Indifference

This post shall begin, like most of my other posts, with thanks to the person who brought this conversation to the fore, Suchitra. If it were not for your questions, I would not be even half the thinker that I think I am.

The question under consideration is what is indifference? We are not going to talk about whether it is beneficial or not. All I am interested is in what it is.

Indifference as defined would mean the ability to come face to face with something and not be affected by it. It seems to mean that the something that one is indifferent to does not hold any importance in my books.

In my opinion, that cannot be indifference. If something is not important to us, then we cannot be indifferent to it. Rather, when something is not important to us, it does not matter what we are to it. We can pay heed to what it is; we can choose to ignore it, neither matter, for once we place it in the realm of unimportant, even the emotion that it triggers is unimportant.

Therefore, I understand that we can be indifferent only to the things that are important to us. The next question is, “Are we indifferent to things that we do not know of?” That too, I believe does not constitute indifference, it is obliviousness. When we are not in the know of something, to say we are unaware of neither its existence nor its non-existence, we are oblivious to it; therefore not indifferent to it.

Therefore, we can be indifferent to things that we know exist and are important to us. This seems to be a self-contradictory statement. How can one consider important and yet be indifferent to it?

The answer, according to me, lies in what indifference means. If it means that we do not pay heed to what happens to it, then we are not indifferent. It should ideally mean that we consider it important; however, it does not have the capacity to run our emotions. The indifference is not to the presence or absence of an entity, it is to the effect that it has on us.

The above statement means that even though something is not present, we can still be not indifferent to it, for it plays an important role in our psychological well-being. I do accept that there is a very thin line between what constitutes indifference what constitutes the opposite. I do accept that with an overview, indifference means no important. However, I can see a subtle difference that lies in the area of importance.

Indifference is in my head,
As is everything else.
I can need you,
Yet be indifferent,
I can have no use for you,
Yet hold you in high esteem.
It is not importance you see,
For indifference lies in my head.

The final farewell

She had held on enough,
Treasuring memories,
Recalling them every time.
He’d moved on,
Leaving her behind,
Removing traces
She’s left.
This was her turn,
Her salve.
Remove picture
Tear letters
Throw mementos.
Everything that reminded
Her of him.
Long enough
Building sand castles
That broke with each wave.
Long enough,
Hoping against hope,
For events that'd never happen
Long enough
She’d said
For things must end.
She changed locks,
She changed keys
She even changed the door,
For it reminded of him.
Long enough
She’d waited
To accept what she knew
Things had moved on
It was her turn now.

My unknown woman

Oh unknown woman,
I pray to you,
Do not get up and leave.
I know not who you are
Or of whence you came.
Let us fool each other a little longer,
Let us fool we know each other,
That we are friends,
That you are my lover.
The stops are rushing by,
Each more frightening than the last.
With each approaching stop,
I pray this is not the one,
The stop where you get off.
As the bus pulls out of the stop,
I am scared to turn,
Lest you catch me
Looking at you.
I sit there looking ahead,
Looking at nothing in particular
Trying to hear every sound,
That comes out of you.
From the moment you sat beside,
I have not looked at your face.
All I see are your hands
As you finger your book
One that you are not reading.
Fingers, so slender,
With nails so pretty
A touch so ginger, the lightness I feel,
When your skins brushes mine.
I think of things I can say,
A joke, a comment, a wisecrack.
But nothing comes to my mind
All I can offer is my silence.
You accept my silence
And offer me more,
That which is the foundation of our love.
You are sitting there,
So close,
That I can smell your perfume,
The one I did not purchase
For our non-existent anniversary.
You look at the watch on your wrist,
A wrist so slim,
I am scared the watch will fall off.
As you seem to be in a hurry
To go somewhere
Without me.
The bus rolls on, oblivious to us,
Everyone seems oblivious
To what is not going on between us.
You start packing your things,
You are telling me,
Without actually saying a word,
That you are going to leave soon,
Leaving me here,
Ruing the silence
That hung between us.
Oh woman who was beside me
Whence you came from,
Where did you go?
My woman, who shared a seat
Who left, without sharing a life.

Horizon

She was vast,
Expanse-less, I thought.
She covered me from all sides,
As she held me up,
So I would not sink.
She seemed all powerful,
moving with an ease,
an ease that came from within
and one that seen on her skin.
Her skin was flawless,
Though with many a trough;
She let you feel each one
As you rode over
Making your way
To where you wanted to go.
Then you looked in the distance,
Until you saw she too was being held up.
By the even more expanse-less sky.
He gently reached down,
And kissed her with his blue lips
For she was not truly blue,
She was made blue,
By his kiss.
He gave her strength,
The blue was her strength,
The blue which hid her depths
From all those at the surface.
These lovers,
They stared at each other for million miles
They held each other at a thin line,
A line that no one but them could ever see.

Calvin and Hobbes - Thoughts of a sage

Bill Watterson created the ultimate six-year old when he penned the characters of Calvin and Hobbes. These two have brought untold joy to millions of people all over the world. I too am one of those who have seen the world through Calvin's eyes. The strips below are some that I could not personally believe came from a six year old for they contain wisdom which even we as adults lack. Agreed that they are on death, but hey they are really good.

What is in a name?

The basic idea for this post is not mine; it is something I read in “The unbearable lightness of being” by one Milan Kundera. The fact that he is a Nobel laureate is something else.

The question he asks is why one loves his or her name so much. As I ask the question, I can hear most of us raise an eyebrow, “Why do I love my name? Is it not simple? Because it is mine and how can I not like something that is mine.”

The question that I would like to ask, and the question is not mine, is that how did that name, with which we identify so much become ours? Did we choose it? Did we ever think that of all the names in this world, this is the one that I identify with and therefore I like to be called that?

In all cases, expect for those (un)fortunate few who did not have parents, all the names were chosen by our relatives, parents in most cases, grandparents aunts uncles and friends of parents in others. The parent or relative thinks of all the names that they have heard thus far in life and then proceed to give their child that name. Do they ever think that once grown up, their child may not like the name that they gave them, or does it cross their minds that their children may not live up to the names that they were given?

Imagine the preconceived burden that a child named Gandhi or Jawaharlal has. Take for that matter an Indira, or now a Laloo. These children are named in the parent's hope that they will turn out to be as great if not greater than the personality they were named after. Just think of the scandal if a person named Gandhi decided to be a professional criminal, a thief who was apprehended by the police. The first sentence that they would hear would be, “How could you, with the name of Gandhi commit such a crime?”

This could work both ways. Imagine that some person who disliked Mahatma Gandhi (there are a few people who do and they have a right to) and named their son Nathuram. Even if the child turned out to be a saint, the society will always retort, “How could you do something right? After all, your name is Nathuram” Now we are not here to debate if Ghodse did a correct thing or not, the one crime he committed, which is not pardonable is that he killed another human being. Now the fact that Gandhi was not just another human being is something that is secondary to the fact. If we stop giving names of people who have committed a murder, I am sure that we will end up with no names to give.

This is not restricted to the name alone. There are so many of us who are such narcissists that we spend hours looking into the mirror, reveling in our reflection. As most of us already know the root of the word, Narcissus, the story of the young man who saw his own reflection in the water and was smitten by it. He was so smitten that he did not move and kept glaring into the water until he turned to stone or something like that.

Taking the question of the name a bit further, we do not have a choice of how we look, unless we were the children of plastic surgeons who have the power to change how we look. When what we appear to be is the sum of a large set of permutations and combinations over the pair of genes we receive from our parents. It is a factor of which gene is dominant, which is recessive and which one is dormant.

The face structure, the physical build, the hair color, the eye color, the length of the nose, the shape of the nose bridge, the nature of the hair, the amount of facial and bodily hair, everything that we think of as an indicator of beauty is something that is not ours. By complimenting someone on his or her looks, are we not complementing something that has been handed down over generations?

If this is the state of our being, then how can we be proud of what we appear to be? I am not talking about my usual perceptions and perceptions of perceptions, but of the possessive nature of our physical appearance. Is this why we were told that beauty is skin deep and ephemeral? Or was it something else, which had the same effect? I do not know. All I know is I am Aditya Rajaraman, a name whose choice that was made by my parents. I thank them for that for I have built my identity around that name, if I were not “Aditya Rajaraman”, son of V Rajaraman, I am not sure what I am. There is nothing else that I am. However, it is something to identify myself and it is not me. I start much above the name and I end much below my face and skin. What those start and end is, I do not know, but I know they are there.

Marriage or Bust

I guess that I have already discussed the impossibility of having a plain platonic relation with a member of the opposite sex. If I remember correctly, there is a lot of hiding of urges and feeling involved. I did mention that it is not the lack of urges, rather the hiding which makes the platonicity (not a real word) possible.

I have a thought. By telling a member of the opposite sex that we do not think of them “in that way”, whatever that way is, are we not insulting them? What I mean is we are with them because we like them, but then we are not attracted to them? Is it not like telling them that if they were more attractive, we would be interested in them “in that way”, but since they are not, we are not attracted to them. What does this leave them with? Why are we friends then? So that when we do not have company, they can come and listen to our sob stories, so that we can bitch about other members of the opposite sex whom we find attractive to the one we don’t?

What do we gain from such a relationship, other than the agony aunt/uncle? Are they supposed to be a reserve, in case we do not find someone more attractive and have no option; we will begin to look at them “in that way”? Is this not the biggest insult?

It seems to me that heterosexual people should have friends of their sex only and only be friend with people who they think they can be with “in that way”. Homosexual people on the other hand should have friends only of the opposite sex. At least in this way, we will not be insulting the intelligence of the other person.

Illusion

They stood there,
Not a shred of cloth on them
Shame they felt, none
For they knew not
The meaning of shame.

The trees were empty,
No fruits they bore
The rivers, they ran dry,
For they never had thirst or hunger,
Which needed quenching.

They roamed about
Not a care in the world
For care was not present
They lived in ignorance,
Ignorance of ignorance.

They had created a god, in their image
To protect them from sin,
They made him all-powerful,
The creator more powerful
Than his own creators.

Not all animals were foes,
One friend they had, the serpent
He was beautiful,
With scales like a rainbow.
And he knew of ignorance.

In those garden of ignorance,
There stood a tree,
That held a single apple,
An apple of knowledge,
The knowledge of life.

When the serpent,
He tried to share
The knowledge of life,
No one paid heed,
Not one soul listened.

He took his friends,
The ones who would listen
He took man and woman,
To eat the apple
To know the unknown.

Now man and woman,
They stand clothed,
In hunger
In shame
In shame of knowledge.

The serpent, he shared,
To break ignorance,
Forever hated and rightly so,
For he removed the bliss,
Uncovered the blinds over our eyes.

We lived an illusion,
An illusion of ignorance.
We live a reality
One of pain and suffering,
for we chose reality.

Ideals and relationships

is something I noticed. Every time a person likes another of the opposite sex, (read likes as loves), that liking is based on an ideal. They have an ideal in their head and they mix and match and find the person is the closest to that ideal. The ideal can be in terms of looks, intelligence, emotions, et al. When a particular member of the opposite sex, accepts the initial advances and then rejects the entire thing, also known as a break-up, one has two choices, retain that ideal and at some level continue liking that person or change that ideal and get over that person. Strange is it not, how many people say that they are not able to get over somebody, when they actually mean that they are not able to get over the ideal that person meant to them. If only ideals were that easy to change!

Infidelity

Before I discuss what I plan to, let me start off with a small story. (Please excuse the length. Bear with me. The end will be worth it, I can promise you)

There lived a man sometime back. He was successful, happily married with a family that loved him as much as he loved them. They were in all senses the perfect family. He went to work, came back early to spend time with his family. The wife stayed at home and took care of the house. It was not something he forced on her. He had once told her that he was OK if she wanted to work. However, she chose to stay at home. She felt that being a full time wife and then a full time mother in itself was a job. She did not want to be one of those women who tried to balance her career and her family. She knew what was important to her and she was willing to do anything to make sure that it remained that way. She loved being at home when her son and daughter came back from school, loved talking to them about what happened that day, who they met, whom they liked and what was going on in their lives. It was not like that she did not give them their freedom. She was just involved with their lives. She especially loved when he came home from work. She mixed him his drink and they sat down in the veranda as the sun set, talking about random things until it was time to make dinner. Over all they had a good life.

Just like in the movies, I am going to bring in a twist. What is life without its twists and turns?

This man conceals a secret. Now please do not go about telling me that there is no person who does not conceal something or the other. However, I have always believed that in a relationship, especially one that has taken the form of marriage and has endured the test of time and begot two kids, the couple would have in most cases told every dark secret there is. Not because the spouse wants to know, but more because they want the other person to understand who they are and to accept them for all their deficiencies.

He had been in love once, with someone other than who was currently his wife. It was not that he did not love his wife. It was just the before marriage, he was in love with a woman. Again, this is something most men go through. I would rather go on to state that there are hardly a handful of men who have not loved someone before marriage. And there are some who have loved a handful before marriage. This was not the secret. This was the first thing that he told his wife when they were to get married. The secret was something that he was doing for the last fifteen years of marriage.

Everything he did, he sought his ex-lover's approval. It was not something that he did consciously. It just happened that everything he did, his thoughts automatically went to her.

For simplicity sake, I shall name the woman X.

He had not met X since the time they had broken up. In the last twenty years since the breakup, they had not even kept in touch. For all practical purposes, he did not know if she was alive or dead. And he was sure that she did not know of his existence either. He had moved on as she had. He was happy in marriage. But, as I said, everything he said he sought her approval. Every time he bought a something new, a shirt, a toy for his son, a dress for his daughter, the school he admitted his children in, the diamond ring he got his wife for their tenth anniversary, the house he got twelve years into marriage, everything he thought of her and what she would say.

He thought that he could hear her voice, “Very nice; expensive but nice. Do you need to get something that expensive to thank her for staying with you for ten years?” for the diamond ring. “You have to be kidding me. Why do you have to always go for black shirts? Do you not know that you look much better in white? It brings out your eyes?” Every act of his, he thought what her reaction would be.

As I said, he thought of her long after she was gone. He did not dare tell this to his wife and let us be honest, can you tell your spouse that you still think of the person who was once held in the same pedestal that you now hold your spouse? Does it not sound that you do not love your spouse and are still in love with that other one? Till his death, at the ripe old age, when his son was settled, as was his daughter and his wife had passed away, he thought of that woman who he loved for a brief period of time every single second of the day. It was her name that was on his lips when he breathed his last; not the name of the woman with whom he spent most of his life with, it was neither his mother or father, and it was neither of his children. It was X. With a smile on his lips and X on his breath he died.

The one thing I want to ask is this; does what he did throughout his life amount to infidelity? Was he unfaithful to his wife for more than fifty years that he spent with her? Was he ever disloyal? Is fidelity restricted to only the physical aspect of a relationship? Or does it surpass the mere physicality of the body and transcend into the mind? Does the thought of someone other than the woman or man you are with surmount to being infidel?

My views on this are already out in the world through my story “Betrayal”. For one who believes in the fact that even an extra marital affair does not amount to infidelity, the thought of another should not be an act of disloyal. However, being one who treasures the realm of thought, will the fact that my dearest is constantly in the thought of someone other than me not make me question the reason that person is with me? Single situation, two aspects, no decisions; just a thought.