The Sound of Silence

Sit in silence. Take a deep breath. Notice your breath going in and out. Repeat.

And let the magic begin. Sounds too good to be true, right? I felt the same. But I tried it. It's not too bad I tell you. Not too bad :)

Meditation has become close to my heart especially because:

• we are living in trying times and mental health is important 

• I've spent a lot of time reading fascinating books written by PhDs and MDs in Neuroscience, Neurobiology, and Psychiatry. Thanks to fMRI machines and advancement in tech in the last 15-20 years we now have numerous and increasing prolific research studies to conclusively support the claims of the benefits, ergo - we don’t have to trust the often exaggerated and mystical claims from Yogis and religious gurus about the benefits.

• having practiced meditation for the last ~1.5 years, I can feel the positive change it has brought in my life as well.

I hope to share some of this with you. But before we start, it is important to acknowledge what gives Meditation a bad name. 

• Religion - There is always a religious color to meditation especially colors of Hinduism and Buddhism. At the heart of it, meditation is a technique. That’s it. No religion can call dibs on it. That’s like saying gravity is Christian because Newton was a Christian.

• False claims - This is pretty straightforward. Those who are selling meditation as a product are incentivized to make tall claims, sometimes as tall as meditation cures cancer - while that could still be true, the evidence isn’t there yet.

But before we dive deep into “Why Meditation” let’s think about why we even want to ask or answer this question. What is the point? What is the point of anything? Now if we keep going deeper in this line of thought, we will hit the existential depths that lead us to "What is the meaning and purpose of life?" While that’s definitely the most fundamental question to ask, I don’t have the wherewithal (yet) to discuss it. So I'll stick to a simpler question:

What is it that we want from our lives? Or, what are we trying to maximize in our lives? More money, fame, power? The usual answer is, our very old friend - Happiness, which is close enough. But I find “well-being” to be a better goal than happiness. I feel one can have a life of well-being even if one is not always happy. Happiness is a subset of well-being (this could be a whole separate topic for another day). Anyway, these are petty semantics. You can call it happiness, joy, or well-being as long as they represent the same thing.

Well-being can be both physical and mental, and both are in some way linked as well, but for today let’s stick to mental well-being. So what exactly is the well-being of the mind - simply put, it is a state of equanimity & balance, where we don’t merely exist, we “thrive” both within & with deep relationships outside, AND we have resilience to stay centered when tested by the vicissitudes of life, be it highs or lows. (All the stoics reading this give me a high-five)

So, full points for guessing what I am going to say next.

Meditation helps in living a life of well-being. 

Sure there are other benefits such as increased focus, better productivity, increased EQ, etc. but those are 2nd order benefits. That's like using Thor to open jammed lids from cans. It's great, but not that fundamental.

We first need to understand the important difference between the brain and the mind. Because at the core of mental well-being are our brains & minds, and the interplay between them. 

Got it from the pic? No? Duh! Okay, okay. Let me explain. 

Brain is an organ, a physical entity. Mind is not. Some describe it as a stream of consciousness, or the set of mental faculties we have. There is still very little we know. In the book “Mindsight” the author says,

Mind is a process

a process through which we experience our subjective reality, our emotions, each moment, and hence our daily lives. So the “quality of life” or our well-being, is effectively driven by the mind, this process of experiencing reality every moment. It’s not for nothing that we keep hearing, if you want to be 'happy', look within. 

The different parts of our brain (eg. cerebral cortex, prefrontal cortex, etc.) control different emotions - fear, anxiety, love, anger, etc. The mind is the process by which we experience these experiences, these emotions and hence our subjective reality. The structure of our brain affects this process (i.e. our minds). Eg. if for a person the amygdala (fear centre of the brain) is enlarged, then “fear” (of loss, rejection, ridicule, etc.) will constantly be a prominent part of this process. Any time they are faced with a tricky situation, they’ll experience fear, anxiety, increased heart rate, sweaty palms, release of cortisol, etc. Ergo, the well-being will take a hit. 

The structure of our brain is affected by 3 things:

1. Our genetics - not in our control 

2. Our childhood - the initial formative years, our childhood experiences and our upbringing plays a HUGE role in shaping up the structure of the brain. Again, most of us are already past childhood, nothing  much we can do here. 

3. Our ongoing experiences - Every experience (or external stimulus) creates a synaptic connection or a neural firing pattern. These patterns determine how we experience that experience. Every time that experience happens, it strengthens those synaptic connections and the response gets codified in the process. It becomes the “algorithm” of the process i.e. the algorithm of the mind. It is precisely because of these algorithms that we say - the mind has a mind of its own.

Simple example - when my wife Gazal and I are walking side by side and a dog runs towards us, Gazal feels love and affection towards the dog and I feel fear, panic and anxiety. How can the same dog create such contrasting emotions in 2 people? It’s because Gazal has had positive experiences of love and affection with dogs during childhood, and those synaptic connections got strengthened over time. And I have had terrible experiences with dogs during my childhood, and the same continued later too, so every time I see one, my amygdala takes over and all I feel is fear and anxiety. In my case the external stimulus of an incoming dog creates and strengthens this synaptic connection. Her codified mind algorithm for this is Incoming dog = Love = Aww. And mine is, Incoming dog = Fear = Run faster than Usain Bolt. 

Because of the above 3 factors, all of us have different brain structures, hence different algorithms or processes, and hence we all live and experience life differently.  Each brain and each mind is truly unique. The imbalances of the brain are also very unique.

So what’s the whole point of knowing about the brain and this interplay with our mind. 

Think about it, if our 'quality of life' = well being = how our minds work in each moment and the mind is a process, then like any process, we can improve it. More importantly, it is in our control. Which means, our well-being is in our control. And this is very empowering. The externalities of life are often not in our control. But the way we respond to these externalities, is. But can we really change our brains, and hence our minds?

Yes. 

Neuroplasticity - there is conclusive proof now that our brain structures can change = our algorithms/process i.e. mind can change. And, we have control over that change. 

That’s where meditation comes in. The simple practice of looking in the infinite space within and being aware/mindful of the inner self and your thoughts. And when you practice enough, it becomes the de facto way that your mind works even when you are not meditating. 

So we finally come to the benefits of meditation or mindfulness. There is comprehensive scientific proof now that meditation:

1. brings structural change to our brains so that various parts can work in harmony with each other AND we have control over the algorithms. Ergo, lesser stress, anxiety, fear and more equanimity.

2. gives you awareness

1. Eg. for a person with an overdeveloped amygdala (i.e. fear centre of the brain) as soon as they face a particularly troubling situation, meditation helps them become more aware of the emotion of fear as soon as they experience it, and then respond to it appropriately. Meditation also develops the part of the brain that is associated with building resilience. So the next time you face an adversity (eg. a yelling boss, loss in business, late delivery of your food, an “unreasonable” demand from your partner, etc.), you are automatically able to respond to it better without losing your inner balance. Because it is not the yelling boss that troubles you, increased heart rate and anxiety i.e. the physiological response to yelling that affects your well-being. As you meditate, you get aware of those physiological responses and recognize their energy signature in the body during that moment itself and you are able to control it to maintain equanimity. It is almost a superpower to have that control over your thoughts and emotions.  

2. Being more aware has far-reaching benefits than just improved productivity at work and achieving peak performance. When you are truly aware and in the moment in your interaction with people, it helps build deeper relationships. It is well established that deep meaningful relationships are the core to our well-being. 

3. More importantly, it helps you build a deeper relationship with yourself. It helps you be aware of your own algorithms, your own weakness, and work upon it.

4. More and more research has proven that a wandering mind = “unhappy” mind. We all are thinking all the time. It is not the thinking itself that is bad, it is thinking without thinking and without awareness that is bad. When you are aware, your mind is more fertile to ideas. As I said, The power to be aware, focused and in control, is almost a superpower. 

5. Being aware helps you get more out of each experience. The same sip of beer or that bite of tasty slice of pizza will feel much more fulfilling when you are mindful while having it. You feel joy from the small things that you might have thus so far ignored.

3. helps you build positive attributes such as kindness, compassion, empathy. The world can definitely do with more of these.

So, now when a doggu approaches me, rather than being swept away by fear, I automatically am in more control, I automatically take a deep breath and avoid fear. And sometimes, no matter the deep breaths, I still get chased and I automatically run for my life. Sigh, it’s a slow process of change.

Now you can say, "I don’t need meditation. I already have a good command on my mind and my thoughts". If that’s true, then genuinely, good for you, and we should all aspire to achieve your state of mind. But honestly, it’s truly very difficult to be in control over your minds without investing efforts into it. You can tell a sad person - "Don’t be sad" - but it most likely won’t work. Such tactical interventions are never sustainable anyway. The better way is for the sad/angry person to gear their internal processes so that when they encounter something that can make them sad/angry, they can take a step back, be aware of that incoming emotion and control it. And repeat. And all that has to happen on auto-pilot i.e. the internal ecosystem has to be geared that way. 

So, if you want more well-being and you aspire to “thrive”, for better relationships, more resilience, better performance at work, you should give it a try. It costs nothing. Except time, 10-20 mins/day. But it will give you much more in return. You’ll probably see the benefit in as early as 6-8 weeks.

Don’t take my word for it. Try it :)

P.S. 1 - Some other practices that help in our well-being (in no particular order) = exercise, healthy food, novel experiences, learning something new. 

P.S. 2 - An efficient way for achieving well being is to take therapy. Good therapists use meditation as one of the tools. Also, therapy is not just for people with severe issues eg. depression, anger, etc. Even relatively healthier minds can benefit from it and achieve greater well-being.

Lest We Forget

“The doctor said he might have – emm..  Parkin’s.. err…Parkinson’s. Yes, yes. That’s what he said – Parkinson’s disease. He wants an MRI of the brain to confirm.”

“Oh”, he said as his heart knotted, and continued – “Mom, can you give the phone to father? I want to talk to him.” He switched hands because his phone got heated up showing sheer nonchalance to the frosty air-conditioning inside the office. Or maybe the phones nowadays are really smart, and by some cutting-edge predictive modeling can indicate the gravity of the conversation thermally.

“Ok wait, I’ll give him the phone”, she said.

 “Hello? Hello son, can you hear me?”, he said mustering all the courage he had to not let his voice crackle.

For the longest second, there hung a digital silence. Like smartphones, time is thermally susceptible too, except that it freezes under pressure.

“Yes father, I can hear you. Father don’t worry. It’s just a provisional diagnosis. And Parkinson’s is anyway nothing serious. You’ll be fine”, he lied as he stood looking outside the ashen evening sky, with his left hand balming his forehand.

“Okay beta. I’ll get the MRI done tomorrow. But beta”, he paused with his voice losing its tenor, “Beta, I was always a little scared of going into that machine.”

“But fa…”

“But don’t worry..” he interrupted. “I won’t delay it anymore. You carry on with your work. Must be busy in office. Bye bye.”

“Bye”

The skies had turned grey by now and the winds had started scurrying, trying to cuddle up the surface of the lakes that kissed the edge of the office. ‘Water Side’ they’d named the building.

Inside the office, people were busy being busy at their neatly organized cubicles. Apoorv, rushed back to his and started his research on Parkinson’s. His heart-beat raced like a gazelle chased by a lion, his eyes pierced the screen, and every single mitochondria of his body went into an overdrive as he frantically gobbled up the articles. When he was done, he felt a lump in his throat. For a few long moments he forgot to breathe.

Some of his father’s symptoms were consistent with Parkinson’s. Though not fatal, Parkinson’s has no cure yet. It starts with movement-related disorders, and later causes thinking and behavioral problems, dementia, and depression. Though it can be managed with drugs, but as the disease progresses, the drugs eventually become ineffective and the eventual resort is palliative care to improve quality of life.

He drew a long breath and with glistened eyes that hoped obscurity, looked away from the claustrophobic screen to the façade of the office. The world was still busy, it hadn’t stopped, unlike the parallel world he lived in.

No but that can’t be true. The neurologists would have definitely caught it earlier. And only some symptoms match, many others don’t – he argued with himself. There is fine line between doubt and denial. And there is no way to know when one has crossed it. Okay. Even with these symptoms the chances of actually having Parkinson’s were less than 1%. But then, that’s why probability is so cruel. In profound matters of life and death, the 1% screws the 99%.  

At night, as he sat at his desk in his hotel room working on scenario planning for cost optimization for his client, he wondered whether in our lives we bear sub-optimal costs by not planning out our life-scenarios properly. Whether by unwittingly committing to the ‘race’ we become too busy to account for a scenario where those who care for us might run out of time to continue doing so. Whether by succumbing to You-Only-Live-Once philosophy, we forget that they’ll live only once too. Whether their sole demand of having a tiny part of our time is so difficult to fulfil. Whether we fail to realize that there will once come a day when their manifestation will be only in the intangible, and we’ll regret not having done enough. That’s an inordinately high cost to pay. The thought knifed his heart. Most of us love the time we spend with our families. But we just fetter away our time being 'busy'. Maybe we should treat our lives as corporations, where revenues are happiness, and costs are the time we spend. And like every successful corporation, we should operate only the high margin and/or high growth product lines, shutting down the rest.

The MRI was done the next day.

“Beta, the report will be delivered on Thursday at 5 pm. Don’t worry, with God’s grace, I’ll be fine. You carry on with your work. Must be busy in office. Bye bye.” he said.

‘How could he be so calm?’, he wondered. When a drop of liquid is poured on a very hot surface, the part of liquid that first comes into contact with the surface becomes an insulating layer of vapor keeping the remaining drop safe and calm. Scientists call this the Leidenfrost effect. Maybe it’s this hope of God’s grace – the first line of defense for the believers when in the heat – that was keeping him calm. But the layer of vapor can only delay the inevitable. Slowly, the droplet gets annihilated.

Time dripped tortorise-ically on Thursday. After every one hour, the clock slothed by only a couple of minutes. They say work expands to fill in the time available to complete it. That day, work shrunk and shrunk until it collapsed into an irreversible singularity. But then, unlike matter, work can be created out of nothing. The more senior you become, the godlier you get at creating work. “Secondary research” saved the day.

When the clock finally struck 5, Apoorv called his mother.

“Hello Mom, did you get the report?”

“Son we are stuck in traffic. There’s a CM rally that’s caused a huge jam”

“What! Rally? Anyway, let me know when you get it”

O how his blood boiled! If the sap of the CM’s life was extracted and poured on Apoorv’s veins that moment, there would be nothing Leidenfrostic about its destruction.

An hour later, Apoorv’s phone rang. It was his mother. Strangely, reluctance trucked his heart. He didn’t want to answer the call. Between now and receiving the news, there were still a few moments to go – moments in which there was still a probability that things were fine. There was hope. And hope’s all we have eventually. But as he gazed at the phone he realized that reality had already transpired. He was just taking temporary refuge in ignorance. There’s only one way to pull out a band-aid – with one quick pull. Preferably when one is under the influence – a luxury Apoorv didn’t have then.

“Hello. Ma, what does the report say?”

“Hello beta, can you hear me? Hello?”

 “Yes, Ma. I can hear you, what does the report say?” he raised his voice.

“No Parkinson’s, beta. The doctor has suggested some exercises, father should be fine.”

That moment, that very moment, the sound of traffic, of the drivel of the colleagues chatting in his car, of the annoying music being played – everything faded away like the last rays of the sun do after a scorching summer day. A mountain just fell off Apoorv’s chest. He closed his eyes and breathed the longest breath of his life yet.

There’ll be a zillion times you’ll hear a “No” in your life – from friends, lovers, interviewers, colleagues, government officials. You’ll come to hate that word. It can give you sleepless nights. Until a doctor one day says “No” to a provisional diagnosis of an incurable disease. A ‘No’ will never feel better.

“Ma, give him the phone”

“Hello beta, I told you I’ll be all fine. These doctors are always confused. You carry on with your work. You must be ve…”

“No father, I’m not that busy” he interrupted. “I’ll see you on the weekend. Take care. Bye”

As he pushed the phone into its haven, a silent tear eschewed from the corner of his eye, rolled down the terrain of his cheek, held onto the chin for a brief moment before taking a solemn dive into nothingness. He wanted to jump in joy. But sometimes it feels better to sink into your seat protectively hugging the joy like a mother cuddles her babies, than sprinkle it away to the world. 

Within 2 days, his happiness had curved from a global minima to a global maxima. It’s in the curves where the wisdom lies, where we learn our lessons.

We are all in a classroom, with the topper being Life - she's smart, suave, seems to know everything, her hand raises to answer every question. Teachers adore her, the other students rave about her, they want to be like her. She says there are infinite possibilities that we can achieve, infinite ways to lead our lives. And then there is a shy, silent lad with dark cavernous eyes - Death - he's the twin brother of Life, only quite the opposite. He stays in his own world, scribbling away indecipherable patterns on the wooden desk, not caring about others. People find him odd. They don't understand him, hence fear him. But if you muster some courage to go up and befriend him, he'll hold your hand and invite you into his dark yet beautiful world, show you how finite and uncertain everything is, how important the time left in your life is and hence out of the "infinite possibilities" how limited your options really are, how limited the people who matter in your life are. Once you understand him, you no longer fear him. Of all your friends he’ll never be the best, but he'll be the wisest.

Wise. Precise. Concise.

Death.

P.S. - All characters and events mentioned herein are fictitious. 

The Call to Light

Far away,

In a universe unknown,

I gazed an invisible star.

It spent a ray to vigor,

A cell buried deep in my heart.

I yearn to be there,

To touch its soul,

Pour it into the darkness I endure,

And fill the vacuum of cells long dead,

For they are many, I’m sure.

But,

Agents of control are aplenty,

They muscle to architect me,

Into their own galaxy,

Then collapse me unto,

An irreversible singularity.

The inches are wide

The Newtons, Brownian,

Fate dictating the Book,

She authored, in delirium.

But, 

Mustn’t there be a book another?

If not, one waiting for an author?

Published in the same ether,

With I holding the tether.

Shrink, I must now,

Attain a duality,

To comply with their field,

And tread two galaxies.

When terminus I reach,

I’ll explode back again,

Into a universe my own,

With invisible stars that endure,

Long after I’m gone.

Soon, I must start,

The time is swell,

And mask the pen,

Lest they ring the knell.

An Odyssey to Wisdom

This is a long (but hopefully not a boring) read on the key learnings in the journey of love. The roles assigned to the 2 genders are completely arbitrary and has no bearing on the analysis.

You start appreciating the word “serendipity” – It all starts you first finding her when and where you had least expected to. You later wonder in sheer amazement about the myriad probabilistic events that had to align for the both of you to be at that place at that point of time.

The movies were right. It is indeed magical - The violins, the angels flying in the air, time beating slower when she turns and smiles at you, intolerable waits, new-found fondness for music, unconditional exuberance when together, yada yada – all of this (and much more)  that you always dismissed as whimsical movie histrionics now pleasantly surprise you.  One proposes, other accepts, and you are a couple! The time-frame of courtship may vary hugely though. The initial days are full of unbridled excitement, moments that take your breath away, feelings that you never knew existed, emotions that create memories of a lifetime.  You will do things for each other and make each other feel beautiful, important and loved. Love becomes your oxygen.

You will live and feel “serenity” – You’ll have feelings of inner calm, peace and tranquility that you had never felt before. “Break-up” is a word you’ll think doesn’t exist in your lexicon. “Fights” is a word you’ll laugh-off as a trivial infelicity and wonder why other couples indulge in it. Long-distance will be a myth you would dispel with disdain. For a brief but glorious period of time you’ll think that you are the most happy, stable, secure and unique couple there ever was.

The beginning of the end -  "'Tis not love's going that hurts my days, But that it went in little ways."-  You’ll have your first fight on the most trivial of issues. Its brevity will make you ignore it as a one-off thing. “We are too stable a couple to fight again, isn’t it?” And then you’ll have an argument again. And again. And then again. The slope of the graph of happy moments will slowly start decreasing and the graph of moments when you are arguing or fighting – that was until now chilling peacefully as a horizontal straight line – will suddenly wake up to attain a steadily increasing positive slope. Then, you realize it’s one of your many anniversaries. You get back to your best, celebrate with unbridled love, forget all the fights and promise to be like you were when you first met each other again.

The inflection point begins from a simple question – It all starts with an simple, practical yet devastating question – “What if we can’t be together forever?”. Once this question is seeded in her mind, the level of scrutiny on every action made and every word said escalates. Tolerance levels tank and every moment is a feedback to answer the bigger question – “Are we right for each other?” Practicality slowly kicks in, the magical moments don’t seem so magical anymore and it is here that stability stems from compatibility and mutual understanding to avoid the inflection point. Alas this is a privilege of only a fortunate few. For the majority, every discussion becomes a debate, every debate a fight. Useless words are said out of anger that they don’t mean but later hugely regret having said. “You always do this” and “You have changed” get spoken more often than “I love you”. Couples in a long distance relationship realize why “Long distance doesn’t work” is not a myth after all. Like a parasite, the 2nd question latches onto the first, draining nourishment from the bonds of the couple, and feeding off every fight and argument they have till it begets the unfortunate answer “No.”

The End is nothing you had ever imagined– You always knew it was coming but had no clue about the timing. Feelings for each other are never equally balanced and one of them will always love the other too much to wish for it to end. When it does, “It’s over” is the phrase that meets the most deafening silence followed by the most savage storm you have felt in your lifetime. Like someone has put their hand down your throat, tore out the heart from within, crushed and mutilated it in front of your very eyes, and then forced the squashed remains that is dripping in your blood down your esophagus. Every place, every song, every movie reminisces you of the memories you had once shared evoking unstoppable tears, slowly rotting, numbing and deadening you from within. "Is this the same person who once loved you so deeply? Where did we go wrong? It must be my fault. But entirely?” you think to yourself over-analyzing every word and moment spent together. You find no answers and get engulfed deeper into the storm.  

The movies and Paulo Coelho are wrong – The ubiquitous idea that true love never fails that the movies have unwittingly cultivated in your mind get a huge reality check. True love is necessary but not sufficient and persistence with someone who no longer loves you merely yields botheration. Worse, it crystallizes in their mind the correctness of their decision. Even if you want something from the bottom of your heart with the purest of emotions, the universe has a life of its own and better things to do than to conspire to provide it to you. Imagine the work-load on it having to conspire to the wants of so many people around the world. A relationship is like the output of an AND gate. It’s on only when both inputs are on and there’s nothing the universe can do to help.

There is no closure – You hope that you can reason with her and that someday she will realize that this was all a mistake and will be full of regret. But the chances of that happening are as good as you sleeping on earth and waking up on moon. She will be happy in her life. She will never regret it. Closure is not an entitlement. You can’t earn it and most likely will never get it so don’t wait or hope for it. This practicality is the final nail in the coffin of your “magical” relationship.  

The beginning of a new beginning. Nothing lasts forever!  –  One day you force yourself to meet your friends and get surprised when you spurt out the feeblest of smiles at a silly joke. Then you laugh. Then a bit louder. There is a ray of hope. Inch by inch you crawl back. But normalcy is still far away. You start finding ways to keep yourself busy – jogging, gym, books, movies, TV series, documentaries, Quora, friends, writing, a latent passion, etc. You find something interesting and cling on to it for inspiration. The inches add up. You finally find a goal (new job, promotion, etc.) and doggedly put in efforts. You might fail in it but that’s not what the bigger purpose of the goal was either. Your time is much precious and the world has endless facets to learn, feel, and emote. The storm subsides gradually, the clouds melt away giving way for soft sunshine that kisses your face. You are done with the 500 days of Summer and know that there might be an Autumn somewhere waiting for serendipity.

Unconditional love is not a myth. You are just looking for it at the wrong place – You will realize that (almost always) the only people capable of loving you unconditionally will be your immediate family. There is no match to the undying love of your parents and if you love them back a tiny fraction of how much you loved your ex, the world will be such a better place! People are selfish. Everybody lies, people we love break our trust and leave us in the darkest of abyss wailing in gut-wrenching debilitating pain. So you have to find the people worth getting hurt for. Our parents deserve to be our first choice.

Now that you know all this, you ask yourself that if this is the cycle do you really wish for Autumn?

Yes. No. Maybe?

The end might have been painful, but for a time you had someone who truly loved you , created "magical" moments with you, gave you butterflies in your stomach, and made you happy. They are special people and the journey was worth it. As someone has wisely said - "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened". Wish them happiness, and find some for yourself too. And to answer the question - do you really have a choice whence swept off your feet by serendipity?  Who knows you just might evade the inflection point this time!  If not, you’ll be a wiser person!

P.S. 1 - At the risk of being repetitive, the analysis is not gender specific.

P.S. 2 - The author wishes for a world where most journeys aren't a complete cycle. 

The Divine

Faith – an armor impregnable to the swords of reason and logic. If I really really believe that in my hand I hold an invisible blue cat that perpetually vigils me, loves and empowers me when I need it to, listens to whatever I have to say and ask - patiently, and with roughly 50% probability fulfills my prayers – and no matter what anyone says, it is MY belief so everyone else MUST respect it – will the burden of the proof lie on others, and will the absence of evidence to prove me wrong imply that I am right? Is my belief universal or is it just an idiosyncrasy cultivated unwittingly by myself?

The concept of God is much the same which is why (if true) something so universal is so ludicrously subjective with opinions about Him and His “mysterious ways” much different across religions. Just like contemporary media, is it not possible, that the very scriptures envisaging the foundation of God and religions might have been taken a bit out of context? Is not possible that the author meant that Ravan was so learned and intelligent as if he had 10 minds? Why is it that Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings considered fiction but books depicting monkeys building bridges and one super-monkey making a trip to Himalayas and bringing back a mountain, considered sacred – when both intrinsically uphold the triumph of good over evil? Is it not strange (and borderline convenient) that all the mystical appearances and physics defying antics have ceased to be observed in contemporary times where technology can help capture them much more scrupulously leaving no room for subjectivity? 

People we love break our trust and leave us in the darkest of abyss wailing in gut-wrenching debilitating pain. But God, God loves us all, and listens to everyone with unremitting patience. But does repeating words from a sacred text establish a communication with Him? And why is there a need to pray? To thank him for whatever He has given us or to cajole Him for whatever we need in life? In either case, doesn’t God being omniscient already know all this?  Don’t we consider Him to be smart enough and hence don’t want to risk not reiterating the obvious just in case? Isn’t that time better spent making our own or someone else’s life better or happier? Is there really a need to go to ultra-commercialized temples/mosques/churches and attach huge “divine” value to selected pieces of stone when God is omnipresent? And are we implying that Gods are really so low on self-esteem that they need perpetual prayers and get easily offended by caricatures, novels and words of mere mortals? Where do we draw the fine line between faith and superstition?

Do we really have a “force” which oversees us all and maintains a balance of justice? Adolf Hitler exterminated 12 million (innocent) people – and then died by committing suicide by shooting himself – a way a lot of random people with much less blood on their hands die every year. Is there any shred of evidence or any way to prove that he got a commensurate punishment? This is where certain religions bring in a master-stroke of a concept of “janam” or rebirth – that much like an accounting balance sheet whatever good or bad you do in this birth gets carried over to the next one and then to the next one – another huge leap of faith with no way of proving or disproving whatsoever. How is Hitler’s pain and punishment distributed across his later births? Is it a uniform distribution? Or is it a decreasing exponential distribution with the most painful births first thus implying that one of the most miserable and crippled persons on earth right now might have been Hitler in his/her previous birth?

Other concepts at loggerheads are that of God and Karma. If we were to believe in Karma - whatever happens to us is a causality of our own actions and deeds, then why do we need a God and His decree? Is God then merely an accountant keeping tabs of all our activities? The huge concern with the theory of Karma is the wrong and insensitive transfer of blame. The brutal rape and murder of an innocent girl can then be attributed to some of her own bad karma in this (or previous) birth thereby transferring a part of the blame from the abominable perpetrators of crime to the girl herself. Really?

We hate holes in our understanding and we hate unanswered questions. The concept of God is a much convenient way of plugging all the loopholes in our understanding of life – so much that most of us just accept it the way it is taught to us as kids and never even question it even when we grow up to be equipped with arsenal of logic and reason. On some level we are so busy, and this concept is so “well-accepted” that doesn’t even merit our time to ponder over, though it quintessentially guides the way we lead our lives – be it praying, visiting places of worship, keeping fasts, not consuming non-vegetarian food or alcohol, facing a particular direction while sleeping, etc. And on some level, we are also too scared that if we dig deep and ask questions, it might convulse the very foundations of our (small) understanding of the way the world works that we have believed in since our inception. Our adult lives are already too complicated with mundane issues to add divine ones to them. Maybe we conveniently want to believe this and depend on science to eventually prove that all of this is in fact correct. A headline of a Hindi local newspaper when the ‘God Particle’ Higgs Boson was discovered in 2012 was – “scientists finally prove that there is God in each and every particle of the world”.

Few things which are common across religions are that we must not lie and (un)knowingly cause pain to others; we must live with love, peace, equality and harmony; we should respect elders; and try to spread as much love and happiness. Isn’t all of this elementary common sense and something we must do irrespective of a belief in the presence of a higher power? The dark side of religion needs no elaboration.  (The second largest religion in the world doesn’t consider women to be equal to men.) Do we then really need a God?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes, and lies in – Fear and Hope. Fear is the biggest deterrent and people must be convinced that if they do wrong there is a force greater than the bendable legal system (created by mere mortals) that is omnipresent and somehow brings wrongdoers to the sword. If the fear of God’s wrath disappears, it is not difficult to see that in the battle for power/money and the ‘survival of the fittest’, there would be no incentive for anyone to not annihilate the rest for their own advantage leading to utter chaos and disintegration of the society as a whole wherever the legal system is not robust. Though there is little evidence to show whether Hitler or psychopaths in general are fundamentally devoid of this fear, (watch out – this is correlation and not causality)  it doesn’t warrant a leap of faith to assume a certain correlation between the two. A deep-instilled fear of a higher power is hence a necessary evil.

Hope – in our mundane and painful lives, especially in difficult times, we need hope to keep us going. The hope that if one does good things or follows the commandments of a “sacred” book, God will ensure that good things happen to him/her. And that whenever shit happens, it is merely God’s way of testing one’s patience/character. Since He only has our best interests in mind, He must have designed a dawn for this pall of darkness. To alleviate ourselves from the sorrows of our lives, we need hope in the form of a placebo - God.

We have an innate desire to cling to ideologies and “follow” people or groups. However unfortunate it may be, pragmatically speaking, we are better off following an abstract irrational concept as a super-power rather than following mortals which entails the possibility of them believing that they are as powerful as Gods themselves. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Moreover, if we assign (or had assigned) the status of Gods to say Sachin and Ponting, or Newton and Einstein, or Pele and Maradona – people will yet again divide into groups and fight irrationally over the supremacy of one God over another, those close to the “Gods” will become preachers of the God’s ideals/philosophy and when the Gods die everything will be much to the subjective interpretation of these preachers. In short, the society will eventually boil down to the same construct as it is today. Ironic, dismal, but most likely true.

Irrationality explains everything and hence explains nothing. God is the irrational answer to every unanswered question. The problem is that we try to find person-specific answers to whatever happens to us. But in the world we live in, the things that happen to us are not merely a causality of our own actions but also a causality of actions of many others as well. And maybe it is this hugely complex inter-connectedness that makes even the attempts to try to find answers to these questions absurd. There can be multiple theories about how the universe works, the origin and purpose of life, and the governing dynamics of everything,  but the magnanimity of the preposterousness and the opulence of the leaps of faith makes the theory of God one of the lesser plausible ones.

Irrational. Improbable. Equivocal.

God.

P.S. 1 – This is not an exercise to try to convert believers.

P.S. 2 – Tolerance for the aforementioned ideas, non-indulgence in taking offence, and discussions are welcome.

P.S. 3 – Hinduism, being one of the more tolerant religions, has been tapped into for most examples.

P.S. 4 – The use of ‘He’ and ‘Him’ to refer to God is unintentional. Though it is more likely that it is a ‘Him’ than a ‘Her’ given the shoddy design of the universe comprising so much pain, violence and suffering.

The Truth

“As I recite the mantras, repeat the lines after me and say his name at appropriate places”, said the pundit, clad in a white kurta, saffron dhoti and with three white sacred lines running across his forehead. The two of them, crouched with folded hands, started the recitation as 10-15 people stood behind them in the open air of the verandah with the sunlight slowly fading away in keeping with its daily routine.

As the 65 year old man recited the first line after the pundit, he broke down in an inconsolable grief. For a moment he lost control of his physical being as a whole with his torso helplessly swaying as if he had got a seizure. He folded his hands again and shook his head frantically in denial as tears gushed out of his helpless eyes.  “No God, No. Please” – he wailed in pain. Two men standing behind him rushed to console him. In vain. The patience and stoicism that the man had shown for the last few hours had finally given away as he looked into the eyes of his 38 year old son, dead  from a cardiac arrest, decorated with flowers and covered with a white cloth, lying on a wooden bed on which a man traverses on his final journey. 38 years old ! And there it was – lying right there in front of him. Motionless. Breathless. Dead.

For most it would have been the most helpless sight they would have ever witnessed. And for some, the breaking down was reassuring of his pain as the stoicism showed by the man with a young dead son till now was disturbing and convolutedly confounding as though it was a sacrilege to some mandatory social norm of demonstrating “visible grief”. “Why wouldn’t he cry?” – they thought. But no more.

They finished the mantras and proceeded to the burning ghat alongside the holy river for the final rites. With the body neatly stacked in the middle of a heap of shabbily cut wooden logs, the man started the first of the final rituals of touching the legs and the face of his son with the burning wooden torch in his hand. “You did not touch the face with the torch correctly. Do it properly or else it is unacceptable”, shouted the pundit from behind angrily. With a heavy heart and a numb indifference for the “correctly” the man re-did it in an “acceptable” way.

“Stop it. There is a mistake in the paperwork. I will not allow you to burn the body” – yelled the ghat  government official from the porch behind and then rushed back to his office. For a moment there was silence. Dead silence. Literally and figuratively. Followed by indistinct chattering as the man rushed to the office with three companions. “The address of the body is not mentioned in the death certificate” – said the official. “What ? Address ? But sir all that is written by the death certificate official. And in a hurry we only  checked the name/age/father's name and the date of death in the certificate”, the man replied. “I don’t know all that. I will not allow you to proceed. Go back and get the address written and take the body back with you” – he retorted with arrogance and an air which breathed “I shall not be convinced (verbally) ”. The string of cars parked outside had replenished his repugnantly insensitive resolve. The man broke down again at the torture – both divine and human. The pain of the situation could not do to the official what two pieces of valuable paper slipped below the window by one of the companions did. The human torture had been weathered. The divine beckoned.

The next rites followed and soon the entire wooden framework and the body caught fire with mild crackling sound of the burning wood and stream of flints flying off from the pyre diffusing into the air as though meeting their destiny. The raging fire slowly engulfed the body. The near and dear ones dispersed slowly. A tall lanky guy in his twenties - named Apoorv - stood by the side of the pyre looking unceasingly at the façade. He was a cousin of the deceased and had been there witnessing everything the entire time. He looked at the face of his brother first being innocuously kissed by the flames, then being slowly plasticized to bereave it of its identity, and then being ripped off of the skin to expose a charred skull and eventually getting annihilated to mere ashes. A sequence disturbingly etched in his memory. His most profound experience yet.

There was a fire raging within Apoorv with repulsive hatred and obnoxious anger. The disgust and outrage at the thought of the helplessness and debilitation of man who turns from a living person a few moments ago to a mere “body”. Everything experienced, learned, felt, emoted – over in the blink of an eye. Just like that. Fate, destiny, an all-controlling omnipotent supreme power who tracks meticulously all that one does – is that the explanation? Really ? And does it really matter if the torch doesn’t touch the face of the body “correctly”? Is there a grace in death? And what is it that we are madly and frenetically running after in our lives? Where and what is its purpose and what are we trying to achieve? What is it that is just an idiosyncrasy cultivated unwittingly by us ourselves and what is it that really matters? Where and what is the “meaningful” part of life? What is the point of it all?

In the funeral pyre, Apoorv unloaded and cremated a baggage. A baggage of feelings, emotions, battered hope and sorrows that he had been untiringly carrying for the past few months. There can be no sorrow greater than that of a 65 year old man cremating his young son. There was no point in carrying it further. He completed its final rites. Resigned and despondent.

After a few hours, the pyre subsided and he carried the collected ashes to be ushered in the holy river, but the fire raging within him burnt unabated. Such was the magnanimity of the preposterousness of the dearth of the answers to the torturous questions. There were none in fact. Only the one single absolute truth – Death.

Undeniable. Unavoidable. Unequivocal.

Death.

P.S. 1 – All characters and events mentioned herein are fictitious.

P.S. 2 – It was later found that there was no provision/mandate of mentioning an address on the certificate.