How much can we share?

How much can we share? I guess people are reading lot of Gita these days, and practicing the wisdom of “words are like arrows, and you must dip them into alcohol before mounting them on to the bow”. Most of it has to do with thinking that we will be advantaged-off in some sense, or because we think it is too soon to mow the lawn—“hell, it’s been raining since days, it can’t really catch fire”. And then, we talk past each other, our models haven’t failed us so far, or even if they have, we have been taught to believe that we should be persistent, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. It seems as though we are just waiting for chance, which is apparent from the fact that very few of us are very good listeners. “Bingo, the DNA has matched, wanna catch a drink?”

As if we are not sure about the right grammar, so we assume that other is wrong. How much can we agree? For e.g. most of the women have complex emotions, not that men don’t have any, but women have more so. Our walls are thick, some easy and some not easily penetrated. But then you take a chance, you feel youcan talk to this guy, doesn’t it happen that we just feel right when talking to someone? But are you ready to take that chance? Do you make them feel home to a level that they are not hesitant to borrow some money from you? But the levels can vary, some people build walls depending on the person that they are confronting with—I agree and don’t agree. There is always something to eat in the kitchen if you search for it hard enough; you just have to want to pamper your taste bud, that’s it. “It is more than satisfying the hunger”, you say, I agree, but, “have you?” I ask.

I guess the job is made easier if you have got lot of history. You can just put some assorted stuff on the plate and ask people to taste it. If the assortment is repelling, he/she would simply walk away from you, for the larger good I would say. Or, I think the good old fashioned ways might be the right thing—just stick to the circle instead of letting it get circular. “So you are saying not to keep an open mind?”

I always keep saying it—life is good in its own ways—it is sometimes better to not to have a choice! I try to act sagacious at times, right now–don’t you think I am sounding like one? Just something on my plate,would you care to taste it?

This might be very clear if you have tried your hand at any art, be it music, writing, painting, anything else. These days even arts is commercialized, we learn the rules first and then play the game afterwards rather than the other way around. If you are a musician, you would know how much people are obsessed with scales, time signatures and phrasing, pivoting sticks on index and middle fingers and thumbs even before they start to play something significant. As if these sheets will spring up emotions; you can’t really work your way through rules, can you? Yes, you may succeed at living at a perfectly bland and blissful-in-its-own-way kind of life. Or am I just extrapolating without sufficient evidence?

But aren’t you just telling me to lick my…?

When we agree, we might be risking our freedom, especially if we are going to hang out with some person for long. It is a fashion these days to agree. If we look around, persons who live with simple instincts don’t agree, to refute is natural, we definitely are skeptical before doing anything. But those around us who try to be smart (and succeed sometimes) are the ones who would show their ambiguity even when the situation doesn’t call for it. The Rajasthani Jalebi vendor near my house was furious the other day and had a debate with me when I told him I have been to Rajasthan long time back, and that I have had wonderful Jalebi’s there. He said he was using the exact same recipe here, “do you want Rajasthani weather here?” he asked me. After an extensive analysis, generally, if two people are at “similar” wavelengths, then chances are that the persons never really disagreed much, but we really won’t get time to call a blood spatter analyst every time you see a red spot in your wash basin, would you?

Can we simply say –Yes, I agree, Wikipedia is a stupid fuck! Lots of gurus around the web don’t like it. And we start building and building on top of that, one fine day, the same guy walks into your room and checks Wikipedia T-shirts lying on your bed.

Diplomatic, the buck stops there, we don’t want to lose, and lots of us want to finish their journey by keeping their feet on two boats at the same time. I doubt why people blame politicians, being politic is a skill acquired without spending energy these days. I have already talked about it, but then there are intuitive disagreements, and others are just plain straight. Intuitive ones are difficult to get around, we can’t possibly scratch somebody’s neck and know the degree of itching or the number of days he/she hasn’t washed himself/herself.  The plain straights ones also can get tricky sometimes, like I contracting Swine-flu have as much chance as Jennifer Lopez coming up with something better than “If you had my love”. The latter one is based on more evidence, I would say, but you would gather all the possible evidence and say that “you see? I have a theory; I have formulated results based on this and that”. But I say again, right and wrong has nothing to do with perspectives, ‘right’ is subjective to the results you want to achieve, but that has nothing to do with perspectives, isn’t it? Right still remains right for achieving particular result, right doesn’t become wrong, we cannot really solve the ‘wrongs’ by being at the same level of wrongness, can we?

Food for thought

Will you just stop being friends with somebody just because you vehemently disagree with him/her?

Sometimes we make a mistake by putting thoughts into others head. We put the thought we are experimenting with, the person too naïve to understand that, doesn’t give us a chance. You can’t reverse it, the person has taken the input, mixed it with his/her understanding of ‘how things work’ and you lose.

Experimenting is NOT allowed, from up here, the ground seems very far, I wish I could spot that left turn the SUV had taken, but it is just too hazy right now. But I have come across few who are extremely skeptical of everything. They simply can’t agree with anything they come across in life. Our group in college had a friend called Sudan. He simply won’t agree with anything that anybody has to say, exceptions were there, but what equations governed his decision making theory of ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ is not known to anybody. “Yeh toh kuch bhi Nahi hai” meaning “this is nothing”, and would pull out few rabbits out of his hat, mindyou, he was the best programmer college has ever seen, and is a scientist in Adobe right now.  I was about to give another example, you know man I am talking about you, do you mind?

To teach is in our genes

Then why are we running away from learning? Are we spending way too much on self defense? We are the president and the finance minister here, we can take the call all by ourselves. Do our political systems need some revamping? May be more concentration on agriculture? More greenery please? Fresh air please? We understand that it is still, perhaps understandably, people imposing their experiences over us? We communicate for all kinds of reasons, we don’t have to know the story of everyone out there, but are we gathering just enough? Are you finding enough of them to find the right one to which you want to add more to? World would have died out long ago, if we didn’t like to teach, always wanting to teach other things we think are better, there isn’t anything wrong with it. Speech is only one of the instincts that have been genetically passed on to us, and for a good reason. If there is so much space for non-sensical speech, then why not for sensible ones? Are we afraid that we might teach something to somebody that we didn’t intend to? Competition, is that about it? You wanna feel safe, is that about it? I would have felt safe if alongside my new underwear, the piles of millions of other underwear’s and women’s pantyhose’s with the strange photo on the cover I would have been able to see my mother smiling at me with her thumb up.

There are instances when we tell ourselves that ‘detachment is the key’, but then, there are also moments when we crave for just those minutes of unbroken attention from someone. I still feel detachment is the key, but that should be an after-result, instead of a beginning. Our proximity is the key to finding a chance to expose ourselves to new fields of understanding, of ourselves and who we are. Don’t we all want to experience the impalpable, the sense of emotion to express and connect even though our minds speak different languages? Won’t you break those chains stifling you and let out the stale air inside you? Or wouldyou still pretend, even after you have seen someone naked? I know it can make us cry and make our eyes unblinkable, but will you still raise your eyes and stare past the tears? For once, would you like to know that grass is so much greener on the other side?

I have been shifting between kitchen and my room while writing this, so what I have written so far might not make sense. I miss the Egg-Dosa (also the Chicken-Dosa, but I don’t eat meat now) from Bangalore, so I decided to give it a try since it is Sunday.

Do you see the relation?