Entry for Liberalism in Life Competition - 2007

LSS 2006 Goa, ALCS 2006 Mumbai

I had heard this term somewhere - Karmic Amnesia. It implied, roughly that all that there is to know is known to us, it is within us, because WE ARE IT. It’s just that, being subject to conditioning from the moment of our birth, we have forgotten it. It lies buried somewhere. Therefore, all knowledge is not learning. It is merely re-membering. Yes, yes, big words (sic)! Fancy thoughts! I had never cared to find out more about the people who propounded this thought, or about the sanctity of the thought itself. But through the years, knowingly and unknowingly I have carried this idea with me.

Post LSS and ALCS, I think I can begin to understand what it is about. Nothing has felt to right or so true till now! More than enthusiasm about tumbling across a whole lot of truth, I feel a peace within myself. In the jamboree and illusion of our life and times, I know that I am not even close in making sense of the madness, but I feel and therefore I know, that the Philosophy of Liberty is true. It is a constant.

Perhaps I am unable to put across how life has been post LSS. So let me go into little specifics. Some incidents, some insights, which have made me happy and caused me to grow. Here I would like you to know that, more than the possibilities of setting right the outside world (which obviously is breathtaking), liberalism has helped me to straighten up my own crumpled self. I think nothing could be more meaningful to me than this. So here goes.

SITTING WITH MY FEET UP

I have a problem. I cannot sit like a lady for long. I just have to put my feet up and sit cross legged, or any other way and then I am set. Did I say that this was my problem? Well it is not. I am perfectly fine with this fine print of mine. People around me are not. It is their problem. As long as it upsets people I care for, then it becomes my problem.

Friends in movie halls, parents in restaurants, they all keep nudging me to stop being a kid, give up my bohemian ways (wow! what was that?! even I thought so!) In school my teachers informed me this trait came in way of me being selected as the school captain. In college, the poor professors cannot say anything but pass disgusted glances, like I should not be there. While walking around the class giving lectures, they stop short of coming to the row in which I sit and so on. On my way to LSS my co passenger in the flight was distinctly discomfited and kept turning the other way round !

Big deal, you would say. I would say too. But during LSS, something happened. Through the four days, I was listening, talking and mind gym-ing like never before. I felt alive and involved for once. And whenever I wanted, I put my feet up on the chair.

The only difference being, I didn’t feel an iota of apprehension doing so. While at other times I have to make do with my 'I could care less attitude’, here that was not a consideration at all. I felt rather that these were a bunch of honest people. People who talk of liberalism of thought and action, such people, such a society will not judge me on the way I appear. They will respect me or disrespect me on the basis of my intrinsic worth. They wouldn’t draw inferences about my bearing, my background et al, on the basis of how I sit. It was not even a gesture on anybody's part, a non issue really. While I do know, that I can’t sit cross legged my way through life, and of course there are pretty reasonable things like decorum, for once, I felt liberated!

SINGUR

I am sure all of you know what is happening in my state- West Bengal. The SEZ issue is all flared up. In December, just before I left for ALCS, I was asked by the paper to write a story about how the Student movement is shaping up. I went about reporting all that I saw and found out. All the acquisitions, reasons, plans, I put in everything. Personally, I found it revolting, but still my job is to report what I see, and that I did. A few days later, the paper called up to say that they cannot run the story. It has too many things against the Chief Minister, I am told. "It goes against our official policy of being anti left parties but pro CM on this issue," they said.

I was appalled. While I always knew, that decorum of this sort was followed, I heard it from the Horse's mouth now. In clear terms. This was a free newspaper practicing self censorship, for whatever reasons. I was asked to clear my head. You don’t just naively ask such things, I was taught. Yes, I do understand that one doesn’t go on asking such things out of the blue. A 20 year freelance journalist is certainly not adequately disposed to write a commentary or editorial to this effect. But what of the people who can ask this question in this medium? Why are they not stirring? Of course there is a method to this madness as well, it dawned upon me. Vested interests, here, there, everywhere. I weighed my options - selling the story to another house. Starting a campaign on my own, talking about it…

MAYAPUR

Mayapur is a little town / village 200 kms from Kolkata. The International Society of Krishna Conciousness (ISKCON) is head quartered here. I happened to visit the place with my family a few days back, in the thick of spring. True to its name, the place envelopes you in its MAYA! Numerous huge temples, museums, and the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen. There are flashes of my stay over there, scenes which keep coming back every time I close my eyes.
The main lotus temple. Done up in the most expensive marble, mosaic, gold, gems, possible, it is a wonder not just for all the excesses it is made of, but of the simple, naive charm that it embodies…All so tastefully done. Mayapur was not a revelation. It was a confirmation. I was wondering how, inspite of these lakhs of flowers being used for the Pujas everyday, the place was still brimming with flowers. While this does not have even a distant correlation to what I learnt at LSS and ALCS, I was happy to see a self-contained system function so beautifully in the absence of a Government!

SELFISH IS GOOD.

This was the biggest, most painful and most important lesson I have learnt / re-learnt ever. That our long held beliefs can be intrinsically wrong. And that Selfish is as honest as you can get.

'I' IS SACRED

Of course at CCS everyone will remember Ayn Rand's saying. "The smallest minority on earth is the individual.”
I am more alive now than I have ever been. Because obviously I am precious. Full of capacity. A lot of things are waiting to happen. I will do them at my own behest. Not under the baggage of impression, expectation or resolution. I am far from finding my route map, on which I shall move ahead. But my senses are more alert than ever. The only thing I owe in the world is honesty. To my self. There might be times when I turn back and say that so and so of what I did was wrong in the long run. But I wouldn’t like to repent for them or for anything ever.