More Reality for our Morality

I feel I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew here. 

The two aspects that this year have been pushed to the breaking point. It’s been a trying year for the depths of human compassion, empathy, survivalist drive & a sheer fight for will wherever it may hide. The world we left one night comforted by walls of privilege seemed to unravel overnight in front of our eyes. But did it? Was it really ever about one night? One person? One victim? One patient? I think the biggest testament to this year are the two words of absolute terror “Community Transmission”.

The world has been far from perfect, burdened by visions, fears, greed & faith of billions, and ideas of billions before. But through it all this hurtling rock has hummed along. Indifferent & passive to screaming echoes in the void. And yet, this same strange rock contains within it a flavourful melody of anxiety riddled beings. Everyone living within their own confines & a shared reality differentiated by perspectives. Our shout of individuality has been our identity. Somewhere though this singular claim has become probably the most poisonous aspect of our society. We’re living in a world today where our identities are diminished on the verge of being denied. Socio-economic constructs have emerged as larger class barriers & within the confines of these intervals, humanity is pigeonholed with its own sense of morality, subject to its own tense of mortality.

This isn’t another review of 2020. Enough number of board meetings, news anchors, corner-stores have presented enough number of views on it, but probably the only aspect which needs to be derived from it is its unnerving almost militaristic sense of confrontation. The year has thrust into faces of everyone ready to face it, the kind of world we are living in. Biases, privilege have never been clearer, the demands of occupations, lack of representation of the disenfranchised, inequity of resources they are all on display through one form or another. And here we are. At a borderline of time with the option to stare dully at passing sands ready to quietly live in a world where these are blatant truths & are happening with our full knowledge and assent (by silence). This isn’t the world anymore where sinister phantoms were lurking in the shadows and we had to fear systems we couldn’t imagine. The monsters are out in the open and it is hunting season.

In an increasingly diversity gifted world, with civilization capable of showing empathy & genuine desire for brining altruistic change, our attentions are split and purposely distracted as a call to action for imaginary wars & agendas. Issues which might not exist, but are more importantly not asking the populace to contribute anything more than their silence. This silence though isn’t what they’re after. They are stealing voices. Voices which deserve to be heard and have minds behind them with ambitions, desires and fears that are being led astray into constricted buckets to engage those actually waging a war for the truth of the human spirit.

We are mortal beings faced with the daily reminder of our timed existence.

Our moral code exists to justify and canonize our usage of this life but how is this definition becoming standardized? Why is tribalism tied to this idea of self-preservation? The very nature of people is to evolve, change & grow to become better being capable of higher thought that both affirms our existence and the necessity to sustain it. Why are we using history & heritage for destroying rather than unifying?

We need to look how we got here. How our isolationism & desire for validation of our existence derailed into this new fight for decrying whatever does not fit within our definition. We cannot hope to forsake those with us because the tomorrow is “ours”. Time’s arrow moves forward & it will arrive here regardless. Unless that future tomorrow is something that is a shared vision, it will always remain incomplete & incapable of ever being anyone’s dream.

The question of any progress that is unable to be holistic is painfully ignorant. Any progress that embeds pain within it is a pointless scream into nothingness that’s begs for recognition for perceived sacrifice, only there is no recognition for any such pain. There isn’t a voice that replies & acknowledges. There is only the depth of biting silence & the pain of those who suffer silently & even worse, unwillingly to the whims of abstract power constructs. Battles of faith, as abstract textual concepts of great inspiration which demand interference of actual people & lives? Battles of economics that demand sacrifice for value. Of individuals, abilities, capabilities & the environment. Real damage that is meted out for concepts intended to be simple interpretations, to simplify & unite people are sowing the seeds of discord and disharmony.

There isn’t any big change in the offing. There isn’t a scripted response & change that’ll come unless it is built & made. Reality doesn’t bend to imagination. It can be guided by it through effort, inclusivity & determination. It’s necessary for us to relearn that & understand our change will have to be ushered in within ourselves. It will be uncomfortable because it will force us to grow, be, do & seek better.

This is our world. This is our reality and it needs to be changed. Apathy & hopelessness have to be rightfully discarded in this cluster-damn of a year which has rightfully shown the rewards for the fighters of both sides. For those who have picked up their share of efforts & driven evolution, have shown that their vision can & will inspire. They need us to join them. Our best brains need our best minds for building this future where we live up to the magic of our existence. And it starts when we do.

Independence Day

 If there is a fact most of the people are a testament to around me, is that I'm not a man who regularly assumes the best of situations and scenarios around me. Nor am I someone who fetishizes the worst of experiences of as a matter of catharsis for the processing of a series of emotions which otherwise could find their way only through a rather rampant series of dominating motions. I have come to realize that unlike a lot of pop art around us, life will not offer successful climactic artistic and powerful release from the bounding chains of a current reality. Life will not find its heroes emerging from sands as tall marble Grecian structure at least as their physical presence, but they will be as timeless and as important as structures to their patrons. They believe that the world they live in isn't right and by no order of faith they are ordained to a life that should deny themselves or anyone around them of the right to live a life safe and unencumbered by the chains of the modern day polarizing political scenario that demands exclusion from the people and the institutions entrusted with carrying out the will of the populace. 

This is the India most of us dream of. This is the India that those of us who regard as an example of a post colonial country reclaiming itself from becoming the poster child of some banana republic, aspire to see. It is the country those of us who work everyday to not want but end up building. 

Our shouts for a departure towards left wing politics are not for the seizure of the means of production as much as they are for the equitable distribution of the product of creation. Of the assurance and balance of opportunity to life and safety that should just naturally extend to everyone. We run around the circles established by an entrenched structure of administrative and bureaucratic qualifications to ensure that we do our bit to maintain all the requirements and demands of the modern day workplace and the demands of a competitive scenario in a world that has its borders shrinking but at the same time we aren't living in a world that assures a protectionist economy or one that even values its talent within enough to extend the balance of compensation for the sake of preventing a neo-colonial setup. The product of the modern day India is talent, meant to exponentially drive business everywhere. And as we're "progressing" with the current government and political situation, there is a steady dismantling of the structures that set to build up domestic strength. We are victims of our own history. Simply put, our political leaders express the same weakness that we do. We want to mean more, want to do more but are happy with the little piece of earth we get. 

Our leaders are full of hot empty gestures of reclaiming our own religion and our own supposed identity regardless of the fact that we're not a flashback cohort. We aren't going to be shocked in to some ancestral memory because that is not how the past works. You build up a civilization through years of belief and construction of pipeline of talent and dominance. It involves very simply planting trees that neither you nor your children will see to enjoy. It's very simply why our focus on issues at best have ever been tactical. We are awaiting the splinter(s) to divide a union that is awaiting the healing of an identity ignored for far too long. Of a belonging that wants to be named but is constantly lost in either ignorance or in false validation of jingoism, disregarding the real meaning behind the depth of the term. Being Indian. 

But as ever. This story comes with its own heroes. Not of the chest thumping shouters, but of the reactive, active expressioned individuals acknowledging that any definition of their identity is not going to be claimed by a community. It is not going to be declared as an allegiance to a political entity that was birthed from a misinterpreted concept. It is not going to belong to those who are trying to snatch the vision of a civilization from their true owners just because they are louder or seem to be everywhere. It is not going to belong to those who are unable to build it for its future and for the brilliance it can contribute to humanity. It belongs to those who get up everyday and without a question, unerringly look up and know that everyday is a new battle for them to forward the spirit of a country accepting and constructive, favourable to the people for their existence and not for the sheer positions of the powerful and the disenfranchised for their entrenchment. And it is to them that India truly belongs. They who understand where innovation and private enterprise lies within the sphere of human existence. Of what balance means and why correcting not just their countryfolks, but the world is essential. For all of them who stand up and defend that idea of a liberal, freedom loving country not just in India, but across the world; wish you a very happy Independence Day.