long as you learn something from it
you get to learn the most only from failures

Neeraj:
yup .. exactly …. that’s what we call experience

me:
I think we call it learning from mistakes 😛

Neeraj:
😀 😀

me:
without making mistakes one doesn’t really understand
everything looks like preaching

Questions about our own existence which will remain unanswered forever I think.

Ever thought why you were born in the same family you are born in? For instance I got born at Thana Bhawan in the family of Sri Om Prakash Gandhi. Why didn’t I born at some unknown place in Africa, for instance in Somalia or some place at Bihar.

How do I feel myself? I feel somebody called Shrikant in myself and there is absolutely no connection with anybody else. Similarly somebody in America must be feeling John Smith in himself. But these two individuals are completely isolated from each other. Though they feel themselves in their body but they really don’t know about themselves. Why don’t I feel myself in some other’s body. What’s that which is so important for my existence. Everybody is isolatedly dropped on earth by some means and have no connection with their so called previous life. No memory, nothing and new life. So in that way, it may be possible that I am here in India right now but I can be somewhere else in Africa in my next life. And who knows, I just go to another planet with a new life as some animal or some other body form. Or who knows, current life is the end of spontaneous life. No past and future but only present. And in that way, I don’t really know who am I except having an option of feeling what I can feel right now.

As soon as this spirit is gone, the body is lifeless. And we have absolutely no clue about this LIFE.

I am a movie freak and almost never miss a chance to watch a good movie. Yesterday I saw “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na”, a sweet romantic one. I liked it and so did my family also. The movie touchbases some the basics of human relations which I believed in for a long time and it just reaffirmed my understanding. You’d say that it’s just another movie. But in my view some of its emotional scenes are true to real life also. I would like to discuss some of the abstractions which I could take out of movie and relate to real life.

1. It’s just too difficult to be just friends in an opposite sex relationship. It just somehow doesn’t work. One of the friends or both of them will find a feeling of loving each other. The cases, where the feeling of love is one-sided, are very difficult to handle even though both of them have made it explicit the relationship as just frinedship. So far, I have never seen two close friends from opposite sex. Somehow I tend to believe it doesn’t exist.
2. In my last blog, I talked about extreme emotions in which when a person becomes part of your life, you’ll do anything for him/her. These emotions are not just limited to a person only; Bhagat Singh was passionately charged with thr feeling of patriotism for our Nation. In this movie too, Jai – a non-violent person throughout, always says that he will not hurt anybody no matter what. When his best friend Aditi asks, what’ll happen when somebody touches her, he responds saying he’ll still not hurt that “somebody”. That all is limited to plain talks in my view. However when one protagonist (Sushant) in the movie really batters her, this guy who never thought to hurt even an ant and whom everybody calls “fattu”, goes straight to the house of Sushant and beats him up.
3. You may never feel the importance of your beloved when he/she is with you. Even though, you may want to think that it’s easy to start a new life without him/her, that separation is never easy. You begin to feel that void when that person leaves you in real.
4. Think about a scenario. You may be very friendly with a person. He/she is your best friend in entire life. You may be sharing your “self” and all secrets of life with him/her only. What happens when someone other comes into your life and takes a lot of time which you earlier used to spend with your friend. That friend will try to accept the new reality but at the same time, feels betrayed too. That feeling is almost very difficult to get away with. Your mind knows that it’s the reality of the life but your heart says something else.

For quite sometime I have been thinking about what leads different cultures to be so different. The differentiation aspects can be many but right now I am focused about family aspect of each culture and also its relation with the surrounding society. A lot is dependent on economic condition of a country. One thing is very common. If economic condition of a country is not so good, people try to live in groups. Living in groups means more security and also less vulnerability. And this directly proportionates to having families, believing in family values; as in case something bad happens to one individual, someone will be there to support him/her.

When you talk about groups and families, society implicitly comes into picture. You are more concerned then – what other people think about you. For instance, in India, if you have crossed a certain age, people will keep on asking why aren’t you getting married. These pressures automatically keep on building. Sometimes your each action is judged by the people across the society and you just can’t avoid them. So if there are some good things living as a part of society there are bad parts too. However living in groups, having family culture encourages and builds on cultural aspects, values etc. I think to maintain the sanctity of this culture they are required too. Economically less developed also means less number of employments which also means that people have a lot of time to think about others. It’s always told that a blank mind is a house of Satan and that’s true in this case. Gossips spread and people have a lot of things to talk about others.

On the other hand, if you belong to an economically developed country, you no longer require a group. You even will not be aware who your neighbour is. The same doesn’t hold true when you live in society based culture. Your actions are not judged anymore. You may be living in a corner of a building and nobody bothers what you do unless they are getting affected by your actions. People don’t need a joint (big) family anymore. They are so involved with their life that they don’t have any time for other individual. You are then more individualistic who always thinks about yourself. Unless you have a good system to support with, older people are left in lurch in their later part of life and sometimes nobody cares about their well-being. Also now, people don’t care about their roots as basically they no longer are aware about them. The ethics and values which a society based culture encourages start to lose their sheen as the communication which keep on happening in a group-based-society from older generation to younger generation doesn’t seem to happen anymore frequently.

I have seen this pattern for some of the countries so far. Poland, which was not as much economically developed encouraged the group based culture. Similar things I have heard about Estonia also. The same holds true to India also. These days, India is in transition phase. If you see the people living in Metro cities, they are getting more and more financial independent thanks to the many economic liberalization policies adopted by Indian government. Families are becoming more and more nuclear these days because of lack of employment near to their towns and also because younger generation doesn’t need older people anymore. Sometimes they are needed but most of the times they are needed to take care their kids as office going couple may not have a luxury to have full time nanny. System still doesn’t support the social security to older people and they are left on their own when people no longer need them. I have already seen many such examples where it happened and nothing seem to work for older people.

So you know what, culture is already is in transition phase towards prosperity but I don’t think system is still prepared for it or even thinking in that direction. One more result is – people are less aware about their culture, ethics and values as they are no longer passed from generation to generation. I am still trying to think if it’s still possible to survive for all those values, ethics and cultural aspects even while living in this environment. From my own experience I have found that it may be possible but one needs to make continuous and conscious efforts with a lot of communication and visits to make it work. Most of the people who are comfortable in their own way of living may not find time/efforts for all these things. And in that way, you normally find the decline of the cultural aspects.