A Flickering Flame...

Politically Correct Nursery Rhymes

2010-12-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

Love this guy. Many of his books are out of print. Old or new copies available on the net seem to cost a bomb. Tried finding pirated stuff but no luck there either.

Hmm... maybe I should spend a bomb on those books. The bang you get from some things can't be measured by money.

On the other hand... heck, I could buy some really useful trekking gear with that kinda money. Or get some e-books printed.

Anyways, here are two politically correct nursery rhymes shamelessly lifted from excerpts on James Finn Garner's site...

There Was a Crooked Man

There was a crooked man,
And he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence
Against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
In a Residence for the Differently Angled.

What are Little Boys Made of?

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Testosterone and not much else.
That's what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand anyway.
That's what little girls are made of.

American Neurosis - A Cultural Analysis

2009-12-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

Any person who is even a little aware of the dynamics between various nations, societies and cultures, would have noticed how the USA, by far, has played the dominant role in it since the early 1900s. This is more so since the times immediately preceding WW-II, as those who would have read about the real reasons behind it would be well aware.

Personally, I think a second wave of US dominance has been unleashed by it's elites since the past two decades or so. Globalization, wars over natural resources, a disguised dictatorial regime essentially ruling the world, and a newly emerging agenda of maintaining western hegemony under the guise of going green, thus effectively hijacking anything meaningful that can be done, plus various other disturbing trends being the initial manifestations of this. I may well be wrong, of course, since I am not as well read as so many other people whose views and comments on such matters I find enlightening. We will know within a decade or two for sure.

The way I see it, the Americanization of the world, so to speak, has sharply accelerated since the early 1990s. It takes different forms in different nations and cultures, much like a shape shifting monster. The essential characteristics, though, remain the same. And this, I think, will create more havoc than anything else in human history. Think about it - imagine what would happen if even 25% of the non-westernized people in the world were to move toward a lifestyle that is at par with that of an average American, materially, socially and intellectually.

I shudder to think of such prospects.

Anyways, to get to the point, I'd read this really interesting essay which talks about the nature of American society. The way it manages to be concise and yet so penetrating is simply brilliant. The text version of the essay can be read here.

I discovered a YouTube channel which has an audio-visual version of it though, which is nice. Here it is, in 3 parts:

Resham Firiri - Vocal

2009-11-18T08:20:00.000-08:00

More!

A street musician playing the sarangi and singing Resham Firiri:

The complete folk version:

Resham Firiri - Instrumental

2009-11-18T08:10:00.001-08:00

Sone instrumental versions of the same song. The 1st one is especially nice.

Resham Firiri - Pop Version

2009-11-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

I find listening to this song over and over! (Memories are hard to fade somehow. The mind is a funny thing.) Found so many different versions on the net.

Here's a rather poppish version:

Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
[ My heart is fluttering like silk in the wind
I cannot decide whether to fly or sit on the hilltop ]
........
........
Ak nalay Banduk Duinalay Banduk Mirgalai Takayko
Ak nalay Banduk Duinalay Banduk Mirgalai Takayko
Mirgalai Mailay Takayko Hoina Mayalai Takayko
Mirgalai Mailay Takayko Hoina Mayalai Takayko
[ One-barrelled gun, two-barrelled gun, targeted at a deer
It's not the deer that I am aiming at, but at my beloved ]
........
........
Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
........
........
Sanoma Sano Gaiko Bachho Veeraima Ram Ram
Sanoma Sano Gaiko Bachho Veeraima Ram Ram
Chadeyre Jana Saktina Maile Baru Maya Antaija
Chadeyre Jana Saktina Maile Baru Maya Antaija
[ The tiny baby calf is in danger at the precipice
I couldn't leave it there, let's go together, my love ]
........
........
Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
........
........
KukuroLai Kutima Kuti Biralolai Suri
KukuroLai Kutima Kuti Biralolai Suri
Timro Hamro Mayapirti Dobatoma Kuri
Timro Hamro Mayapirti Dobatoma Kuri
[ To the dog it's puppy, puppy, to the cat it's meow meow
our love is waiting at the crossroads ]
........
........
Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
Udayra Jauki Dadama Vanjyang Resham Firiri
(till fade)

A bunch of westerners have sung it in a really soulful manner here.

Resham Firiri

2009-11-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

Back from Nepal...!! From my longest trip as well as my longest trek ever. Did Annapurna Circuit and ABC (Annapurna Base Camp) from Sep 26 to Nov 02. Also spent some time in and around Pokhara after that - relaxed, walked along the touristy Phewa lake, bicycled to nearby lakes and had loads of momos, thukpa and chowmein at the local restaurants. Being the cheapo that I am, I managed to get a room for 200 Nepali rupees a night, and hunted for cheap places to eat too.

Heard this rather silly sounding song in Nepal... It is the modified English version of a Nepali folk song. I would hear it now and then with the guides and porters singing it. It is very catchy though, if you sing it with the right tune.

Found the folk version on youtube, but not the one I used to hear on the trek.

Here are the lyrics for it anyways:

Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
I am a donkey, you are a monkey
Resham Firiri

Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Sometimes trekking, sometimes rafting
Resham Firiri

Resham Firiri
Resham Firiri
Sometimes drinking, sometimes sinking
Resham Firiri

The "i am a donkey, you are a monkey" bit refers to the Nepali porter being weighed down with a load and trudging along the trail like a donkey, while the trekker is free to hop along carefree like a monkey.

Sadly, that is truly quite often the case. I saw so many wealthy trekkers walking with a minimal load or even nothing on their backs while the poor, underclothed and underfed Nepali porters, wearing flip-flops, would carry back-breaking loads of anything from 25-50 Kgs. And that too with a smile on their faces.

I found that there are advantages as well as disadvantages to lodge based trekking. I would not have been able to trek solo with just a 18-20 kg. backpack if it were not for the lodges which eliminate the need to carry a tent, food, stove, utensils, fuel etc. Yet, this very convenience means that many people do this trek. Per estimates, about 30,000 people do some or the other trek in the ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) each year. Although the region was beautiful, and the trek very satisfying, as far as the style of trekking is concerned, I felt more like a tourist than a trekker. There was so little of roughing it out. Heck, there was a warm bed, blanket and even electricity at most places on the trail!

Yet, there are some advantages too. Nepal, I think, is doing a relatively great job when it comes to planning and managing trekking in the Himalayas. Certainly a much better job than India. The conservation areas are comparatively well cared for since the government as well as the locals have a vested interest in keeping it green, beautiful and unspoilt. Else, the government wouldn't get dollars, and the locals would not be able milk the tourists and trekkers :)

Things are changing though. The increased use of plastic is alarming. 'Development' is taking a heavy toll too. The road in the Kali Gandaki valley is a case in point - how it has changed this once remote and quaint region! The invasion in Nepal by Indian and western media is also having repercussions on the cultural fabric of the people.

And then there is global warming. As I walked along the edge of the morraine of the massive Annapurna south glacier, I could not help but notice how much it seemed to have shrunk. The glacier seemed to have more of debris than ice. The walls below the morraine were so steep that I think the glacier must have lost a great amount of height - as much as 50%, perhaps. As for the loss in length, I don't know. The locals too said that it was much more warmer at base camp since the past few years than before. It used to be a considerably more difficult trek earlier in terms of the weather, low temperatures as well as the trail.

Sigh.

I guess all this is inevitable. Maybe I should just trek to all the places I want to as soon as possible before they go to the dogs.

I would love to visit Nepal again though. Perhaps as early as next year. Am thinking of doing the Langtang & Helambu treks next year. Two separate treks which can be combined via either Ganja La or Gosainkund. This can be done solo.

Am more keen on the Manaslu trek though. Only hitch is the expense. Just the permit itself is US $90 a week..! But it is a great trek - safe, yet challenging, beautiful and involving a good amount of roughing it out. It can be done solo, but I hope I get a good partner to make it more enjoyable as well as safer.

Ah... I wish I could just keep trekking and living out of a backpack all my life :) But that is too romantic, dreamy and unpractical :)

Cry Me A River - Takao Uematsu

2009-09-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

King of the Road

2009-08-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

I've been finding myself humming this song although I couldn't get some of the lyrics. Heard it in the movie 'Into the Wild' which has really good OSTs by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King. This one though is not an OST. It is a classic country song by Roger Miller. Awesome. Makes you realize why the classics are called classics. :)

Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

Third boxcar, midnight train
Destination...Bangor, Maine.
Old worn out suits and shoes,
I don't pay no union dues,
I smoke old stogies I have found
Short, but not too big around
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

I know every engineer on every train
All of their children, and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain't locked
When no one's around.

I sing,
Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let, fifty cents
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

Mall Mania

2009-08-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

Mania. Oh yeah, that's the word for it.

The newspaper tells me that 'Mantri Mall', the largest mall to-date in India will open soon in Bangalore. Recession and retail slowdown be damned, the developers sold out 94% of the space weeks ahead of opening. Who says Indians don't have money and are conservative when it comes to splurging? Almost every major retailer in India has a presence there - Tatas, Reliance, Future Group (Pantaloon Retail), Landmark (Piramal's), Shopper's Stop et cetera. With 1.3 million sq. ft., it is 10% larger than Ambience Mall in Gurgaon and over 2.5 times the size of Forum Mall, which used to be the biggie amongst malls in Begaluru.

Great news. Yet, doesn't 1.3 million sq. ft. seem really small by... er... 'international standards'...?? I mean, India has over 1 billion in population and a burgeoning middle class, and there is so much untapped potential, and we have only scratched the surface, and the revolution has only just begun, and the retail sector is set to witness a sea-change, and so on and blah blah blah... et cetera ad nauseeam.

When I was a kid living in a tiny house at Dadar in Mumbai, we used to go the Shivaji Park or the Chowpatty for timepass. Mom would take us. When dad was in the mood, we would go to more distant places like Marine Drive, Gateway of India, Hanging Gardens, Juhu Chowpatty, Girgaum Chowpatty, Kamala Nehru Park, Santacruz airplane wala garden (It has a airplane shaped structure in it. I still don't know what the garden is called.) and so on. If not anything else, I would curl up with a book in a chair, play by myself or roam around Dadar on a bicycle. Going to the movies or eating out was so rare.

I wonder what the heck do kids do thesedays. One of the activities is sure to be visiting malls with their doting parents. I see quite a lot of them when I used to visit a Food Bazaar near my office once in a while. And whenever I watch the idiot box, I see innumerable ads aimed at inducing purchase decisions by kids - and not necessarily for kid stuff either. As for the rest, I'd rather not say much 'cos I have rather vague ideas, not so concrete. But I'm sure it ain't too good what kids are up to thesedays.

Reading about this 'Mantri Mall' brought to my mind another conversation that I had with a friend when we went for a 4-5 hour walk along Marine Drive early one Sunday morning 2 weeks ago. After that he showed me a cheap place near Gateway of India for breakfast. Too bad I could not eat anything there since the place is almost exclusively non-vegetarian. Vegetarians can have some lettuce leaves for breakfast. :) And sometimes some dal, roti and paneer at lunchtime. I was talking about how temples have a habit of cropping up anywhere and everywhere in India. The rate at which temples and gods crop up in India would probably give tough competetion to the birth rate I'm sure. And religion is big business too. VERY BIG. Heck, religious figures and organizations/trusts seem to be even more powerful and rich than the bloody politicians. It is also perhaps the greatest timepass in India. One sees even otherwise perfectly sane and so-called well-educated folks doing inane things such as queuing up 8 hrs. (or more) for darshan at some temple. Or worse still, walking barefoot from some god-forsaken (or should I say builder-and-municipality-nexus-forsaken..?) suburb to some temple which looks more like the corporate headquarters of Siddivinayak Inc. than anything else. The circus surrounding religion in India often makes me wanna puke. It doesn't get that bad usually though. More often than not, I manage to look at it as just that - a circus, a source of entertainment for my mind and senses. How else would I be able to deal with the display of idiocy on such a large scale?

In fact, to take entertainment and timepass to new levels, I have a great idea. You see how the fast-food chains quickly learnt that they have to 'Indianize' in order to do business in India? I think the same needs to be done to Malls in India. There needs to a convergence between the religion mania and shopping mania in India. Get what I mean?

Convergence. Syncretism. Synergy. Oh-so-fancy, huh?

Seriously, I think it would be a big hit. Imagine this - massive malls with massive parking lots (for all the Tata Nano's and other such cars) located on once useless forest or agricultural land. These malls would have themes or a combination of themes as per the local market appeal. I mean, say a Vaishnavite theme mall in Gujjuland, Vithoba theme mall in Maharashtra and so on. One can engage in religion and shopping in the same place. So convenient!! The decor and ambience for the malls would need to be suitably modified, but that should be okay. Chic restaurants serving gourmet prasadam are sure to do brisk business. And with people of all ages and classes thronging the place, retailers of every kind are sure to have a gala time. Special transport corridors should be built to ferry the hordes to these massive complexes on the outskirts of cities. For the more devout, there can be dedicated pedestrian pilgrim paths with shade and watering facilities just like in the good old days when India was the greatest and most religious land in the whole damn universe.

Yeah, I really think that's what we need. A grand marriage between religion and shopping malls.

In fact, I seriously hope some bright young entrepreneur wanting to follow in the footsteps of Kishore Biyani is reading this so that I can offer my consulting services. I would suggest forming a joint venture with one of the local temple trusts to ensure a captive market and greater success. It would also help in easy clearances from various Govt. and regulatory bodies as well as easy availability of land and amenities such as water, electricity, etc. The temples are awash with funds so the initial start-up costs would also be reduced. One could begin by simply encroaching on private property or public land. Amazing, isn't it?

Heck, I'm even willing to put in some money to test this idea. It is called seeding a small-time venture capital business, you know. My consulting comes free if you can give me a 10-20% stake.

Any takers?

Night trek to Peb

2009-05-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

This was my first night trek. It was thrilling and enjoyable enough for me to be motivated to write about it, albeit a little late!

Unlike as usual, I had the weekend off on Apr 11 & 12. The last trek that that I'd done was in winter, sometime in Nov - months ago! Was itching badly for a good trek. Summer makes things worse for trekking in the Sahyadri. (Monsoon is the best. Winter is good for tougher ones.) Even an easy trek can sap the energy out of seasoned trekkers. So a night trek was the only obvious choice. The places I had in mind were Harishchandragad, Naneghat, Peb (aka Vikatgad) and Gorakhgad. I'm generally averse to an "easy trek." At the some time, since this was my first night trek, I could not afford to bite off more than I could chew. A few phone calls later, asking people if they would care to join, what their choices are and so on, I and Moiz finally decided on doing a night trek to Peb. This would be my 2nd trek with Moiz, a seasoned trekker and traveler by my standards. ;)

The plan was to leave Mumbai by 4:00 PM and start from Neral a little before sunset. That way, we would suffer little heat. Secondly, it would also give us the advantage of some light which would help us in the initial patch where there are chances of getting lost - more so at night..! he he... :) More about that later.

But it was not to be that way. I went off to sleep and probably didn’t set the alarm properly. When I woke up, it was 5:15 PM. I saw missed calls from Moiz and called back. He had assumed that I cancelled our plans at the last moment. We took stock of our situation and decided that we would go ahead with a trek although it was a little late. Question was - should we stick to Peb, or opt for Gorakhgad instead? We decided to stick to doing Peb. There was some risk involved in this, but since I had done Peb before in daylight, I had a fair idea of the route and felt we would be able to manage the tricky part even at night.

I took a local at 7:27 PM from Ghatkopar. Moiz joined me at Dombivli. We reached Neral at 8:45 and had some grub near the station. We started the trek at 9:30.

Here's the inside scoop on how to go about tackling Peb at night. :)

From Neral station, walk towards the right - in the direction of Vangani. At one point after one has left the hustle-bustle near the station behind, take a left and walk across a small maidan and onto a narrower street with shops on either side. (I believe this point is a tax/rickshaw stand - not sure.) One can now see Matheran (left), Peb (center) and Nakhind (right.) One can now see the col between Peb and Nakhind which one has to reach first. Reaching this col is the only slightly tricky part of this trek 'cos it is easy to go off on the wrong track if one is not careful and does not know better. After walking a while along the road, we reached a village. We continued walking along the same road, going right, till I realized we had come a bit too far to the right. I could see the lights of a village which was closer to the col and realized that it was that village we had to reach – not the one we were in. We backtracked a little on the road and then walked across the land in the direction of the lights. There was no need to backtrack all the way on the road. If we had been more alert, we would have spotted the farther village instead of going to the right. Anyways, we did not lose much time due to this.

We reached Kapoor Farm – it is a landmark in the area. We saw a path going in the direction of the hills on the left of its gate. We took that path and soon reached a brick structure which was under construction. Must mention here though that there is always quite a bit of construction going on in these parts and so the paths do not stay as they are. The only thing that can truly guide you is your sense of direction, judgment about which would be the right path and your wits. Of course, you can always ask someone if you're not sure. There are always sooo many people anywhere in India - you just can't escape humanity in this land! There was a pot bellied baba sitting with someone outside this place and we thought of confirming the route with him. As it turned out, he was not a local and did not know the route. He did confirm that we were in the right direction though, so we went ahead after having some water.

Soon after leaving the Ashram behind, we started ascending a hill. There is only a single fairly well trodden path here rather than the confusing criss-cross and mish-mash that one finds closer to the villages. We simply followed this path which went right first before circling and turning left, ascending all the while, till it took us to a small plateau. We now had to begin using our head torches since it was quite dark, esp. in the thickets. We did not have much benefit of the moonlight since the moon, in the waning phase, was almost full but hidden by clouds. Ascending this hill brought us to the first big power transmission tower. I must make special note of these towers now.

More than anything else, it is these power transmission towers that can act as one's guideposts on this trek. They go over the same terrain and roughly the same direction. In fact one of them sits bang on the col between Peb and Nakhind and then the lines go down on to the other side towards Panvel. The path does not go directly below these of course, but the direction is approx. the same during most of the trek till the col. One has to keep note that if you're going too far away from the direction in which the power lines are going, then you're off track. And one should be alert and keep a look out for the path where it seems to disappear or where multiple paths seem to crop up.

After reaching the 1st plateau, we turned right and began another ascent through the hill and thickets to reach a 2nd plateau / flat area. This is larger than the 1st one. The 2nd tower is somewhere here too. We walked straight past the tower, with the path going slightly left, till we reached a point where we crossed a 3rd tower and walking even further we could see the col right in front of us. At this point, it seems easy to think that all one has to do is climb and reach the col in 45-60 mins. But it is not so. There is no proper route to the col from this point. There are many boulders and thickets in between which make it tough to ascend to the col from this point, either from the right or from the left. During the day it is possible to manage an ascent somehow, but at night it is foolhardy.

There is a path which leads towards the area situated directly below the col. This seems to be going in the right direction but is in fact the wrong one. Keep a look out for a path which goes right in the direction of Nakhind rather than Peb. Although it initially seems to be going in the wrong direction and away from Peb, this is the right one. At some point it turns sharply left and then one ascends through a fairly thick jungle following a clearly visible path till one reaches the col via a 4th tower that one passes along the way.

Our problem was that either due to poor visibility, or lack of alertness or being engrossed in talking, or all of these, we missed the point where the path turns left and kept walking straight ahead till we reached a point where a further clear trail was not visible. It was then that stupid me realized we had again gone too much to the right. There was no other option than to backtrack 'cos we were now somewhere below the hills of the broad Nakhind mountain. We decided to backtrack all the way to the 3rd tower so as to be very clear about taking the right route. But we kept a lookout to see if we could find a path on our right which went up. We rested at one point and it somewhere there that we saw the now dry nullah made by the monsoon waters. We figured that the nullah would take us to some point near the col since the water flowed from that direction. So we set off to ascend through the nullah rather than backtrack further which would have cost us 30 minutes or so. Fortunately, after just 2-3 minutes of climbing, the nullah criss-crossed a path which came from below (the one we missed seeing earlier). So we followed the path rather than the rocky nullah till we reached the 4th tower. From the 4th tower, there are again 2 paths. I don't remember exactly now, but we took a path on the left which was ascending figuring it would take us to the col since that was still further up. But that path went in a different direction after a while. Again it turned after a while and started climbing in the direction of the col. It is all quite hazy now in my memory. We were scrambling like crazy through the thickets since we lost the path after a while. We just kept ascending however we could simply knowing that we were in the right direction and could see the mountain ridge up ahead. Fortunately, after about 15-20 mins of this crazy scrambling we accidentally got back on the path again. After that in another 10 mins we were on the col. Finally.....!! Near the col, there are 3 other paths. One goes over the col and down towards Panvel side to a village below. One goes right towards Nakhind along the ridge that connects Peb and Nakhind. The 3rd one, which we had to take, was the one on the left which goes to Peb.

It was 12:30 AM by the time we reached the col. We spent a good 45 minutes there resting, drinking water, eating and chit-chatting. It was very cool, peaceful and much of the topography we had trekked over was visible from this point. From the col to Peb there is no chance of getting lost and it takes just 35-45 mins to reach the caves of Peb from there. The path does go up and down and there are some slightly steep scree ridden paths. When one is almost at the end of the connecting ridge and near the Peb mountain, there is a rock patch that needs to be tackled. It is just 20-25 feet and an easy free climb with plenty of holds - no problem even at night or in the monsoons. After the rock patch, we skirted the mountain wall in front of us and took a path which went to the right. A further walk of 10 mins and we found the caves on the left. Whew..!! It was 2:30 AM when we reached the caves.

We were out of water and so I set off to find water at 3-4 spots near the cave which I knew. Found nothing. I realized that these spots probably held water only in the monsoons and a little after that. We were now faced with the prospect of trekking to Matheran without any water. We decided to sleep for 3-4 hours and set off as early as possible to avoid the Sun. We went off to sleep at 3:00 AM, near the entrance to the caves rather than inside.

We woke at 6:30 AM. Or to be more precise, we were awakened by the Sun and chirping birds etc. soon after Sunrise. As I woke up and sat erect, the most wonderful sight greeted my eyes. This was the best moment of the trek for me. We were in the west and the Sun was in the east on the other side of the mountain, so it was not visible. There was freshness in the air and the quietude was broken only by the sound of birds. Best of all, moonset had not occurred. Since it was not bright daylight as yet, the almost full moon was clearly visible too. And down below we could see the flat lands - villages, fields and the Palasdari lake. Just sitting quietly at this spot for 10 mins was the best of this trek for me.

We quickly packed and set off further for Matheran by 7:00. We also intended to check out another 1-2 places for water which we could not check out at night. Walking further we reached a wall which one has to climb using an iron ladder. There is a tank at the top near the wall but that too was dry. We climbed further and then took a right to get on to the ridge that connects Peb and Matheran. There is a path that again skirts the top area of the hill and goes around it instead. At it's end where we could now see the ridge to Matheran clearly. We saw a path going to the left and leading to a hut. The "hut" is a kinda Ashram set up by followers of Swami Samartha. There was no one around so we freely trespassed and entered the shrine. Lo and behold - the blessed souls who lived here had kept water in a drum inside the shrine..!! We were very thirsty and drank our fill before also filling the bottles. We would not run out of water till Matheran now.

Leaving the hut we walked in the direction of Matheran and after a while met 2 guys. They were the Swami Samartha fellows who lived in the hut. One of them showed me the place where they got the water from. It is very close to the hut, a little below it, and has water all year round. There is enough water for them to take a bath everyday and enough for their 2-3 cattle to drink as well. They invited us for tea which we declined and after ascertaining the route we set off again. It is an easy 1.5 - 2 hours walk to the railway track of Matheran from Peb. One has to descend by an iron ladder at one point where it is rocky. After this descent, the path leads straight to a point where it again skirts the mountain side rather than going up. This is on the west side, so if one leaves early, one is shaded from the Sun after this point. A further 20-30 minute walk brought us to a point on the Matheran railway track at 9:00 AM. The train passes by this point at 9:15. We decided not to risk boarding it as we would have to board it while it was running and also ran the risk of a hefty fine if caught without a ticket. The ticket checker was sure not to let go of relatively rich city folks like us – “Tch Tch… Educated people like you should know better. Now you have to pay a fine.” I am sure they let local folks hitch a ride without any payment.

So we walked along the track till we reached Dasturi Naka. It is the entry point for Matheran where one has to park one's vehicles and leave them behind as they are not allowed in. We reached the Matheran market by 10:15 AM. Had a snack there and roamed around a little before going for an afternoon snooze in the Paymaster Park. Sleeping like bums in a public park on the park-benches was quite an experience. I did not get much sleep though Moiz was fast asleep soon. I could overhear the yapping of a group which came after us and rested nearby. A young boy was wondering aloud why we were not getting disturbed by the insects. To which his mom or aunt or whoever it was, replied "Huh..! It makes no difference to people like these." .. he he... When I later told this to Moiz, he speculated that they probably thought we were drug addicts. Or maybe good-for-nothing bums asleep in a public park 'cos they have nothing better to do in life.

We left the park at 4:30 PM, had a snack in the market and bought soda to make a 2nd round of a heavenly drink (Kokum sherbet with Soda..!) and took a cab down to Neral. I was back home by 8:30 PM.

All in all, a great escape and a resounding success as it was mine as well as Moiz's first night trek.

My Expenses: 49 - Andheri to Ghatkopar rickshaw, 30 - Ghatkopar to Neral return ticket. Sub-total: 79.

Shared Expenses: 70 - restaurant at Neral, 50 - Matheran entry fee, 30 - Diwadkar restaurant, 32 - 2 bottles of soda, 70 - snack in market, 100 - cab from Matheran to Neral. Sub-total: 352. Per head: 352/2 = 176

My total expenses: 176 + 79 = 255.

Cheap, huh? And this was one of the treks where we ended up spending more since we went to a touristy place like Matheran. Else we would not have had to spend more than 150 bucks per head.

The Sermon

2009-04-03T22:09:00.000-07:00

I was watching a documentary called "Fish! A Japanese Obsession." Unusual one. Made by a British fisherman and travel writer who decided to travel to Japan to try and capture the essence of the Japanese love, or obsession, with fish. It followed his 6-week journey to various parts of the island nation that are associated with certain kinds of fish, fishing industry, traditions and various other fishy things. :) Found it rather interesting. For example, the statistic that this country which makes up 1/50th of the world's population eats 1/10th of it's fish was quite startling. So was the extraordiary lengths to which Japanese go to satisfy their craving for freshness and the taste for delicious but endangered fish. It is curious how the Japanese apparently revere fish and yet do not even think what their appetite/craving is doing to fish in general and esp. to those that are endangered.

Anyways, the documentary also briefly brought into focus some curious aspects of Japanese culture and got me digging into memory and thinking about various things associated with Japan - Samurai, Zen, martial arts, rice farmers, minimalism in art, super-efficiency, Japanese militaristic ambitions, it's place in the modern world economy and so on.

I suddenly remembered this Zen story that I had read once and liked a lot. As I recollected it, I thought I'd put it into my own words. Here it is:

It was dawn in spring season. The air was cool and life was stirring itself up for activity as the Sun made it's appearance.

Zen monks, fresh and eager faced, were sitting on straw-filled mattresses in a courtyard. The Master arrived and sat under a tree. He chanted with his head bowed and then looked with repose at the disciples.

As he was about to begin his sermon, a bird alighted on a branch above him. It hopped about energetically and broke into a birdsong. All eyes and ears turned towards it. The bright-colored feathered creature sang for a while and then flew away.

Turning to the monks the Master said, "The sermon for the day is over."

Liked it? I found some more nice Zen stories here.

Bob Dylan - Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

2009-03-02T00:07:00.000-08:00

Dylan wrote this poem as a goodbye/tribute to Woody Guthrie.

2 Solutions for 1 Problem (Abbas Kiarostami, 1975)

2009-03-01T23:01:00.000-08:00

A short 4-minute film by the noted Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami. Loved the way he has managed to get across a multi-layered message using a simple plot. The audio-visual medium can be so much more effective when in the right hands. And I think that is what separates the masters from the rest. Whether in writing, music, art or films, the masters are the ones who manage to say the most with the least.

This one definately makes me want to see more by this director.

Ek Kavita

2008-12-20T01:41:00.000-08:00

A 3-minute short film documenting hands. This won the award in the non-fiction category at a contest sponsored by Nokia.
Found it on youtube.com and loved it, so thought I'd post it here.

Putumayo's Dreamland

2008-07-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

This one is about one of the most wonderful collection of songs I've come across. It's called "Dreamland" (by Putumayo) and is a selection of lullabies & soothing songs from around the world. Yes, lullabies! If you thought lullabies were meant only for kids, think again. This kind of music will soothe your nerves so much that you will want to curl up and leave behind your adulthood to escape into childhood dreams and memories. There's a kaleidoscope of soundscapes here which will appeal to everyone, no matter what their age, ethnicity or musical preferences.

I'll try to briefly describe each track so as to paint a picture of the album as a whole. Most of the tracks are not in English, but that seems to matter little. Music has it's own universal language which the discerning ear can instinctively understand. And that's how it is with these songs too. One wishes one knew the meaning of the lyrics on some songs. On the other hand, as one listens, one seems to get a sense of what a song is all about regardless of the language. And perhaps that is the beauty of listening to these. As Antoine de Saint Exupery said in The Little Prince, "... you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings."

Naïma by Angelique Kidjo & Carlos Santana -- This is a gentle and melodious lullaby sung by the West African singer Angelique Kidjo who wrote this for her daughter. Angelique's voice sounds so different here as compared to that on her other well-known songs like Babalao. You can feel the depth of affection and care coming through in her voice as she sings. At times, I've almost felt as though I am spying on her singing to her daughter! :) There is also some guitar work by Carlos Santana. Yes! Carlos Santana. Strange to think of him playing the guitar for a lullaby, no? It is quite inconspicuous though and does not try to take the centrestage from the vocals, which I guess is how it should be. :)
Ny Fitiavako an'I Mama by Eric Manana -- This one is my personal favorite on the entire album. (Naïma comes a close second). The singer is from Madagascar & has sung this in his native Malagasy language. It is not a lullaby, but a song dedicated to his mother. To the accompaniment of acoustic guitar, Eric Manana seems to be gently and powerfully declaring his love for his mother. I really wish I could understand the lyrics on this one. A reviewer translated some of the lyrics as follows: "You are my shelter from the rain / You are my anchor in life's ocean / I'll always need your love and compassion." I guess this gives some idea of the theme of the song.
A Lullabye by Teresa Doyle -- A traditional Celtic lullaby, this one is nice but not great. It does not have a tenderness and personal feeling similar to that which Naïma has. Overall, the song seems confused between trying to be gentle and cute, and also wanting to have a Celtic air, all at the same time. It is strictly OK. Just a personal opinion!
Thula Mama by Sibongile Khumalo -- This one is from South Africa. Dunno which language though. Good vocals with nice piano in the background. It has more of a somewhat operatic feel than a traditional African song. Comes out very well though.
Arriba del Cielo by Claudia Martinez -- Another awesome song. It is in Spanish and originates in Mexico. The title means "Under the Sky". It has been sung A Cappella i.e. - only vocal singing with no instrumental accompaniment.
Yi-Rrana by The Letterstick Band -- This is the shortest song on the album. It is in the traditional language of the An-Barra clan of Aborigines from Australia. The title means "Sunset". Very good vocals with guitar in the bacground.
La Vai Alguem by Virginia Rosa -- From Brazil. Language seems to be Spanish. Lovely lullaby with soft guitar & mouth organ as accompaniment.
Cradle Spell of Dunvegan by Lynn Morrison -- Best way to describe this song would be to say that it has a heavenly feeling. And it comes from the enchanting land of Scotland. It tells the story of a child born to a human father and a fairy mother. The fairy mother felt homesick, so the father let her return to fairyland. However, one night the fairy mother heard her child crying and came down from fairyland to sing her little one to sleep. What a gorgeous feel this song has! It soars.
Numi Numi by Tanja Solnik -- Don't know the what the language is on this one too. The singer is from America. It is a lullaby in a voice that seems to be softly urging a child to slip away to sleep. Or perhaps it is telling a story of something wonderful that has passed by or maybe something that the child will encounter in dreamland. Whatever it is, it's a nice song!
Cradle Song by The Sanshin Cafe Orchestra -- An instrumental from Japan. You could call it the odd man out in the album. It definately sounds like a lullaby though, as though telling the story of a little prince and his childish adventures. One hears the deep sound of the Japanese style drum at regular intervals. The leading instrumentals are using a Japanese stringed instrument called the Sanshin.
Canción Para Dormir a un Niño by Beatriz Pichi Malen -- Another personal favorite on this album. I liked the vocal style & the feeling in the singer's voice. It is in Spanish and the title translates as "A Song to Put a Boy to Sleep."
Durme Durme by Fortuna -- From Brazil. Like A Lullabye by Teresa Doyle, this one too, I think, is nice but not too great. Definately worth listening to though.
Lullaby by Zulya -- This one comes from the Republic of Tatarstan which is one of the little republics subject to the Russian Federation. LOL. I too had never heard of Tatarstan till I read about this song. Zulya is a talented singer. Am not very exposed to music from Russia or Eastern Europe, but this one has some similarity to the kind of haunting feel that the song Ederlezi by Emir Kusturica has as it starts off. There is another song by Zulya on "Asian Dreamland" which is also quite nice.

I downloaded this album for free using µTorrent. However, I would say that this album is definately worth buying if you are not into downloading music. Trust me, each song on this album is worth a million bucks! You would not regret spending on it. This collection was so well received worldwide that Putumayo came out with other selections such as "Asian Dreamland", "African Dreamland", "Celtic Dreamland" and so on. I am looking forward to hearing ALL of these. Asian Dreamland is already becoming a favorite of mine just like this first one of the Dreamland series.

Voces Inocentes

2008-06-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Saw this film yesterday. Had come across a review of it accidentally while searching for productions starring the beautiful Leonor Varela. :) She plays the role of Chava's mother in this film.

IMDB tells me this film (in Spanish with English subtitles) has 12 wins & 9 nominations. It has great ratings by viewers. Yet not many people seem to know about it. It did not make as much news as, let us say, Schindler's List or Life is Beautiful.

I guess this is probably Uncle Sam's doing. The film is set in El Salvador and makes no bones about the tragedies of civil war in that country in the 80's. It states how the US supported the Salvadorean army with billions of dollars in aid and arms.

The film itself is gripping and always manages to engross you. It is based on a true story. More importantly, it also makes you think real hard about the brutality and stupidity of war, which seems to bring out the worst in men. It does not rely too much on the depiction of graphic violence to do this, unlike the Hollywood flicks. The story is told through the eyes of Chava (Chavita) a 11 year old boy who with his family is trapped in a village that comes to be a central point of conflict between the Salvadorean army and the peasant rebels. Chava happens to be amongst the lucky survivors who lived to tell the tale. Other children, recruited to fight when they turned 12, either perished fighting or were shot dead by the army.

This film compares very well with a few other war related films that I liked a lot: No Man's Land, Turtles Can Fly and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Each is great in it's own way. They make you think real hard about war, which is just one horrible aspect of our society.

I think Voces Inocentes is a good example of how cinema can be engrossing and watchable while also being very thought provoking. Something different from the mindless entertainment that often passes in the guise of good cinema.

Intelligent Life

2008-06-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

Me loves the way a cartoon manages to say a lot with some images and just a few words. Best thing is, it manages to be serious and funny at the same time. I love those kind the best. Peanuts by Schulz and Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Waterson take the cake in this category, though I am sure there are more who are also amazingly talented. Wish I was more exposed to this art form.

The one above made me think of something. Let us say some aliens decide to check out earth, okay? What do you think they would do next after checking out the state of life here? My best guess is that they would go off somewhere else thinking that earth is already dominated by some species not native to the planet. Too much of a trouble trying to dislodge them from that position. No prizes for guessing who this alien species is.

There's this famous quote: "I have seen the enemy! The enemy is us." To turn it around a little, I would say "I have seen the aliens! The aliens are us." :)

Here's a few more little ones that I love. (Click on the images to enlarge if the text size seems too small.)

Problem of Painlessness

2008-05-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

The following article is being reporoduced with permission from the author Alf Seegert (alfseegert@yahoo.com). I found it quite insightful. I am sure it will be of some interest to those interested in environmental issues & questions related to the self and our relationship to the world and what is happening. It has been helpful to me. Hope you like it too.

The Problem of Painlessness:

Why Deep Ecology Won’t Work Without a Willingness to Feel

by Alf Seegert (4/2003)

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

- Kahlil Gibran

Pain hurts. As a result we try to avoid it, and when we talk about the problem of pain our goal is generally to find a better way to get rid of it. I would like to try something different here by instead considering the problem of painlessness. What happens to ourselves and to the world when we close ourselves off from the experience of painful feedback? (Be warned: the following example is not pleasant to listen to, but it is I think necessary in order to show the seriousness of the problem.)

In his book The Gift Nobody Wants, Dr. Paul Brand relates the following true story:

Tanya, a seventeen-month old girl, was left alone in her playpen laughing and playing while her mother cooked in the kitchen. A few minutes later the mother walked into Tanya's room to find her daughter "finger-painting red swirls on the white plastic sheet." The mother didn't understand where the paint came from at first, but when she did she screamed. The little girl's fingertip was mangled and bleeding. Tanya had bitten off the tip of her finger and was now using it as a plaything for making designs with her own blood on the sheets.

Dr. Brand discovered that Tanya felt no discomfort in performing such a self-mutilating behavior because of a rare genetic defect that rendered her indifferent to pain. Although Tanya's parents did what they could to keep their daughter from biting off the tips of her fingers, no pleading seemed to work, and even spankings only induced laughter. When Tanya twisted an ankle, she didn't limp; instead she only twisted the limb further and further. By the time she was eleven years old, Tanya had lost both legs from amputation, as well as most of her fingers. Both elbows were dislocated and her tongue, which she chewed constantly, was lacerated.

This grim and startling picture would strike many of us as unfathomably painful. The irony here, however, is that this kind of intense, self-destructive suffering occurs only in a life where physical pain is absent.

At this point you may be wondering if you have walked into the wrong session or you might be asking yourself how this gruesome anecdote could possibly have anything to do with environmental philosophy or deep ecology. Bear with me. I use the story of Tanya because it provides a harsh and instructive example of how our sense of self, our capacity for pain, and our responsiveness to injury are all intertwined. Tanya’s self-mutilating behavior hints that how we experience ourselves has no small effect on how we take care of that which we call “self” in the first place. Such a claim is at the heart of deep ecology’s notion of the relational or ecological Self.

Proponents of deep ecology, for instance, argue that a truncated sense of self goes hand in hand with ecological devastation. They contend that our present environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis not of ethics but of perception, where we narrowly and mistakenly identify ourselves with our particle-like egos. Doing so introduces a subject/object split between the human and the more-than-human world that is not only illusory, but also dangerous. By conceiving nature as “radically other” and separate, we instrumentalize it and consign it to “thinghood,” thereby reducing the more-than-human-world to the status of raw material valuable only in terms of its use. The perhaps unsurprising consequence of such an isolated, dualistic sense of self is an ecological holocaust unrivalled by anything that the planet has seen for over 65 million years.

But there is a way to get around what Alan Watts called “The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” Instead of identifying ourselves as narrow, particle-like substances, we can undergo an ontological shift that allows us to “identify widely" with our ecological context. In such a view we come to recognize that interactions with things outside our bodies are not merely relationships that we have, but are in fact what make us who we fundamentally are. This is to say that we are more than just our bodies; we exist as the intersection of countless interactions with our fellow beings, with the air and water, with the ecosystems that sustain us, and ultimately with our planet and the cosmos. Every time you gulp down a mouthful of water or suck in a lungful of air, your body absorbs and assimilates a new set of particles; you become your environment. Exhale, perspire, take a pee; your environment becomes you. Or, as deep ecologists might put it, the environment was part of your wider identity all along.

According to Arne Naess, deep ecology’s founding philosopher, the result of “identifying widely” is that you will spontaneously behave in an Earth-friendly manner because the Earth is understood to be part of your wider Self (that’s “Self” with a capital “S”). This is to say that if you experience your “Self” as including the biosphere, you won’t need to be moralized or legislated into not injuring the planet, because you will instinctively take care of what you perceive to be part of who you are.

And this is where the significance of pain enters the picture. In his work with lepers, Dr. Brand discovered that because they felt no pain in their extremities, people suffering from leprosy would (like Tanya) use their bodies to perform acts that bodies are simply not intended to perform. He relates how one leper would retrieve food cooked in hot coals with his bare hands (his hands were just suppurating knobs at this point, really) because he didn’t feel himself being burned. Dr. Brand lectured the man about how important it was to take care of his hands, but the man didn’t seem to care. He encountered another leper who was running—seemingly unaware—on a badly dislocated ankle. Such cases were typical of Brand’s experience with leprosy, and they had in common what Brand called “an utter nonchalance toward self-destruction.”

But why? Why do Tanya and the lepers of whom Brand speaks behave in a manner that is so deliberately self-mutilating? I think that the reason is because they do not construe their behaviors as mutilations of themselves at all, for the mental distinction we make between self and other is grounded most basically in our physical sensations. Lacking the experience of pain in their limbs, the lepers and Tanya understood their own hands and feet and even their entire bodies as Other. Because no pain registered for her, the little girl Tanya perceived her own fingers as objects to be manipulated at will—as things separate from herself—and not as parts of her own precious being.

I believe that the same mechanisms are at work in how we as human beings interact with the planet. Like lepers, we express an “utter nonchalance” toward global self-destruction because our nerve endings terminate at the skin and we allow our self-identification to (for the most part) stop there; we therefore don’t experience the feedback necessary to recognize and respond to the damage that we are doing to our wider, ecosystemic Self. Like Tanya, who used her own bloody fingers as paints, we continue as a species to channel and dam our rivers, pour toxins into our air and water, reduce our agricultural land to asphalt, and wantonly cut our forests, all the while not recognizing that it is ourselves that we destroy. We mangle our world as Tanya did her fingertips, not because we are evil people (usually), but simply because we misperceive where our selves start and end. As ecological pioneer Aldo Leopold put it, “We only grieve for what we know.”

Because the capacity for experiencing feedback is critical in determining what we experience as "self," it would appear that a necessary condition for global healing is that we go beyond the skin and somehow extend the reach of our nervous systems. For we will only treat as self what we experience as self. We therefore need to be willing and able to feel the pain of the world as our own pain and to embrace the earth’s joy as our joy—in order that we can respond to suffering with healing, and respond to healing with celebration. But how do we achieve this?

There are, of course, many ways to answer this question—but I think there is a lot of room for hope in this respect. One thing often overlooked in deep ecology is how we already tend to identify more widely than we might initially think. When someone we love rejoices, we are overcome with sympathetic delight; when a loved one is suffering, we feel pain involuntarily; our own self has been afflicted whether we like it or not. We already identify ourselves not just in terms of our bodies but also in terms of our interactions, our loves, our aspirations, our frustrations, our joys and sorrows. I have played a game with college students—a variation of the “Dating Game,” actually—where I ask students to tell me three things about themselves. They characteristically respond by telling me about their family, their favorite sport, the musical instrument they play, where they live, fun they have with their pets, or the places they like to visit in their spare time. All these means of self-identification involve relationships with things external to one’s body. Not once have I heard a student identify herself as a hairless biped, as a rational animal, or in terms of her binocular vision or blood type. I don’t mean to say that this counts as a scientific survey or that we never identify in terms specific to our bodies; but I think it is actually characteristic to invoke relationships beyond the skin when conceiving who we are. Our nerves already reach well beyond our fingertips. Thus I would argue that realizing our ecological selves by “widely identifying” is not different in kind from what we already do regularly. It is only different in degree.

Making the transition from ego- to eco-consciousness is, however, not a logical but a psychological procedure—and a difficult one. In our techno-savvy culture we are so primed to eliminate pain and discomfort that we rarely question why we’re experiencing it in the first place. Think how we unreflectively pop a pill when we feel a headache coming on. How we clearcut our forests but divorce this fact from our awareness by leaving thin “buffer-strips” of trees in place along roads. Same story. But pain happens (usually) for a good reason, namely to protect each of us from injury: it combines fact with value in such a way that it can’t merely be ignored. When your hand makes contact with boiling water, your body does not merely inform you of this fact; it instead ensures that you value such an experience so negatively that you remove your hand reflexively. Pain can therefore be a powerful ally; by creating suffering that demands an immediate response it provides the means for avoiding even greater suffering. Denying pain its power to speak is like putting masking tape over your car’s oil light when it flashes on. It doesn’t make the problem go away.

Of course, opening yourself to the experience of a wider range of feedback introduces a serious potential for overload. When you become existentially and not merely intellectually aware that you live in a world of wounds, the pain can be overwhelming. Take for instance the following catalog of dismay from David Orr:

If today is a typical day on planet earth, we will lose 116 square miles of rain forest, or about an acre a second. We will lose another 72 square miles to encroaching deserts, the results of human mismanagement and overpopulation. We will lose 40 to 250 species, and no one knows whether the number is 40 or 250. Today the human population will increase by 250,000. And today, we will add 2,700 tons of chlorofluorocarbons and 15 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Tonight the earth will be a little hotter, its waters more acidic, and the fabric of life more threadbare. By year’s end the numbers are staggering: The total loss of rain forest will equal an area the size of the state of Washington;

expanding deserts will equal an area the size of West Virginia; and the global population will have risen by more than 90,000,000. (7)

Orr concludes by indicating that up to 1/5 of the life forms that existed on our planet in 1900 are now extinct (7). (Have a nice day.) Hearing these things can make us numb—it feels like too much to bear. Such awareness can lead to despair, a feeling that is as unhelpful as it is unpleasant.

And despite one’s best attempts to identify widely, still one must act from within the finitude of a particular skin-encapsulated body in one particular place and time, and that’s OK. Consequently, I think that a good place to start might just be in that clichéd, seemingly overused, and absolutely essential domain of particularized action: one’s own backyard—which I mean both figuratively and literally. One of many ways to help deepen and widen your sense of self would be to interact concretely with your immediate ecological context, working to become intimately aware of your shared identity with it. For instance: grow a garden; plant a tree; trace where the water in your tap finds its origin; say grace and mean it; volunteer in your neighborhood (or as an instructor, work with your class on service learning projects in the community); plant native species and other vegetation in your yard appropriate for your bioregion; follow the weather by looking up—not at a TV; wait expectantly for the hummingbirds to return this spring and greet them with beakers of sugarwater and flowers brimming with nectar; honor dates that the sky celebrates—solstices, new moons, full moons, equinoxes—not just holidays marked on human calendars; get out of your car and walk.

One specific practice that has helped me to reconnect with the local landscape is ecological restoration. For over ten years the non-profit organization TreeUtah has worked with countless volunteers—many from the University of Utah Bennion Center—to restore critical migratory songbird habitat along the Jordan River in Salt Lake Valley. Their work planting trees not only helps restore ecosystems but also reconnects people with the land in such a way that they feel it become a part of them, experience themselves as a part of it, and spontaneously come to its defense when it becomes threatened. This work of attempting to restore mangled ecosystems is an outer expression of our attempt to restore our own hearts. I still remember the jubilant expressions on children’s faces at planting projects; they would often draw me aside to show me that tree, what they called “my tree,” the tree they planted, the tree they would come back and take care of.

Deep ecology’s goal is very basic, and it’s far from new. Dozens of centuries ago the Oracle at Delphi urged one who sought wisdom there to “know thyself.” But the “Self” that deep ecology argues to be both real and badly in need of being realized is a circuit of interactions that extends far beyond the “individually wrapped” egos that we too often mistake ourselves for. We are enmeshed in a web of relatedness with all life. To cut ourselves off, through denial, from this flow of relationship to our hearts is indeed to cut off the pain of the senseless destruction of other living beings. In doing so we not only enable such destruction to continue but we also, beyond that, doom ourselves to the frigid and numbing waters of isolation and alienation. In contrast, to reconnect our isolated selves to the larger unity of earth’s ecology can indeed open us to the messengers of pain and so motivate us to care for the planet. And it can do more. Reconnection can also remove the painful chill of alienation and put within our reach the warmth and fulfillment of connectedness that our spirits hunger for. In nourishing life around us, we ourselves are nourished.

Alf Seegert holds a masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Utah and was the Assistant Planting Coordinator for TreeUtah in Salt Lake City for several years. He is presently pursuing a graduate degree in English and teaches writing at the University of Utah. He can be reached by email at alfseegert@yahoo.com

Works Cited

Brand, Paul and Yancey, Philip. The Gift Nobody Wants. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Donaldson, Stephen R. Lord Foul’s Bane. New York: Ballantine, 1977.

(Not cited in the paper, but it’s foundational to the project as a whole—it’s an epic fantasy tale in which the hero—or anti-hero—is a leper thrown into another world where the health of the land enters directly into people’s awareness. Lord Foul’s Bane is Book I in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.)

Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York: Knopf, 1973.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine, 1966.

David Orr. Earth in Mind. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994.

On Interpretation

2008-05-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

The topic of interpretation came up in a conversation I had been having someone. This is a vexed issue, yet one which I think is very important to resolve for any reasonably thoughtful person. We can help each other to an extent, but it can only be resolved by & for oneself by each individual. What follows is my limited attempt to highlight various aspects.

Let me begin with a story I read recently:

One day, Drona summoned two of his students, Yudhishtira and Duryodhan. “Spend a day in Hastinapur and find me a really bad man,” he told Yudhishtira. Then turning to Duryodhan, he said, “Spend a day in Hastinapur and find me a really good man.” The day passed. Drona waited for his students to complete the search. Finally, at sunset, the two returned, but with no one accompanying either of them. “Well, where are the men I asked you to find?” asked Drona.

Yudhishtira replied, “I scoured the city and went to every house. I met every man, woman and child. I really looked for a bad man but at the end of my search, I am convinced that everyone is the city is actually very nice. There is not a single bad person in Hastinapur.”

Duryodhan replied, “I don’t agree. I too scoured the city and went to every house. But everyone I met was a scoundrel. Even the children. There is no good man in Hastinapur.”

Drona heard both and said, “This is all Maya.”

The author then goes on to clarify what is meant by the word maya. It is usually simply translated as illusion in English, which is incorrect. Yet that is how most people seem to interpret this word. Maya derives from another Sanskrit root which means to measure. What the word maya tries to convey is that "...our understanding of the world depends on the measuring scale we subscribe to. Yudhishtira’s measuring scale failed to identify a single bad man in Hastinapur. Duryodhan’s measuring scale failed to identify a single good man in Hastinapur. Their opinions about Hastinapur said nothing about Hastinapur but about the measuring scales they subscribed to."

The way that they interpreted the behavior of others revealed more about themselves than the people they observed. We are the creators of our own limited worldview mistaking it for reality. That is not the same as saying that we are in illusion, because what we perceive as reality seems real enough to us. My guess is that depending upon how clear we are, either our sense of reality is way off the mark & quite distorted, or we somewhat see reality or the truth, but as if through veils. I have a notion that being intelligent is a never ending process wherein you constantly strive to uncover veil after veil so as to see the truth or reality as it is. If so, this would hold true whether we are trying to understand the world (the external) or our own self (the internal). Also, even amongst the most clear of people, their perception of reality is bound to be limited by their consciousness, however intelligent they may be. As a corollary, I can take our sense of vision as an example. Human beings do not have the ability to see the ultraviolet or the infrared spectrum. That is the limitation of the human eye. The eye of a bee can see some of the ultraviolet spectrum as well. Some other animals can see infrared. Some see only the primary colors - red, green & blue. Imagine what if we too could see some ultraviolet & infrared spectrum. Our sense of reality would be radically altered. A crow, instead of appearing to be in shades of grey, might appear multi-colored. Same with the mind as well: the nature of the human consciousness affects our perception of reality. If we evolve & have a different consciousness, our sense of reality will also be radically altered.

Conditioning also plays a major role in our lives. Although a lot of people talk about unlearning & unconditioning, I think that is almost always more a case of substituting one kind of conditioning with another. We see the world as we want to or the way we have been conditioned to see it. Our consciousness, which includes experience, knowledge, desires, hopes, relationships, beliefs, ideas, biases, prejudices, images and all kinds of emotions, act as a distorting screen through which we see the world. I can see all this happening in myself quite clearly, yet is very difficult to live & act in another manner - to live a life illuminated by the light of truth. I am not being too negative by saying this. I am merely being brutally frank.

Here’s another related idea. I remember reading what Mirra Alfassa said once, that “…if you see a defect in someone else, you may be sure that it in you…” All of us are human beings, members of the same species sharing a common evolutionary heritage of millions of years. Thus in a certain sense our consciousness is the consciousness of the whole of humanity. If I see a certain quality in another person, that is only because the very existence of that quality in myself allows me to recognise it in him or her. It is only my conditioning which causes me to label it & classify it as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, beautiful or ugly and so on. A warning though! This should not be interpreted as a justification for nihilism or that moral values do not matter. Rather, what it means is that if you see some defect in others then it is a pointer for you to correct it in yourself first. Similarly, if we see something wrong with the world, then this attitude would help us realise that the cause of it is our own self. The problems of the world are merely a gigantic projection of the problems in the consciousness of each human being. For example, all the terrible wars are merely the projection or externalization of the conflicts that exist in our minds. We are directly responsible for the wars of the world. Thus, to change the world, we have to change our own selves first. The human consciousness itself has to change, because it seems as though there is something seriously wrong with the way it has evolved so far. What this calls for is a scientific attitude towards understanding one’s own self. To explore this further, I would have to go off at a tangent so I shall leave it at that for now. :)

Getting back to the topic, here are some other aspects related to interpretation.

To quote verbatim, my friend wrote that “... a piece of art stops being owned by the artist once its gone public... its then an idea which is shared and meant to be tossed and turned, introspected, mulled, subsumed, consumed. There is, in my belief, no one true meaning to anything. There are only interpretations...”

I think that to have a meaningful exploration or understanding of anything, meaning has to be distinguished from interpretation. Speaking of art, that does not mean that, let us say a poem, has only one meaning. It may have multiple meanings and/or multiple layered meanings. The richer & deeper a work of art is, the more this would tend to be the case with it. Yet I think that these meanings should me distinguished from interpretations. Interpretations can be thought of as arrows shot in the dark. We are in the darkness of ignorance, not knowing what is meant or intended to be conveyed and so we interpret in an attempt at understanding. And that is not a bad thing at all. It is a good thing. It is always better to say that perhaps this is what it means, or probably that is what he/she meant, rather than making assertions, or sticking to beliefs & ideas as opposed to facts or reasonable conjectures/interpretations.

Actually, a lot depends on how one interprets the idea of interpretation itself. :) There is certainly a place for responsible interpretation as opposed to irresponsible interpretation. A classic example of this would be the different ways in which people have interpreted the various religious scriptures. Asserting that a certain interpretation is the right one and developing a codified set of beliefs only leads to conflicts between religions and sects. This has been a big time problem throughout history, all because people don’t know how to be reasonable, think logically and not indulge in irresponsible interpretations. I am sure God would be horrified to know that he (or she, whatever you please) has been one of the leading causes of death in the world. :)

The so-called scientists are also not as scientific & logical as we might expect them to be. There are of course those who validly point out science is very limited in what it can & cannot explain. Yet even in their somewhat limited field of enquiry, scientists seem to be as worse as if not more than ordinary folks like us. Two of them may study the same phenomenon, analyse the same evidence, and yet come up with totally different conclusions – both asserting that they are absolutely right, and mistaking their dimly lit investigations & crude hypothesis & theories for the truth. I shall only give two examples to illustrate this. Firstly, note how for centuries they asserted that the Sun, other planets & the entire universe revolved around the earth. When Galileo said “Nonsense!” to that, they got him imprisoned and virtually killed through mental torture in collaboration with other powers. Another example is of how members of society are being brought up to believe that all human beings are in essence selfish, scheming creatures only interested in protecting their own self-interest above everything else. This idea, supposedly supported by the game theory, is at the core of the laissez-faire ideologies and the belief that in each person pursuing his or her own self-interest, whatever it may be, lies the overall good of society. One of the leading proponents of this was John Nash (A Beautiful Mind is based on him). Yet, as I saw in a brilliant documentary series called “The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom”, it turns out that he was quite mistaken. His beliefs about the behaviour of human beings arose from his own schizophrenia, which no one knew he was suffering from. He used theories & twisted evidence to support his own beliefs. In the documentary, there is an interview in which the now old & cured John Nash admits that he may have overemphasized the role of that in human interpersonal relations. Yet so much mischief and harm has already been done by his theories which influenced hundreds of other people and their work, who caused even more chaos in the world.

Often people in power also wilfully distort scientific truths to serve their own self interest and to manipulate others and influence society as a whole. A classic case of this is how Darwin’s theory of evolution has been distorted to justify the survival of the fittest in human society. It has almost become a buzzword, which you will hear in corporate boardrooms as well as in interpersonal relationships. What of kindness? What of kinship & compassion? Even other animals, which we consider lower than ourselves (another artificial and noxious idea!), have some measure of that.

Well that’s all. I know I have rambled too much & wandered here & there, perhaps aimlessly, but that’s how I am. I really should learn to be more focussed and stick to the topic while writing. :)

Sleepy now… and tired. Got to go. Over and out.