On Happiness, GNP, and Love - A letter

On Happiness perhaps i see the light there but more importantly will i be able to win myself back again ? Ah listening to wishbone aint good..the guitar notes pierce through the heart like sharp sabres..the melodies sound haunted with the ghosts of memories and the drums seem to pound the mind into a raw pulp of pure sentiments…i taste the saltness of my own tears from my own but estranged eyes. where had i seen a life in them before…i remember it was not very long ago yet so distant and an entirely different world now sinking away in the deep recesses and shadows of my mind, if i can call it mine at all. yes this mind seems to have its own character, nay even more, it seems to have a melange of charlattans playing with the simultaneous emerging and disappearing images of the world, creating and reifying reality in a macabre dance that leaves me exhauted acting as it does of its own volition.do i know me? my m.phil subject is development studies and an important part of development open to debate is how to measure it. you might have heard of terms like gnp or per capita income etc and you might have heard of a man called amartya sen. whats the connection? well sen along with mehboob-ul-haq is among some of the leading radical economists who suggest the need to bring in ‘happiness‘ as a measure of welfare and growth. that then will do away with the current madness for economic growth measured solely in terms of money which may indicate that the economy has grown but will not reflect if the people feel any better at all. noble idea and no wonder they got their nobel prizes for this but the problem still remains : how to measure happiness? also i wonder if one day there will come another modern economics guru who may include the idea of love as an essential component of happiness and therefore an indicator of growth and welfare or satisfaction levels of a people. we are, you see in the process of doing a full circle. going at this rate one might begin to understand why jesus or a budhdha was born and preached what they did regardless of the facticity of their births. whats the connection? i just told you. no silly what is the connection? oh i see . cant say there is one you see. does there have to be one? always? if we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life itself is destroyed. …paraphrazing tolstoy. ‘when i walk beside her, i am the better man when i look to leave her, i always stagger back again once i built an ivory tower, so i could worship from above when i climb down to be set free, she took me in again… Once I dug an early grave, To find a better land She just smile and laughed at me,And took her bruise back again….. Once I stood to lose her, when I saw what I had done bound down and flew away the hours, of her garden and her sun so I tried to warn her, I turned to see her weep 40 days and 40 nights, and it’s still coming down on me……. eddie vedder, ‘hard sun’ ‘the sea only gives us harsh blows and occasionally the chance to to feel strong, now i dont know much about the sea but i do know that this is the way it is here and i also know how important it is in life, not necessarily to be strong, to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once in the most ancient of all human conditions facing the blind death stone out alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head’ ( quote {i think it is h.d.Thoreou} by christopher johnson mccandless alias alexander supertramp in the film ‘Into the wild’) the last sentence he writes in his diary and this is a real story and a real diary, is remarkably short in that it is supposed to summarize the learning of the man, and thus the learning from the film… ‘ happiness only real when shared’ a little earlier he comes across this passage from tolstoy, on the same subject ‘i’ve lived through much…….rest, nature, books, love for one’s neighbor, such is my idea of happiness,… a mate …and children…and what more can one desire’ Sen and Mehboobulhaq co. you listening? ——————————————————————————————————————————- ‘take good care of time to sow your own true seed the summers end will bring your leaving’ sorrel-wishbone [July is traditionally the end of summer announcing the arrival of the mighty thunderous monsoons that shower blesssings on dry parched and thirsty souls or can cause devastation, death and despair . isnt it my love] ——————————————————————————————————————————– no i cannot blame you for it was my own fragility that is to blame. And my sanity or lack of it did you know that iterate and reiterate do not have different meanings. i did too but never thought of it. but this is not important at all. in fact this fact has no meaning, at least not contextually here. ‘…not to be strong, but to feel strong….’ the old man – ron : ‘i wanna tell you something. with the bits and pieces i’ve put together….about your problems with your family…church……..but there is some kind of bigger thing we all appreciate and it seems like you dont mind calling it god. but when you forgive you love. and when you love god’s light shines on you’ chris mccandless [as the sun breaks out from behind the clouds]: ‘holy shit’ … —————————————————————————————————————— can that be true my love. about god’s light…i almost wish it were true…i so desperately need t believe in something…..i often wonder at belief…so powerful that it dictates the lives of men and women , including those who do not believe, and directs the course of their lives and the history of peoples as it has over more than two andwho knows more millenias now. and yet so weak that an individual can shrug off the cloth of belief or the veil be cast off one’s eyes and all it may take is a moment. so mighty that it can challenge the mightiest kings andyet so frail as to offer nothing to hold on to but the ephemereal itself…belief. faith. knowledge. power. And the self? who are you my love and who am i . yes i have a name. it was given to me and not strictly me but still that is me. at least for u for him and for her it is me. isnt it? take that away and what am i? i am nothing. my self itself is dependent on recognition from you and you. without u there is no me. without the other selves there is no me self. my self wouldnt be a self if it weren’t for all the other selves that exist, indeed come into being itself , into existence by the mere acknowldgement of your existence and your existence and hence my existence. no this is no mystical crap i read somewhere. think about it. can i exist without you. maybe i can but it wil not be in this way., indee it can not be in this wayfor this way is the way by which selves are formed and come to exist only becoz there are other selfs. you can put all the self used here in quotation marks and that would make it even more true. ————————————————————————————————————————– and what is the truth ….chris mccandles [quoting or paraphrasing Thoreou]: ‘rather than love, than money, than faith, with fame, with fairness; give me truth’ can that be true also? isnt that a little too demanding on truth? will truth itself be able to bear the burden of such a claim. i personally doubt it. doubt it very mch for i ont think there is a truth but truths. and there are as many truths as there are those uttering them. why even a single person can have different truths for different people and different truths for different times. the last one is amply exemplified in history what with the earth being flat and now round …how come we are absolutely sure that there are no more dimensions waiting to be discovered which might tomorrow make the earth appear like a hole in the fabric of space and become the truth of tomorrow rather than the round solid body that we take now for granted? same with ifferent people. u have different truths for different people. even your existential truth is differnt for different people. ah i now understand..poor thoreou he must be so confused that no wonder he placed the truth of truth at the highest pedestal. what is your truth my love and what is mine…or do we reach the conclusions that it is all play and there is no truth? ———————————————————————————————————————– of course i am wrong for the truth of suffering and the truth of death is only so hard a truth that we spend all our life an waste all our energy running away from it? and we have a perfect explanation..why worry or think about these things like death when it is bound to anyway conquer you some day. i do not however agree. why ? why cant death be but another phase of life so diagonistically opposed to it that we may not even be able to imagine it but lets not abondon it. but these are me, a mere mortals words. lets take buddha. what did he do? nothing. precisely . if we can understand this then we can stop here but we or at least me am a mere mortal and cant understand this and will not stop here. but we do understand that all buddha did was to speak the truth of suffering and of death and of desire. if only we can appreciate with full significance the relationship between desire and suffering. but to do that will mean to put an end to all our little games with which we occupy ourselves. what will we do then if we stop and pay heed. it can become unbearable..the truth is a burden that all of us carry, few see and none wants to acknowledge. i may be wrong. and i better be. ——————————————————————————————————————– where will this search lead us to my . where will all the games we play lead us to my love. but if i am of no consequence just as you and you and him and her then why shud we worry what consequences may follow us my love? i have died a thousand times and taking a line from nietszche, i was even born posthumously once. how would some more deaths matter. will it matter to me? even i cant tell for each time i die this little frivolous me is dead sure; this is it untill i die again to realize that i wasnt yet dead. ——————————————————————————————————————- what am i doing ? why am i writing all this crap? i want to tell me and you something but i cant tell it straight for i dont know what it is that i want to tell. if i knew i would have told you already u see. but in a way i have done exactly that. i have told you all that i want to andi am still not done. in fact i realize that it may not ever be gotten done. go back to the last line. do you seee the genesis. that of the birth of the begotten. what about the unbegot then . more specifically, what about the birth of the unbegotten.stop..heresy..crime…how can u speak the unspeakable. but who has ever really spoken..maybe buddha did but then he uttered not a word about the unbegotten. so one who is born is then already immortal in the sense of the endless suffering in life and in death even. there is no escaping . we are all doomed by the fact of the phenomenon of our birth. the seed of immortality is right there . the seed of all i have to say is perhaps a word perhaps a line but then i think i am a mere mortal and can not do that which otherwise can be done in one line. i am the source of my own suffering. do u see it now? ————————————————————————————————————– what did i see? well the truth is that i did not see much. afterall i had my eyes shut as i tried to repeat the words of prayer whispered into my ears.and besides it was dark in there…but i could still hear. and what i heard paralyzed me with fear. no that is wrong. i could have hardly known fear and in its lack what came about was a result of knowledgeable recollection…for how could there be a recollection of thoughts and memories without the ordering power of knowledge..and it was that of despair..or that is what i think it is or was and still is.a hopelessness and an ever lasting despair that has now come to define the essence of my existence. huddled under a table wih womenfolk begging for their lives in that roomfull of women mostly elderly. the scores of men or their shadows more aptly threatened to burn us alive or break open the door with their spears and crude weapons some of which would snake into the room from under the door or the lone window at which the great fearless grandma stood alone defiantly denying the presence of any men and it was perhaps the iron door that saved us from the savagery of fellow humans or maybe her fearlessness and outrightness for threatened with life there she was scolding those who threatened her and her family. what a woman. yes dont talk to me of feminism , i have seen what women are capable of. and i know what family means.they did not burn us alive for afterall they too were family only not as close. yes i know what is family. they however torched and looted all other rooms including mine, the room full of toys, the most modern the most unique and a large collection. i never played with toys or come to think of it anything else or even anybody else. yes i dont play games. i still remember the prayers whispered into my ears for i guess those were the first prayers i had learned. i was four then. and then when nine while enroute to delhi to receive mom coming back from saudia, i saw them burning this sardar in the fields who sat opposite us in the train not 10 mints ago. my brother placed a hand over my eyes so i would not see the ‘spectacle’ of a burning man not to speak of the suspicious looking strange smelling fires in the midst of the roads and the blackened connought place i saw that night. indira gandhi had been killed that day and mom decided to postpone her visit. and i will not speak of the 89 bhagalpur riots when in class IX i was home to attend brothers wedding as all guests became trapped in the house for 15 days for i did not see much even in the midst of all the blood curling cries and religious slogans acroos the tracks from either side of teh communal divide except for teh body of a 12 yr old split in two by a police bullet as he tried to steal some food from a shop in the curfew imposed locality going hungry for the 10th day by then. yes i have seen what a bullet fired from a police rifle can do to a childs body. but even then let me end in all honestly that i havent seen much. these sorrows and tragedies were hardly ever directly experienced except in the first case and i say this because i honestly know what real tragedy is like. in that case i have been really lucky to not have seen much which at the end of the day is rather sad for it takes away the claim to be a hero had i been directly affected by violence. but no ..on the periphery…always at the margin..not a hero nor villiany…. thus it is that i seek love so it will purify me by its fire and sear inhumanity from my heart for the doers of these inhuman deeds , the little i have seen and the more i know of, were done but by my fellow bretheren and i fear the stench alike in me of that inhumane humanity. Tears that purify my heart and reveal to me the secret of life and its mystery, Laughter that brings me closer to my fellow men; Tears with which I join the broken-hearted, Laughter that symbolizes joy over my very exist- ence. I prefer death through happiness a thousandfold to life in vain and in despair. An eternal hunger for love and beauty is my desire; I know now that those who possess bounty alone are naught but miserable, but to my spirit [ ah i miss khalil gibran – ‘tears and laughter’…do i or can i ever gather this kind of courage] ———————————————————————————- so where are we by now my love…lost . who is not …i got lost in my own tale… stories shud be light and should refresh one but then i was not writing a story. and the one line that could say it all…that is for you to figger out….. i am not finished though …in fact not even a quarter of all that i would want to say without all that i should want to say in addition to possibly all that i could say…but i donot have a voice no more…it was stolen from me lsat year when i went on a deer hunt and slept under a banyan tree right in the daylight. u were there too or was your image that in a dream…now i am not so sure after saying that for a minute ago i could have sworn it was you there too but having said what i just said i am not sure anymore. but then this way we will never reach the end not that there is a specific end as such..it is all means and it is all in the meanings and the means to meanings that end up consuming us instead…so i will leave u with these lines from a real holocaust survivor who gave shelter to Anne frank while addressing a school group in the US from the movie ‘Freedom writers’ ( i know u have seen it , u saw it with me… the group she is addressing is a multi-ethno-racial conflict ridden group bent on gang fights etc who r out to change themselves inspired by their teacher who in turn inspires them through the story of anne as a result of which they write to this lady about their experiences and finally after collecting funds invite her to the univ. all this apparently happened in real as story is based on real life episode produced by danny devito… during the meeting one of the boys tells her that he has never had a hero and that she was her hero. her reply is a dedication to your unwavering spirit in the face of all adversities and various other tragedies that u have had to experience…. the lady [in the movie it is the real life character herself and not some actor who is playing the role: ‘ i am not a hero, i did what i had to do becausse it was the righht thing to do. { she is referring to hiding anne frank in her house} that is all. now we are all ordinary people but even an ordinary secretary or housewife or a teenager can within their own small ways turn on a small light in a dark room. yeah. i have read your letters …. you are the hereos. you are the hereos of everyday. your faces are engraved in my heart’. you are a hero by your own right . my salaam to you. your face is engraved in my heart.( so it doesnt really matter even if i were to not see you again )