Are You Happy Now?

The Times Of India yesterday carried a front-page article that read "Indian youth happiest in the world". It went on to say that according to a study carried out by MTV Networks International, 60% of Indian 16-34 year olds are both religious and happy, while less than 30% in the US and 50% in the UK admitted to be.
I don't get it. What are we so happy about? Are we gloating over the fact that the country is in shambles? Is it because of the instability of the coalition governments that seem to be a permanent given? Are we happy about the law and order system, the crime rates, politicians' families running amok to the point of murder and then getting away scot-free? What about the infrastructure- the potholes where roads should be, the erratic water supply, the unpredictable power outages? What about the garbage dumps that seem to make their appearance anywhere in the city? What about civic sense in the common man? What about the regressionism that is the public epidemic? The state we're in is no secret to anyone. So what are we really so happy about?
Or has someone confused the word happiness with complacency? Is the common motorcycle-riding, loud-talking, law-bending Indian youth secure because he's insulated from the progressive thought of change? Is he happy because as long as it doesn't affect him directly in his face, it's always somebody else's problem? Is he happy because he can dump his garbage anywhere he pleases or urinate beside any road he fancies? How many of those who were surveyed actually voted so they could get a better government? Our rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but it wasn't the poor who was surveyed by a certain music channel most of them might not even have heard of, now was it?
I'll concede the fact that the family and marriage values here may contribute to the happiness, as may the booming IT industry, and the generally upward trend of the economy. But doesn't the way they actually live really matter to anyone? Don't they realize that there could possibly be more to patriotism than waving flags at cricket matches and cussing Pakistan? And why is revolutionism so unfashionable? Why does anyone who talks of such things immediately become an object of ridicule?
And what is the nature of this happiness, this contentment? Does it not cause stagnation? All the great thinkers, revolutionaries and progressionists were far from being happy with the status quo. Any instrument of progress must be bred out of discontentment. What if Gandhi, Bose or Bhagat Singh had been content? What if Martin Luther King had been? What if Voltaire, Rousseau, and Jefferson had all claimed to be happy with the world as it stood? What if the Bastille had never been stormed because the people were indifferent and complacent? What would history have been then, and what would we be now?
No, there is no room for complacency. Happiness is but a euphemism. The youth of India must realize where they are headed with this attitude of theirs and make amends before it's too late. People did not lay down their lives in the struggle for Independence so that an apathetic people can let the nation run itself to ruin. Disorder invariably increases in a system left to itself. The Second Law of Thermodynamics succinctly states so, and let me assure you, the concept of entropy does not limit itself to physics.
(I have referred to Indian youth as 'we' because even though I am Bhutanese, I've spent a lot of time here in India. I mean no disrespect to India or Indians; I would be one of the happiest people to see the nation rise to glory. But will it really?)
(The words regressionism, progressionism and revolutionism probably don't exist, so please pardon my free use of them. On second thoughts, why don't they, really?)

Why I Should Never Blog Again

There is no reason I should put my feelings up on the internet for the whole world to see. Whether they do or not is entirely another matter (okay, so they don’t- that doesn’t change a thing).

There is no reason I should give anybody who accidentally stumbles upon it or the few people who know of its existence any right to judge me or form opinions about me from reading a few paragraphs of writing.

There is no reason I should pour my deepest darkest self into lines of ASCII characters that will suffer markup language tags wrapped around them, like it was any other bit of text, any random Lorem Ipsum.

There is no reason I should choose a color scheme or a layout scheme to present my feelings in an aesthetically pleasing form, like I was decorating a platter for the hungry businessman who sits at the table waiting to be served.

There is no reason my blog should represent my soul.

There is no reason I should put up my true identity, yet there is no reason I should crave anonymity and hide behind the veil of an obscure epithetic agnomen.

There is no reason I should write.

Which is exactly why I love doing each one of those things.

The Masochist

Why is it that I need pain to keep my sanity? Why do I feel incomplete and wasted when there isn't anything to worry about in life? What is it about suffering that makes me feel special, better than the rest?

Maybe it's because I'm so used to having something to worry about all my life that it's so hard to let go and just live a normal life like everybody else. When there is no pain, I need to create it. I could easily let go of painful memories, give up on impossible dreams, and live in the here and now, which isn't altogether bad. But I'd rather relive each of those moments, hear every word, read every letter, keep hoping and wishing for things I know will never come true. I believe the process of pain purifies me, like a trial by fire. It sets me apart, because I know I will be strong, much stronger than anyone can guess. Suffering helps me believe in myself, and remind me of the hero I always wanted to see in myself. I need the pain to be able to reach deep into myself, know myself better.

Yes, I find pleasure in pain. Does that make me a masochist? Maybe. And does this masochism breed and nurture narcissism in me? Maybe. Either way, I don't really think I care all that much, because I'd much rather know me as me, not by definitions of some socially accepted stereotypes invented by society for their own convenience.

Born To Run

Sometimes you feel you're born to run, destined to be a physical and emotional nomad. You feel the need to move on, to leave behind yet another installment of life and start all over again somewhere new. You have perfected the art of detachment, and that of making temporary friends. You get a strange comfort in knowing that the people around them aren't going to be forever, just little longer. You've done nothing wrong, yet you feel the need to distance yourself from your past, to rebuild you life again. But there are some people you wish you didn't have to leave behind- a few real friends that you wish life wouldn't take away from you. But you can't be a nomad and keep friends forever. You have to let them go live their life, nestled in their perfect little worlds. You just brush the dust off your backpack and get back on the road. It does get lonely at times, changing worlds, restarting your life each time, but you learn to live with it. It's the only way you don't feel threatened by your surroundings, so you're not afraid you'll turn into your neighbour. You could try falling in love but that would probably want to make you run even worse. After all, how much heartbreak can you handle? Some call it fear of commitment, some call it instability. I call it life. For some of us are, indeed, born to run. And who ever said nomads don't enjoy life?

Gratitude: a sin?

Most religions try to impress upon us that it is our moral duty to help those in need and be generally kind to others all the time. Going by this philosophy, someone who is kind towards you is merely doing his duty, because by moral standards, he is bound to. If his copy of religious text had a misprint that said ‘punch thy neighbour’, he would have done so with equal zeal. Nobody is grateful to someone who is just doing his job (when was the last time you thanked your janitor for doing an "awesome job on the loo"?), so by feeling gratitude, you are acknowledging the fact that helping you was not his duty but something nice he did for you. And since religion would have it otherwise, you are, in fact, contradicting it, and hence are sinning. So the next time you say "Thank you" to someone, be prepared for the fires of hell!!! :-)    

"There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?'. When you look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions." From Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne.

The Nature Of Evil

"What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known," wonders Private Train in the 1998 war drama The Thin Red Line.

I suppose Train isn't the only one who's ever questioned the nature of evil. I have a million times myself. However, the most satisfactory answer I've got is, interestingly, from the same movie, when Colonel Gordon Tall (played by Nick Nolte) tells a doubtful Captain Staros, "Look at this jungle. Look at those vines, the way they twine around, swallowing everything. Nature's cruel, Staros."

I hated the idea the first time I heard it. I was a teenager who believed in the fundamental good of all creation, a humanitarian. There was no way I could accept nature as cruel. It was the kindest thing that existed. It was only man, when misguided, who was cruel to it and to each other. Nevertheless, it was a line that stuck in my head for the next six years or so, when I happened to watch the movie again. And it was all so clear.

Cruelty, or evil, whichever way you put it, is woven into the very fabric of our existence. It exists in every last, purest one of us. Cruelty is part of the great design that is this universe. Colonel Tall's example is wonderful: a vine draped around a magnificent tree, living off the tree, relying on it for everything, yet seemingly giving nothing in return. The vine doesn't wish to be cruel; it's just the way it lives. That's nature, and it is evil. Yet, nature has this amazing ability of imparting beauty to anything. The vine manages to look beautiful even as it reaches into the innermost depths of the oak, robbing it of its nourishment, veiling it by climbing all over it, and at the same time relying upon it for support. Even the oak, infected by this parasite, gains a certain grandeur in this system. It represents the stoic boldness that some men aspire for- to stand tall in the face of adversity, not to be hampered by climbers trying to pull it down.

The beauty of the vine is superficial. Just under the leaves lies a vileness almost unparalleled. It couldn't live without the tree, yet by climbing it veils it from sight. The beauty of the oak is much more powerful- it commands awe in the hearts of men that look upon it. In spite of the vine, it still looks majestic.

Often, as I believe many others have done, I have wondered if the universe was just a series of random events or a well-planned course of events headed somewhere for a reason. I can't say I am too religious a person, so I wasn't too comfortable with the idea of the whole God's Masterplan concept. So I wondered if there was a mathematical expression, an equation that run the world. The various parameters substituted according the situation, correctly weighted, could perhaps yield the outcome of an event, action or even emotion. To a small extent, we already know the immediate cause-and-effect relationships, but what if it were possible at a much larger scale?### If there were such an equation, I believe "evil" would be a very important parameter in it, because I believe it is a fundamental trait of life. It is necessary to sometimes be cruel, and it is necessary at other times to carry on in spite of cruelty inflicted upon us.

###I don't know how sane the "equation" above sounds, but most philosophers I know seem to give us a choice between believing in the "random series of events" theory, or the "God's Masterplan" theory. In my opinion, the universe is a little too well-ordered for so many random events to happen. Random events would completely disprove cause-and-effect relationships. Driving off a cliff and dying are certainly not two random events that occur in series. And if our whole life was nothing but a carefully planned course of events, and that the fact that I'm half-asleep well past midnight trying to write this was not my conscious decision but a pre-planned move intended for some higher purpose, it would make life extremely depressing, dreary and dreadful. Hell, I can't even stretch my legs under the table and feel good about it, because it wasn't me, but something written in a Scripture. But who knows what the truth is? Maybe Douglas Adams was right. Maybe it's the mice.