Happy New Year 2020

And so, the decade comes to an end.

Last year I decided that resolutions get us nowhere. We get all hyped up and are determined to work them out until the first week and then everything evaporates. We remember them sometime later and then try to get back to it but never seem to have the discipline to stick to them. So I relaxed last year and walked the road as it was revealed to me. I was also travelling at that time with family and nothing seemed more important than just being together so the dreams I wanted fulfilled, already were by then.

This year, the beginning of a new decade, I have a few resolutions. Some situations need to be resolved and some habits require dire change for the ripples to remain positive so I have made a list of things I will bring to this decade. I have made the pact with myself and certain matters are not to be broadcasted, so I will steal most of the details for myself. The one that needs mentioning and the most important of my resolutions is minimization.

Over five decades, I have seen more of hoarding in my family than of diminution, a disorder none of us were aware of until one day I woke up unable to breathe, most probably because I had a terrible nightmare of someone strangling me, but as I woke up, I looked around and attributed it to our inability of parting with or discarding things we were not using for years.

The excessive accumulation of items we perceived to have a need for, if not immediately, then in the future had driven us to create a cramped living condition with every corner and wall filled up, and as we aged, we could neither tidy up nor clean the clutter, stacking them everywhere and making them a part of our daily living. This not only killed me slowly but helped contribute to the constant decline in both my physical and mental health, affecting the way I function both at work and in society on a large scale.

In recent months, my attitude towards hoarding took a drastic change, and I started giving away things I have treasured for years having given them more value than they deserved.

The process of healing is yet to be completed as the corners of the house are still unable to breathe. Therefore this resolution includes giving away one item every day for the coming 365 days. It is a heavy task but not so heavy that it cannot be achieved. Along with material things, I have also included a habit or an idea or a kind of food or even people that I will do away with every single day in the coming year. I will also list them all down.

Here, I will address you, Mansi. You asked me if there was a chance I would discard you too. It is easy to say that I will never do that knowing the bond you and I have and the connection that was created by the universe. However, that isn’t my reply. You know I have always been honest with you so I hope this will convey what I want to say. I wrote this for you and for all my friends who would probably ask me the same question.

2019 has been an absorbing year. I made it to my monastery, a long awaited fulfilled wish. A sanctuary of my own creation, and a haven for solitude. I called her `Ashon’, meaning seat or posture in Bengali. But when we were kids, ma used to refer to the prayer altar as Ashon, and so I wanted that connection to my paradise.

Travel to India was frequent. We made it to the south as a family. After which, I travelled places I never imagined. After a year of writing and being friends, I met a few `your quote’ (yq) friends, one I travelled with to Hampi and Badami. Two I met in Bangalore and one more in Bhubhaneshwar. Unfortunately, I was unable to meet a friend in Kashmir, but instead I met my fellow blogger’s family. It was both beautiful and surreal.

The golden temple In Amritsar, the treacherous journey in Himachal, the Tibetan gongs and singing bowls in the Dalai Lama temple in McLeod Ganj, the Konark Sun Temple, the Buddhist triangle of Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri, Udayigiri of Orissa and the magnanimous snow peaked mountains of Kashmir were the highlights.

Snow touched me for the first time in Gulmarg after 53 years.it was such an exhilarating moment.

Duli’s silver jubilee and Putul’s adulthood made this year memorable. Also Putul’s excellent results got her a place in TARUC, at a concession for a foundation programme in Bio-Science with Chemistry which will have her sitting for the final semester in April of 2020 to qualify for her entrance to a degree programme. She has also received her full license in both riding and driving. Duli quit her job and decided to take a break to recuperate from the toxic environment of corporate life.

I remain jobless and declare that there is nothing in the world which is better than this. It is the best thing that I have done for myself, the second best being Ashon.

On advice from a fellow yqian, I created another profile in the writing app and started penning without caring about comments or likes. It felt great to just manifest everything in the mind without caring where it came from or where it was going or even if it made any sense at all. None of my work is discoverable in google but I will transfer them to IG in the next decade.

I have created a new blog only for movies and book reviews as I did not want it to blend with this blog where I am personal. I am yet to write a review there. I wanted Ali A. Rizvi’s book to be the first review but perhaps I will start with something else, a movie maybe. Duli, Putul and I recently watched a Korean movie called Parasite, a movie worth writing about.

My writing goals are fulfilled so far, however the next year has a list waiting. I have also promised myself I will at least make it to fifteen entries in the thoughtfills blog with my fellow blogger by the end of 2020. However, the major task and the biggest hurdle is to complete writing the book I have always imagined writing and if I may say so, completing.

Time is a test I will need to pass now. It is on a marathon mode presently and if I don’t start flexing my muscles, I will never catch up. By the end of 2020 I can no more complain of its brevity. Instead, I will also highlight the time I spent doing all the nothings that I want.

2020 is a year to look forward to. The world will witness self driving cars in plenty, flying cars, though highly improbable will be present even in developing countries like Malaysia. Robotics will thrive, there will be more robots, more machines, less needs for humans to perform technologically and Japan will build a robotic lunar outpost before the end of the year. The Chinese will shift attention from China to the west to gorge on any resources like timber or minerals by offering a high speed rail line completely at their cost running from the west to the east (China) in the coming decade. Also fossil fuels will take over bio fuels which will prove cleaner vehicle fleets and less dependency on volatile regions for energy. This decade will also witness computers having the processing power of the human brain, and microchips will be planted in a human brain to correct any defects on neural communications. As for our computers, 5G and paper thin OLED surfaces will wipe out all else. Apple and other smart phone companies will follow Samsung with the foldable technology and while they do that, the galaxy S11 will come out with no front camera, no charging port and no head jack. They will all feature under display with both wireless charging and earphones.

Change, being the only constant will remind us that those minds who refuse to change their opinions will cease to be minds.

I have had plenty of encounters in my life, and I hope you will too. Now as we close the chapter of a decade and open another, let your pen ink up and continue your story if you favour it, but if you don’t, it remains in your power to alter it, in any small way you can. We bid farewell to a past of learnings hoping we use those experiences to guide us in new lessons in our present and future. Fill your lives with inspiration, passion and motivation that is available both within you and around you. There is magic in positive thinking and you can turn it into a magnet to attract colossal reciprocity. You can create genius and power if you believe in it. You neither need perfect conditions nor unlimited talents, you just need to make a decision and follow it through.

My wish for you this new year is peace. The chaos will be slightly better if you don’t contribute to it and just focus on your progress so you can make some kind of change when you are able to.

In the Chinese Zodiac it is the white metal rat year, a good year both financially and progressively if you put in the effort. Therefore you will reap only if you are brave enough to sow. With that, wishing you a tranquil and a healthy year of bountiful procurements.

Happy 2020.

LOVE

The last post was more than a year ago. It is amazing how time flies these days. I have allowed much time to pass before getting back to my blog again. But thoughts continue to come and go and this time, I will stop giving excuses and will not say that I did not have the time to pen them down. Instead, I will admit that my laziness overpowered my excitement in writing.

Love.

In recent months, a range of conceptions have crossed my mind on its definition. This whole post is written on the basis of thoughts that enter when reason somehow does not qualify an answer. I write this despite knowing that literally everyone who reads it will disagree vehemently. But my rationality in this is that I am neither here to argue nor defend myself. We are absolutely right in whichever way we want to look at it. If I had read a post like this, perhaps a year ago, I would be in the same band width as everyone else, opposing such a ridiculous idea. We often do not live in dimensions that are unseen and fathoming anything near them is unfeasible and implausible.

The Oxford English dictionary defines love as :

“An intense feeling of romantic attachment based on an attraction felt by one person for another; intense liking and concern for another person, typically combined with sexual passion.”

I do agree that there are many other definitions of love. But largely they run on the same lines.

Humans evolved.
Well, not with dracula characteristics or dinosaur strength, but with anatomical modernity.

We lived through wars, but fights did not seem the way to live in a society. So we espoused an effective way of living in peace with each other. As a result, we took on an emotional and dependent attachment to one another, which ensued in us being less selfish and more giving. We called it love and permitted it to overwhelm our lives. Perhaps it helped us survive, and eventually live.

Assuming Tabula Rasa is true, we are born with no prior content and ultimately we secure knowledge and understanding through perception and experience of self and others. Based on this, our whole lives could be a fabrication of what has been fed to us, unless it is proven without a doubt to our satisfaction, that our history books (also other ancient tomes including our religious scriptures) are based on facts.

Is love a feeling? Or has it been imposed on us masterfully? Think about it.

The love which is natural is affection, the kind that cares, not the kind that exists today in narcissism or irrational loyalty and insane madness for another person.

Again, it may be that I am juggling words to explain my thoughts on this. Let me try a different approach.

Just like all else, our parents teach us what they have been taught. We are disciplined neither to question, nor oppose those teachings. And if we have the courage to question, then perchance, we will be discouraged to get into an argument about it. Some of us become rebels because of this, most of us become like our parents. So we have a world of followers and a `fatwa’( for want of a better word), on the person who thinks differently, the rebel.

Before the 12th century, love meant loyalty among a group of people.

But after, romantic love was scripted in songs and auditioned in movies. It was when the invention of romantic love began in literature, it was then that passionate emotions were displayed, sold and adopted by all.

The bard, made popular his romantic tragedy and magnified celebration of obsessive love, in happiness and sorrow, life and death. In scepticism, I see love and tragedy as a contradiction. How is despair and anguish a celebration?

Love is a lasting preoccupation for us, more so in designing melancholy as an attachment in a meaningful pattern making it almost beautiful. Are we reduced to thinking that perhaps these feelings belong to us? Our assumptions are made normal in the beliefs of others, and as a result of ours too.

But I think it is an intriguing concept that it is actually an exhibit and a belief that is passed from generation to generation, and perhaps an affliction, we cannot cure ourselves from. And it is interesting to question why we would doubt what and how everyone feels if we feel the same way. But again, is it really a feeling or an emotion planted on us to display normalcy?

I, in oppose to normalcy, declare that passion, romance and sex are neither a part of love nor an extension of it. I look upon the connection in trepidation, not being able to justify the thoughts of the masses. We follow and we are followed, an ailment we continue to will to our children. If we look back at those passionate romances, they were the acts of inanity, still, how easily we excuse ourselves from them, saying we did them for love.

Not much later, the industrial revolution emerged, when structural changes from agriculture to industry influenced daily lives in every socio-economic strata. Men left for the cities in search of work and women were emancipated in their economic status giving them a kind of equality to the men. Duty to the job and responsibility to family were priorities. Romance and sexual gratification became business.

It was only in the 19th century with the age of romanticism, when all of a sudden, people’s feelings were of utmost importance. Love became a fairy tale of happy ever afters. Embodied in music, literature and arts, intense emotions became a source of aesthetic attachment. Romance became an easy sell and business men pounced on it for mega bucks. They sold excitement, passion and eternal love through advertisements and testimonies.

Being in a relationship of marriage and keeping it going is dreary and unappreciated. With romance, we are swept off our feet and claim devotion pour toujours for our partners. We cannot foresee that anything could possibly go wrong with such a passion. The drama of romance ignores all faults and failures of a relationship right in front of our eyes so we remain delusional and continue displaying the witless acts through it until we finally commit to one another and find out to our dismay, that the reality of it all is something else. Our understanding of love and its overestimated magical ability to solve any rift in the relationship will crumble in argument, disappointment and depression.

Romance in love is a fantasy that inspires us to make the wrong choices. We are overwhelmed with an emotion that takes control of us by blocking our rational thoughts. It isn’t an emotion we were born with, it is passed on to us as a concealed misfortune of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that will eventually cause us pain one way or the other. We are deceived by people who did not know they too were tricked into believing something which was not there at all, and which was possibly never meant to be there. We imagined it, we created it, we hyped it up, we gave a name to it and we made it an invisible contagious disease passing it to our own children, and then we let it destroy us. How conveniently ignorant and mindless we have become.

Let us recognize real things, like respect and value. Being brave and humble, and being in a continuous and constant state of gratitude. Being reliable and progressing in our lives while guiding others with honesty and honour. Let us be kind and supportive when no one is watching and contribute in every way we possibly can to everyone around us every time we are able to.

What has all these got to do with love?