VOLUNTARY DEATH – IS DEATH AN OPTION
04 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Absurdity, Death, India, legal issues, Life, philosophy, Thoughts Tags: choice, pro-life, Samadhi, Suicide, Voluntary death, war
The first argument I ever had with this person who went on to be my best friend and now my husband is – whether suicide is okay.
He argued for the right to kill oneself as being a part of, a sort of sub-sect of the right to live. I was 18 then. I couldn’t grasp what possibly life could become, how intolerable it could be for some people and how some people just live life because its there.
Animals have self-preservation in their instinct. But humans, we are capable of a rational choice. This is not a justification for every child who fails an exam and hangs from the fan. But I am speaking of a calculated choice.
What if something happens in your life, which makes living or continuing to live, meaningless? I know of one such thing in my life. I would not want to live if the thing I dread the most happens as it would have belied everything I stood for and everything my husband stands for and what we i.e. me and him represent.
It would not be out of failure or dejection or depression, so much as it would be out of not wanting to live beyond.
I am not advocating suicide or escape from life. My proposition is simple. I should be able to take a cold, rational choice to end my life. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami keeps coming back to me. Now that I think of it, the female protagonist in the novel, tries hard to live, to justify her living and her life. But she is unable to sustain it. After her boyfriend killed himself, she tries to live life, but cannot. So at some point she ends it.
I, as a living being, breathe. I, unfortunately cannot stop breathing when I feel like and therefore, if I wish to stop living a gruesome intervention is required. Is this the reason people abhor suicide – because it is an external intervention. Is it only the goriness of it all? The means of death are not natural and trouble the minds of those left behind, is that why suicide is shunned? Can the means of doing something justify the desirability or the undesirability of an end?
What if I were to go into a forest and end my life there? (I am vegetarian. So in all probability I would starve to death.) What if my body became one with the earth, then would I be hailed as a saint?
What about soldiers? Don’t they choose to end their lives when they go into a war? Is that not a rational choice? I can fully imagine what the consequence of allowing people legally to end their lives would be in the world today – total anarchy. But it still does not make it an illegitimate demand.
Suppose I am 65 and find out that I have cancer. Well, I am not going into the euthanasia debate. So, if at 65 I find out I have cancer, and I am a doctor lets say. I know death for me is going to be a long painful affair. I am happy with my life and choose it be a peak of my life. I die.
In India, the saints and yogis and all the great spiritual masters have attained high stages of meditation. The ultimate stage is the Samadhi, where the saint or yogi, chooses the time and place of death (in common man terms). They go into a deep trance from which they never come back. Is that suicide? No.
So why, if I should choose to end my life, I shouldn’t be allowed to. The state like in the case of most other subjects has no answer to this. I would probably be shot for asking. That should serve my purpose, but that is not how I would want to go.
FIRAAQ – Separation or Quest
16 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Absurdity, god, India, Life, Movies, philosophy, Politics, Religion Tags: Firaaq, Godhra, Gujarat, hindu, Indian movies, Movies, Nandita Das, Naseeruddin Shah, Religion, riots in Gujarat
This is a movie by Nandita Das. Her debut.
The movie is shot as an ensemble of lives of people in Gujarat post the Godhra riots. The lives of a Gujarati woman who is subjected to violence in her own home, a woman who cannot get over the violence in the city. A woman whom the riot had shaken up, she could hear people knocking her door crying for help, at her window asking to be let in. People whom a mob was chasing to slaughter. Women and children who were burnt because they belonged to another religion.
The story of a muslim couple, an auto rickshaw driver and his wife, whose house was burnt down by Hindu fundamentalists. An old muslim singer, played by Naseeruddin Shah. A man older than independent India whose love for music does not leave any room for hatred. His music survives the attacks. But he is anguished by humans killing other humans.
A muslim businessman married to a Gujarati girl, whose shop is looted and plundered by the likes of the husband of the Gujarati woman I mentioned earlier.
A little muslim boy in search of his dead father.
These are all people whose lives are changed forever. Why? Because a mob decided that people of a religion should be killed. The Hindus decided the Muslims should be killed. Muslims decided Hindus should be killed.
Why? Why? Why? Ask them why and no one can give one concrete answer. There is none! The truth is no one knows why they have killed or raped. No one understands the anger or the hatred. What is the difference between gods that have form and gods that don’t. Haven’t Hindus been taught that God is omnipotent and omnipresent? God is present in everything. If God is present in everything, how come your belief allows you to accept that God is absent in a muslim?
Politicians are using this mob mentality and what do they gain – 5 more years of power. In the name of religion? Isn’t religion a private emotion? Isn’t my religion sacred to me? Why is my religion superior or inferior to yours? Do singers persecute all people who cannot sing? Do dancers persecute all people who cannot dance? What about painters?
What is this religion for a mass? Is it not my liberation as an individual? I don’t understand.
I was not in Gujarat. But I can hear the screaming, I can smell the fear of people. Why? What are we killing each other for?
After the riots in that defeaning silence, stench of blood who is happy? No one. Everyone has been affected in some way or the other.
When I finished watching the movie, I was shivering. The movie ends on a positive note. But leaves the reality clinging to your skin. The fact that murder was committed at such a scale. Is this not genocide? How come the international forces have turned a blind eye to this? Is it not genocide? What does it take for it to be declared a genocide? Why isn’t India being condemned?
Why is the leadership in India not being condemned? The international community doesn’t care. India is profitable and therefore no one is raising any hue and cry. Is this the country I live in? Is this the world I want to bring children into.
I don’t even know what happened at Godhra. I was hardly 18 when it happened. We wanted to believe that there was reason for the violence, there was none. I only saw burning trains, screaming reporters and crying women. Who knows what the truth is? The truth is what the media paints it to be. Can one hear over the noise of the media. Its all unintelligible sounds. Its cacophony. I don’t even want to know anymore what happened. Can I live with the fact that it did happen? I have to live with the fact that it happened.
There are some who confidently will tell me who actually started it, which is the best magazine to believe. Tehelka seems to be the most reliable account. Yet. It doesn’t explain the desire to burn human flesh, to massacre, to drink blood. I don’t think anyone can answer this question.
Infidelity
30 Jan 2009 5 Comments
in Absurdity, Life, philosophy, Reading, Thoughts Tags: Life, Milan Kundera, philosophy, Reading
I don’t really know how to deal with infidelity.
If one really loves another, there is no room for infidelity. However, the other side of the coin is that if one really loves another, one must be able to forgive infidelity!
Sometimes just the thought that the person you love could be interested in some one else, evokes a pang in the heart. It is a preplexing feeling. The victim of another’s infidelity could be both murderous and suicidal. One would hope to elevate to a higher moral level and raise it above jealousy. Ofcourse, jealousy is the state of mind of the affected and infidelity is the act of an “affector”.
Whenever I think of infidelity, I connect it to Milan Kundera’s – The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. The protagonist simply couldn’t help being an infidel. His wife and partner died of it. Every day she woke with the nausea of knowing that her partner had been elsewhere. He could see her pain, he could see her nausea, her anguish, but was helpless against his senses.
It is something that evokes different reactions. Some react by throwing you out of their lives. Some would leave. Some would kill themselves and some would murder the aide.
Despite being in a monogamous relationship can one defend infidelity. Anyone who understands the absurdity that is of being infidel to the one you love, should be able to dismiss it and not think about it.
Ofcourse infidelity can be of varied natures and intensities. To one, it would have to mean ultimately sleeping with another. To another it could be simply thinking about it. Do we oscillate between one extreme and another? Of course we do.
The question is – at what point does the relationship snap? Like the woman in Milan Kundera’s novel, if you are unable to snap the relationship, you will snap yourself.
I cannot explain the why of infidelity but I surely can explain monogamy. Every truly monogamous relationship is based on a conscious rational choice. It is not that you cannot leave your partner, but it is that you choose not to.
Is there some one who can explain infidelity to me?
An Exercise in Excise
02 Jun 2007 Leave a Comment
in Absurdity, Current Affairs, India, Law, legal issues, Politics, Thoughts Tags: Excise Duty, Excise Laws, India, Taxes
When I speak here, I speak as a layman and not as a member of the legal profession. I find it amusing that a State should tax manufacture. That’s what excise is all about.
I make goods – say shoes for instance. I am expected to shell out a percentage of the costs of making the shoes to the Government! Why should I do that? I already pay a percentage of my profits (income tax); I also pay for the same when sold (sales tax), why should I pay for manufacture?
For a society that wishes to promote the greatest good of the greatest number through increasing availability of goods and services – the State is not really helping to achieve that end. I find it absurd that while one gets income tax deductions etc. to help save profits for productive concerns – how is taxing the activity of manufacture of any use? Yes, it does add to the coffers of the Government– but at what cost?
I understand that it helps make exports more competitive, but why do we have to still have such high rates of excise – 16%. To this absurd philosophy of the State, all I can say is that excise should be phased out and no manufacturing unit should be taxed for being productive. But that is never going to happen.
The Face of Death
30 May 2007 1 Comment
in Absurdity, Death, Life, philosophy, Thoughts Tags: accidents, birthdays, Death, Life
The vision one can never get over is the face of death. We were in the middle of a river, high speed river in a canoe. I cannot swim and I did not have a life jacket on. One mistake was made and I saw the face of the navigator. A quick, sharp glance at the oarsman. But it was too late. The water had already streamed in. My boat turned upside down. At that moment, I remembered my brother’s words – “paddle, always paddle to reach the surface”. I paddled. There was the light. I could see light! Before I knew it I had climbed onto the back of the boat.
My mother was stuck underneath and we recovered her after 15 long minutes. We had taken a trip to celebrate my birthday. I thought I would never want to celebrate my birthday ever again. But I remember the face of death and smile today, because I saw that it was not meant to happen. I will have my second birthday since that day and I can finally celebrate life! I have finally understood why a birthday is meant to be celebrated. I now have the reason to have a ‘happy’ birthday.
All Men Are Liars – Ouspensky
24 May 2007 Leave a Comment
in Absurdity, Books, Existentialism, Life, philosophy, Reading, Religion, Thoughts Tags: Ouspensky, Sartre, The Pyschology of Man's Possible Evolution
“To comment on the last paragraph: If you are writing and FULLY conscious of the fact that you are writing, can you still be writing? The same goes for reading. Once you become conscious of doing the activity, you are no longer “doing” it. I believe Sartre wrote on that, but I may be mistaken.” This was a comment to a previous post.
I was reading Ouspensky
and he talks about a similar phenomenon – consciousness. What he says is that it is quite possible that a person is conscious for about two minutes or so while he/she is writing or reading, but what remains is the memory of the consciousness. However, the person thinks that he was conscious the whole time. Ouspensky has declared the whole of mankind to be liars. Not because they don’t speak the truth but because they don’t know that they are not speaking the truth, for they are unaware of the truth.
This is food for thought and I must thank my friend J. Bo for propelling me in that direction.
Absurdity, Man and Religion
24 May 2007 3 Comments
in Absurdity, Existentialism, India, Life, philosophy, Religion, Thoughts Tags: Absurdity, Fate, Hindi Movies, Religion, Religious Wars
There is a certain absurdity in the way fate operates. One can never know why one was born into a certain place. Why did a man rest at a particular place while travelling and why not at another?
You mix this general absurdity of fate with man’s irrational behaviour (including religious behaviour) and one doesn’t know what will become of it. The consequences are extrapolated into unimaginable dimensions. Unfortunately, I am not the best of writers and will have to resort to an example to make my case.
This is an Indian set up, say in the interiors where the religious strife is high, coupled with ill informed villagers and gullible townsmen; who would believe anything. A Muslim boy decides to rest for the night in a temple. He loves temples and is researching on them. But the reason he rests there is because he is unable to get a grip on the fact that he was the cause of the death of the girl most dear to him. She committed suicide because the non-Muslim boy she loved was murdered by her relatives (who were informed by our hero of their elopement). When the Muslim boy is seen inside the temple, he is immediately assumed to be a terrorist and the police is waiting to gun him down and people from all over the state are gathered to lynch him. He walks out of the temple after two days. He is shot dead.
Notice the absurdity of the whole situation. Starting from their birth, all the three – the muslim girl, muslim boy and non-muslim boy had no reason to be born as such. The lover need not have been killed, the boy need not have been found at a temple…
The force that acted on these seemingly unconnected absurd events, was man and his irrational behaviour. Thus it is not good enough to say that life is absurd and we can do nothing about it. The absurdity has at all times to be balanced out by rationality. Man’s rational behaviour – conscious and thinking behaviour can cancel out or rather balance all absurdity in the world.
Where does religion fit into whatever I have said so far? Religion does the very opposite of rationality consequently extrapolating absurdity. The boy got killed because he did not belong to the same religion as the girl. There is no rational in that. It has, if at all, magnified absurdity. The same goes for all religious feud, whether it is the Hindus (banning Valentine’s Day) or Christians with their forced conversions or any other religion with its respective idiosyncrasies. Bach has said – that when spiritual knowledge becomes public and is taught it becomes a religion and then the knowledge is lost. Therefore, any knowledge has to passed on to individuals and not the masses. This is what is happening today. Absurdity is getting magnified to be all consuming and to fight this unknown, uncomprehensible absurdity man resorts to God. Man must if at all, resort to his reason.
(Please note that whole concept of absurdity being balanced out by rationality was something I discovered during an argument with a friend, all due credit for this thought process of mine is to go to him.)
