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It is, therefore, no surprise that we are also encircled by the overriding premise that microbes, or microorganisms, are our ecological foes and that they are meant only to be destroyed. This is how the origin of the word “bug” first came into vogue for bacteria, illustrating a creepy sense of apprehension for other tiny, eerie insects, or the notion of the “hateful bugle,” crawling all over everything. Hence our drive to destroy the bug, or the damn insect, wherever it exists.

Safe Isn’t Safe

was not too long ago hailed as the “safest” herbicide in history. New research suggests that it may be harming us in ways we’ve just begun to understand. In addition, a new body of growing research has pulled the questioning bell with the ringtone as to how long traces of glyphosate, a powerful weed killer, can linger in the food we eat or the crops that livestock feed on. The irony, of course, is that not many people are willing to distinguish the recent rule change regarding one of the world’s most popular herbicides.

The big alarm signal, as ongoing research also suggests, is that glyphosate harms our , or our internal ecology. This is one side of the story, because many of us have just begun to floppily understand the inner recesses of our body and, more importantly, how our own microbiome affects our health.

When intrepid research efforts sequenced DNA from microorganisms derived from our armpits, belly buttons and other locations, they found minuscule versions of ecosystems à la the Alps, composed of trillions of microbes. In their totality, this “invisible” mass of organisms is our microbiome. Research estimates that they make up as much as 5 kilograms of our body weight. A vast majority of human microbiomes, comprising of 10 trillion to 100 trillion cells and thousands of other species, also include 8 million unique gene types.

As most of us would know, bacteria produce essential vitamins, natural body chemicals such as anti-inflammatories and other compounds that power our metabolism by breaking down food. Though they encompass most of our microbiome framework, it was only recently that we delved into studying them in-depth and understanding, if not necessarily fully yet, exactly what they function is. Research also suggests it is probable that our microbiome us from illnesses. When its equilibrium is disturbed, it may also possibly trigger disease.

Proponents of glyphosate would certainly not acquiesce. This is because most would argue that it is not as toxic as the “wonder drug” aspirin, for instance, even if one has a against the latter. From a point of view, glyphosate is not well absorbed by our digestive tract — more than 98% of it passes right through us. In addition, its mode of action involves a biochemical process that is specific to microorganisms and plants. This is known as the , which human beings lack. Be that as it may, glyphosate is evidenced to get into water and affect aquatic life, leading to dreadful loss of amphibians, the guardians of our ecosystem.

Little is yet known of the damage to soil that glyphosate can cause, not to speak of its impact on beneficial soil microbes and encumbrance on the natural growth of plants, including those that are genetically modified to resist the herbicide. But when you add a contentious body of new independent research conducted in the US and elsewhere, there appears an alarming prospect that glyphosate may abortion and sterility in farm animals. What next? We are not sure yet.

Other likewise implicate that glyphosate may be just as toxic to human placental cells, especially in farm workers exposed to high concentrations of the chemical. This is not all. Studies in Europe have found that glyphosate levels in human urine exceeded safe limits. All the same, advocates of the herbicide insist that farmers do not use “pure” glyphosate anyway and argue that there are far more toxic ingredients than glyphosate used in the world today.

The counterpunch is that there are some indubitable reasons why more and more people are being exposed to the dangers of glyphosate. Research itself cannot disrupt or tweak our metabolic process — what actually wobbles such a process are microbes. We may be harming our inner biological canvas with other powerful herbicides whose deleterious effects have not been fully understood. As research grapples with newer pesticides and herbicides, the jury is out that glyphosate may also exterminate several species of beneficial, “good” gut bacteria while not affecting harmful, “bad” gut bacteria like E. coli — the cause of epidemics in cattle. One shudders to think of the likely impact the same bacteria, which have colonized the human species, may possibly have.

Maintaining Health and Wellness

Our gut bacteria play a key role in maintaining our health and wellness. On the contrary, an unhealthy microbiome, as new studies reveal, may trigger obesity and inflammatory diseases of the gut, such as inflammatory bowel disease. Newer research also points out to a of health disorders that glyphosate, in combination with other environmental toxins, could contribute to — depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also referred to as motor neuron disease), multiple sclerosis, infertility, developmental defects, cancer and so on.  

In this context, it is imperative that we warily take a fresh new look at the origin of our food. Conventionally-produced vegetarian and animal products are often a result of farming practices that make use of factory-farmed manure and raw human sewage. Animal and human excreta are extraordinarily toxic. They include a vast array of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, hormones and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, not to speak of pathogens that taint our food and also our bodies. We are not talking of another perilous dimension yet — the use of nuclear waste-based and “bacteriophage” sprays to disinfect inherently toxic food, which produces different and far more hazardous compounds as a consequence.

All the same, non-organic lobbies are increasing the amounts of anti-microbial pesticides and herbicides in our food. What is worse, we do not have adequate data as to what extent we are being exposed to such chemicals. Yet another downside is that glyphosate is difficult to test for. The fact also remains that many farmers have embraced genetically-modified seeds with glyphosate with alacrity. In the US alone, it is that over 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate, which began to sell as Roundup in 1974, has been sprayed on fields and farms, and its usage is expanding just as rapidly. If this is not a distress call or a formula for disaster, what is? Is there a way out?

Yes, there is. It isn’t easy, however. Nevertheless, it is time we stalled that archaic, rationally unrefined exemplar that disease or illness is, for the most part, caused by germs in the environment rather than viewing our risk of infection as being principally determined by immune vulnerabilities within us.

We also need a paradigm change, if not a simple shift, to drastically alter our understanding of health and illness if we are to endure the indiscriminate demolition of our biosphere while refraining from supporting, endorsing, buying or consuming food produced through dubious non-organic farming practices. We need to respect and revere our body in all its encased grandeur derived from the molecular framework of the cosmos. If we don’t, we will only have ourselves to blame for genetically modifying not only nature and the environment, but also vandalizing ourselves — in mind, body, spirit and soul.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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During the last hundred years, modern medicine has undergone a sea change. Just think of it — an ever-expanding repertoire of medicines, high-tech procedures, therapies and reams of clinical data to employ when one gets sick. Yet modern medicine remained (in)complete, notwithstanding the therapeutic advances.

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Things are now changing thanks to the integration of all such advances, from how a person’s diet interacts with one’s unique genetic profile to how environmental pollutants affect our thinking, not to speak of preventative medical approaches in health and wellness. The big perestroika has begun, and it is poised to transform health care for a growing number of people in the near future. Welcome to a whole new world of personalized, bespoke medicine.

Customized Medicine

is, in essence, tailored or customized medical treatment. It treats while keeping in mind the unique, individual characteristics of each patient, which are as distinct as one’s fingerprint or signature. It also includes scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of how a person’s unique molecular and genetic profile makes them susceptible to certain illnesses. Personalized medicine expands our ability to envisage medical treatments that would not only be effective but also safe for each patient while excluding treatments that may not provide useful objectives.

Personalized medicine is, in simple terms, the use of new methods of molecular scrutiny. It is keyed to help better manage a patient’s illness or their genetic tendency toward a particular illness or a group of diseases. In so doing, it aims to achieve optimal therapeutic outcomes by helping both clinicians and patients choose a disease management approach that is likely to work best in the context of the patient’s unique genetic and environmental summary. In other words, it allows to accurately diagnose diseases and their sub-types while prescribing the best form and dose of medication most suited to the given patient.

Personalized, or precision, medicine is not rocket science — it is, in essence, an extension of certain traditional approaches to understanding and treating disease. What jazzed up the therapeutic fulcrum of personalized medicine are tools that are more precise. This is what also offers clinicians better insights for selecting a treatment protocol based on a patient’s molecular profile. Such a patient-specific methodology, as has been practiced for long in certain complementary and alternative medical () or integrative approaches, not only curtails harmful side effects but also leads to more successful outcomes, including reduced costs in comparison to the current trial-and-error approach to treatment, which has distressingly come to the fore during these extraordinary and unprecedented times of COVID-19.

It is still early days, but the fact remains that personalized medicine has changed the old ways of how we all thought about, identified and managed health issues. As personalized medicine increasingly bids fair to an exciting journey in terms of clinical research and patient care, its impact will only further expand our understanding of medical technology.

Tapping Nature

What personalized medicine has done is bring about a in our thinking about people in general and also specifically. We all vary from one another — what we eat, what others eat, how we react to stress or experience health issues when exposed to environmental factors. It is agreed that such variations play a role in health and disease. It is also being incrementally accepted that certain natural variations found in our DNA can influence our risk of developing a certain disease and how well we could respond to a particular medicine.

All of us are unique individuals, perhaps with the exemption of identical twins, albeit the genomes are unique in them, too. While we are genetically similar, there are small differences in our DNA that are unique, which also makes us distinctive in terms of health, disease and our response to certain medicinal treatments.

Personalized medicine is poised to tap natural variations found in our genes that may play a role in our risk of getting or not getting certain illnesses, along with numerous external factors, such as our environment, nutrition and exercise. Variations in DNA can, likewise, lead to differences in how medications are absorbed, metabolized and used by the body. The understanding of such genetic variations and their interactions with environmental factors are elements that will help personalized medicine clinicians to produce better diagnostics and drugs, and select much better treatments and dosages based on individual needs — not as just “fixing” a pill or two, as is the present-day conventional medical practice.

It is established that a majority of genes function precisely as intended. This gives rise to proteins that play a significant role in biological processes while allowing or helping an individual to grow, adapt and live in their environment. It is only in certain unusual situations, such as a single mutated or malfunctioning gene, that our apple cart is disturbed. This leads to distinct genetic diseases or syndromes such as sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis. In like manner, multiple genes acting together can impact the development of a host of common and complex diseases, including our response to medications used to treat them.

New Advances

New advances will revolutionize bespoke medical treatment with the inclusion of drug therapy as well as recommendations for lifestyle changes to manage, delay the onset of disease or reduce its impact. Not surprisingly, the emergence of new diagnostic and prognostic tools has already raised our ability to predict likely outcomes of drug therapy. In like manner, the expanded use of biomarkers — biological molecules that are associated with a particular disease state — has resulted in more focused and targeted drug development.

Molecular testing is being expansively used today to identify breast cancer and colon cancer patients who are likely to benefit from new treatments and to preempt recurrences. A genetic test for an inherited heart condition is helping clinicians to determine which course of treatment would maximize benefit and minimize serious side effects while bringing about curative outcomes.

Such complexities exist for asthma and other disorders too. This is precisely where molecular analysis of biomarkers can help us to identify sub-types within a disease while enabling the clinician to monitor their progression, select appropriate medication, measure treatment outcomes and patients’ response. Future advances may make biomarkers and other tools affordable and allow clinicians to screen patients for relevant molecular variations prior to prescribing a particular medication.

It is already clear that personalized medicine promises three strategic benefits. In terms of preventative medicine, personalized medicine will improve the ability to identify which individuals are predisposed to develop a particular condition. A better understanding of genetic variations could also help scientists identify new disease subgroups or their associated molecular pathways and design drugs to target them. This could also help select patients for inclusion, or exclusion, in late-stage clinical trials. Finally, it will allow to work out the best dosage schedule or combination of drugs for each individual patient.

Yet not everything is hunky-dory for personalized medicine. Critics of precision medicine believe that the whole idea is too much of overhyped razzmatazz, among other things. Proponents, however, argue that when it comes to managing our own health, most of us are used to the idea of taking a one-size-fits-all approach — be it medicines, supplements, diets and diagnoses. This may be wrong.

What works, as they put it, for one may be a gaffe for another. As the award-winning oncologist and medical technology innovator, Dr. , author of the groundbreaking  “The End of Illness,” puts it, each patient’s individual risk factors are based on one’s DNA, the environment and a preventative lifestyle plan in response. He begins with simple, profound pointers: “How is your sense of smell?” and “Is your ring finger longer than your middle finger?” He explains with statistics-backed guidelines that moving and walking regularly is mandatory because exercising and then sitting is equivalent to smoking cigarettes, while eating and sleeping at consistent hours is imperative because irregularity causes inflammation.

The inference is obvious: We should all understand our physiology and quiz doctors with the thorough, exploratory frame of mind of a gadget buyer. This holds the key to making medicine truly personal, more humane, effective and safe while keeping in mind the individual in us all as unique and distinctive, the sum of the whole — not just the parts.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This brings us, inevitably, to the two faces of . One view of science is as a tool for progress, prosperity and happiness of our race. The other curses it for creating a world of materialistic chutzpah, not to speak of violence and destruction, including the COVID-19 tornado (a lab-grown organism, as some conspiracy theorists believe it to be), that has rattled our planet. Call it science’s double-edged sword, thanks to its overwhelming, cascading effect on our environment, ecology and values, besides health and wellness, down the ages.

The of science on our society any which way you look at it is significant and total. Besides, the sway of technological authority, through such means as nuclear power and automation, is direct and immediate. You may call it the technological spell that casts its perpetual effects in the application of knowledge for practical purposes.

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To be a technologist, one need not be a scientist with academic training alone. Thomas Alva Edison and Albert Einstein had nothing to rave about by way of pure academics or test scores. Yet the fact is, modern technology would not have flowered but for the individual scientist — ensconced in the lab with no interest whatsoever for the simple pleasures of life. While the role of the scientist has been central to technological development, the important advances of today, ranging from nuclear reactors, computers, space programs, lasers and the silicon chip, have come about because of science’s intimate involvement — and the collaborative efforts of scientists — with technology.

The Transformation

While science has changed from the realms of pure speculation and influence of the past to a unique mode of approaching knowledge, the scientific method, unlike before, has been broadly based on the interplay of sizzling new ideas and facts. Isaac Newton’s concepts of force and motion led us to understand the behavior of machines and planetary movements. Einstein’s theory of relativity, likewise, suggested not only the nuclear processes which keep the sun shining, but it also delved into the frills of atomic reactors that now drive ships. Interestingly, when the word “science” first emerged in English writings, it was accepted as the personal knowledge of a scholar and did not mean the theoretical framework of a previous student of the subject.

How things have changed. In the path-breaking triumphs of technology since the 19^th century, applied science has increasingly depended upon the fundamental knowledge provided by its theoretical and academic contemporaries.

When James Watt, an instrument-maker, invented his model of the steam engine — based on Robert Boyle’s principle that steam could be used to move a piston — he was guided by the work of Joseph Black, a university professor in latent and specific heat. In the same way, ideas about electromagnetism were applied by Samuel Morse to produce the telegraph, the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, and the electric light, phonograph and cinema by Edison.

As a matter of fact, Edison’s discovery that the filament of his electric bulb produces particles — what we now know as electrons — led to the invention of the radio by and the development of electronics. , the real creator of the wireless receiver, was “robbed” of the credit because Marconi was faster at applying for a patent. What’s more, the basic idea of thermodynamics made possible the amplified development of a host of fascinating advances in metallurgy, modern warfare, aviation and refrigeration, to mention just a few.

World War II changed the face of science like never before. When progressive mathematicians were asked by the Third Reich to devise theories that could help with the communication, processing and utilization of information, a whole new branch of mathematics was born — information theory. This led to the development of the radar, improved telephone systems and computers. The rest is history. Interestingly, information theory has practical use in medicine too: It explains how data stored in our genes is used for protein-building in our cells. While neurologists have used it to analyze nerve impulses, economists use it to evaluate national and international economic trends.

Things to Come

Curiously, most of our high-tech gadgets spring from the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th-century inventions — typewriters, clocks, washing machines, recording equipment, refrigerators and fiberglass boats. Interestingly, the bounty has been plentiful, but not as bountiful as it appears it may be in the future. A sample review would give us a good idea of the shape of things to come.

Electrically-powered robots will take over the running of domestic chores, fed by information from a computer at home, while drivers may run their vehicles on automatic control systems. Commuters will rely heavily on helicopter and hovercraft services — and, owing to extremely crowded air traffic, the use of autopilot will be banned. Body organs would be replaced at the proverbial drop of an illness, and many animals and plants, which have barely managed to survive our technological boom so far, will disappear from the face of our planet.

We are also extending our compass and radar elsewhere, proclaiming that life potentially exists everywhere, “out there,” potentially billions of years old. More recently, the of DNA components in interstellar space has increased the chances of “discovering” alien life. This is a significant finding in the search for extraterrestrial life, more so with the evidence of prebiotic molecules in interstellar space.

The discovery, as scientists aver, could increase the odds of finding life outside of our own solar system. The prebiotic molecules cited include a fragment called ethanamine, which produces adenine — one of the four nucleobases that form the rungs of the DNA. Yet another newly-discovered molecule, cyanomethanimine, is evidenced to play a significant role in the formation of the amino acid, alanine — a key player in human physiology. The allegory is apparent.

Paradigm Shift

As noted ecologist Edward Goldsmith points out in his book “The Way: An Ecological World-View,” the paradigm shift was inevitable but also counterproductive: “The concept was probably entertained, explicitly or implicitly, by all vernacular societies” — from the beginning of time. He adds, “Ecology is a way of looking at the world, in a subjective and emotional way, not just as an objective and rational one. It involves seeing the world with wonder, awe and humility — as something to feel part of, to love and to cherish, rather than to exploit. This principal tenet of the traditional man is confined to logic — of all benefits regarding a favorable climate and generous supply of the source of life, water.”

It is only when we respect the biosphere, as Goldsmith emphasizes, can we also evolve a system, a behavioral pattern that enabled the traditional individual to preserve the critical order of the biosphere and venerate nature’s own biological laws. “The present worldview serves to rationalize and legitimize today’s policies. Its most basic tenet is the tenet of progress and the idea that science, technology and industry are going to create a paradise. This is the worldview of modernism which believes that all benefits are man-made.” This also relates to the benefits measured in terms of manmade goods that you acquire or possess. Paradoxically, it does not take into account non-manmade benefits — a favorable climate, fertile soil and clean water.

What does this signify? That our ancient, logical view legitimized a plan or policy toward a sustainable and fulfilling society. This was also the traditional worldview. Adds Goldsmith: “I don’t think there is anything to invent. I think the solutions are already there. The people who lived in the valleys in India for 2,000 years are likely to know how to farm the land. The idea of an American graduate coming and teaching them is preposterous. I studied irrigation and found that the traditional ways were fine.” The other downside is population explosion. This is, of course, the consequence of economic progress. As Goldsmith explains, “I have realized that the only answer to our problems is to return to the traditional type of society,” as Mahatma Gandhi understood it. “What we are trying to do is impossible. What we are proposing is difficult. So, I opt for the difficult.”

Goldsmith derives his ecological hypothesis from the Vedic principle of rika, the behavioral template aimed at maintaining the natural order of the cosmos. He explains: “The religion of the earth is in the Vedas and in early Greek scriptures. Science is superstition and a pernicious one at that. It has no foundations. There is no epistemological justification for modern science. It is sitting in the air. Things like are simply a farce.” Just think of it. The grand idea to adopt geoengineering solutions to climate change, like placing 50,000 mirrors, each one 100 square kilometers into space to reflect the heat of the sun away from us.

The argument is simple: It is evident that our climate operates on the basis of self-regulatory processes, just like the human body. If it depends on our conscious effort through technology, there is little hope. “Yet the saving grace is,” as Goldsmith underlines, “god or whoever created the evolutionary process knew it. Hence, the functioning of our body or metabolism is well-insulated against human follies.” 

Proponents of technology may oppose such a radical view, but the inference is obvious. While Sigmund Freud, the plumber of the psyche, is said to have robbed man of his soul, modern science, with all its stupendous progress, has reduced our brain into a mechanical tool. In the process, we have all moved, or so it appears, out of Einstein’s famous phrase, “God does not play dice with the universe,” thanks to our incredible and lopsided scientific advance — always more, never less.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In the present context, the foremost thing that each of us could do is to make — not just attempt — a constant and resolute effort toward harmonious living and a good work-life balance while heeding medical advice. But we must also listen to our body’s signals and improve the quality and depth of our conscious awareness. In other words, we’d do well to unlock ourselves, during the lockdown, from meaningless trepidation and worry.

Mind Mantra

To achieve this outlook isn’t easy. We have to use our instinctive and intellectual mind with better judgment, foresight and sensitivity. This will permit us to untangle ourselves from our flawed emotions and dispositions. In the process, it will help us to understand ourselves as being capable of spirituality and not just as corporeal entities with a fixed mind and a proximate, yet distant, soul. Call it the pursuit of and mindful living, with family and loved ones, while maintaining a discreet physical and social distance.

Such capability exists within each of us, if only we are receptive. It supplements and drives every task and process in our body. It “ups” our normal healing processes with a gush of restorative energy that directly impacts every bit of illness or its probability. It also leads to nothing short of what we call a “maximum” cure while heralding the surging influence of our expanding mindful consciousness that encompasses everything in us. It consists of our beliefs, thoughts, cells, tissue or anything that you’d connect to — inside and outside of us. It echoes our convictions, not just emotions.  

For most people who delve into and are focused on their mindful consciousness and spiritual awareness, their intent is obvious — to retain and embrace the “divine in us,” at all times. The most remarkable part is when you walk the path or find the framework of the divine connection within, you begin to understand that the core of your self-conscious awareness is just as connected to the mind as one’s inner soul. What does this connote? That true consciousness, including what philosophers and scientists refer to as , is the fundamental crux of our entire being — a sublime prism that exemplifies the breath of life, juxtaposed by the grammar of all our feelings and emotions.  

This appears unpretentious on the surface, but it is actually profound and intense. This is because no matter the quantum of our life experiences, there are certain thought processes that are not permanent and merely fleeting. It is only when we achieve a stable state of constant, continual awareness of ourselves that our conscious awareness becomes all-encompassing and capable of understanding.

Things to Do

There are some simple actions we can practice every day to cultivate our mindful consciousness.  

Rewire with others. You’ve missed connecting to an old friend. Now is the time to text them a simple “How are you?” message, or call up. This is just the right thing we all need to do to feel “normal.”

Flex it. Exercise is good for mental, emotional and physical health. It pumps our body with endorphins, the feel-good chemicals, while leaving us with a clear, fresh mind after every session. Do what you can. Most importantly, keep at it.

Think of a hobby. Hobbies are a great way to spend your time or disengage from a boring routine. They not only bring in a draft of fresh air, but also provide a “no-pill” way to fulfillment and quality time with your family and loved ones.

Count your blessings. Write all the things that you are grateful for and keep adding new elements to it. Take a moment to acknowledge everyone’s presence in your life, right from the milkman and the greengrocer. You’d take note of just about everything — from the small to the big — like getting out of bed, making a fresh cup of coffee, a beautiful sunrise, a loved one, a parent or friend, even if they may be far away.

Be there for others. Together we stand tall. Help with the household chores. Prepare a new, exotic dish for your family. Do everything you can. Volunteer to help someone in need, especially an elderly neighbor, or simply lend your ear on the phone to have a good chat. In times of uncertainty, empathy goes a long way.

Nostalgia time. Go back to when you were a child. Your favorite film, or your grandma’s bedtime story that mesmerized you to sleep. Pick a game you loved, or a song that you used to hum. Cherish your inner child and “mind-cuddle” the things that you knew used to bring you joy. There’s relaxation and pleasure in stepping back in time.

Write your journal. Daily jottings are good for you. When you go back, long after the COVID-19 nightmare is over, you will know a new you.

Sing a new song each day — in a language you know, or don’t.

Art of the Matter

There’s a need for a constant, of mindfulness, self-awareness and self-care in each of us to reach the most profound level of our unconscious self. This is, of course, not as easy to achieve as it may sound. What we consciously experience or understand as the divine is perceptibly limited to our unconscious self, including the perimeter of our thoughts and feelings from deep within, or from the inside out. It is only when we transcend the humdrum that we can attain a lasting state of conscious awareness, one that is in complete fusion with the universe and the law of karma.  

New research suggests that all our troubles not only exist in our mind or emotions, but also in our genes. Our genes us to anxiety, depression, misery and a host of other illnesses. Yet there is a silver lining: Not all unpleasant conditions, such as anxiety, fear or depression, are totally awful. They have a significant to protect us from harm. Just think of it: Someone who cannot feel pain may injure oneself with disastrous consequences without being aware of it.

Balance works best in every situation — good, bad or ugly — provided you are conscious of your emotions and express them with positive intent. When you suppress your feelings, they will not only bottle up negative energy, but will also use far too much active, bustling energy to keep the distress in check while not being able to deal with anguish effectively. When you, likewise, endeavor to vanquish agony from deep within by way of powerful positive emotions and without unwanted baggage — from the center to the periphery and slowly out of their system — you will begin to feel better. You will also be able to purge their disquiet, stress or fear with good, positive outcomes.

Mindfulness communicates to us that our intensely united sense of ourselves is essentially a presence in our sphere of consciousness. It does not lead to the idea of “only you” or “oneself.” Every such element of reason connotes, no less, a rightful conviction or optimism, even when we fail to identify ourselves through our rational minds. The best part is that mindfulness does not alter the perimeter of our thought — it changes how and what we see, including our view of our mind and our world. It provides autonomy from our so-called special identities. Put simply, it emerges for a reason. What’s more, it enables us to have greater freedom within our own ambit, lockdown or no lockdown.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This is the raison d’être of the placebo effect. We all know what it is — taking an inactive “dummy” pill or an injection of saline can bring about “healing” effects. This is how it works: When a patient in pain responds to the innocuous treatment, which they believe works, they feel relieved and healed after taking the “medicine,” although they would not know that it was just a placebo. It is a different thing if patients were malingering that they had pain while they never actually did. Well, if this wasn’t the case, the valid question is, How could their pain be relieved by a dormant placebo?

The Impact

It was a given that in the good old days, the placebo effect approximated evidence enough of unreliable, shifty and changeable patients for most conventional physicians. This may, of course, not have been the only reality because nobody assigned such “healing” feelings to patients. In recent times, the verdict is that for patients who are in pain and perceive what they claim to feel, the placebo effect is something profound and real.

This is not all. It is implicit that the conventional medical establishment was just too disinclined to understand it, for obvious reasons. For far too long, it never gave its ear to the mind-body connection — the part of the whole and sum of the parts, which is so powerfully linked to the conviction that certain internal mechanisms can activate biochemical systems within the mind-brain-body apparatus and accomplish what the actual drug, if not placebo, was intended to do.

has fascinatingly, although reluctantly, found new-old, or old-new evidence of the eternal truth that has been known, for eons, by native or spiritual traditions — that our minds and advanced consciousness, or awareness, can impact not only our emotional, but also physical being. Interestingly, the opposite also holds true because certain events in our lives, when deduced by our minds as positive or negative, will have a substantial impact upon our body’s immune system or defense.

More recently, research in the rapidly-expanding area of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) has provided scientific evidence for the . This was paradoxically something that was for long denied by scientists — but not anymore. PNI offers something more intense too, namely that our bodies have evolved with the innate ability to calm and mitigate anxiety and depression, and provide pain relief or deep, sound sleep.

It is a scientific fact that we are all to heal our own fears, anxieties, depression or sleeplessness. It is a different thing altogether that pharma companies “engineered” the whole precept and percept of synthetic compounds that would “bind” with such natural receptor sites. On the upside, pharma researchers or companies did not, of course, “invent” such sites — all they did was to tweak the process and activate them. Just think of it: If only one masters the art of tapping one’s own production of peptides, our molecules of emotions, it could lead to a scary prospect. Pharma companies would go kaput.

What’s more, there are, in addition, a host of ways for us to up our feel-good factors or boost the levels of our own mood-altering peptides. Do you not feel good when you exercise, meditate or watch a hilarious, rip-roaring comedy? This is primarily because such healthy events the flow of endorphins, the feel-good chemicals in the body.

State of Mind

That placebos have the power to provoke healing and other effects has always been a major worry for big pharma. The reason is simple. For pharma to beat the placebo finesse at its own game calls for massive investment, not just in terms of research alone. They have to develop and prove that their drugs are more effective. This is sometimes easier said than done because research has presented that placebos can bring about “therapeutic” in up to 50% of study subjects.

The evolution of mind-body medicine has amplified the placebo issue and turned it on its head. Several involving the ability of our body to fight infection, including illnesses as dangerous as cancer, have led to the establishment and potent validity of the mind-body connection. For example, factors like loss of employment or a terrorist threat heighten our stress. This empowers our bodies to quickly take position to fight, flee or defend against such infectious, perilous agents. On the downside, however, chronic or persistent stress is not only debilitating but also places a colossal load on our immune system, rendering it defenseless against infections and illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and cancer, among others.

How to Reboot an Infected Nervous System

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The inference is obvious: Our state of mind determines the health of our immune system. This holds good for what is called the nocebo effect, the reverse mirror image of the placebo response. The nocebo effect highlights a contradictory element — that expecting hostile effects from a placebo can result in an intimidating, sometimes disastrous, response to it. In simple terms, it denotes an “exaggerated hypnotic” effect — what you believe can happen and, as expected, take place.

The premise is unpretentious, but also insightful. What we contemplate, sense, accept or believe about ourselves and how our bodies react actually make things happen, placebo or nocebo. This also leads us to an integrative paradigm shift: Taking responsibility for our own healing processes through the placebo effect is not such an implausible idea, and there is no reason why one should not investigate the power of our minds to alter our responses to illness in the physical sense.

Mind-Body Connection

When stress, depression and other psychological factors can alter our susceptibility to illnesses, including viral and bacterial infections — not to speak of heart disease, diabetes and cancer — there is ample reason to infer that the mind-body facet is not only potent, but also a defining factor in health and illness. The inference is obvious: The association between the mind and body may be construed to be connected, not only by our behavior, but also by the organic relationships that exist between our brain and immune systems. These connections work in either direction. The result is predictable: Our state of physical health can stage-manage our mental or emotional health, and vice versa.

Not long ago, most theories about human nature were founded on conscious experience. They were also proposed to be nothing short of prescientific scuttlebutt or folk psychology. But clinical and scientific justification for the causative patterns of our conscious mind in health and illness has only expanded today. It is not also without a purpose, therefore, that a whole new school of thought accepts the use of meditation, hypnosis, imagery, homeopathy and biofeedback as not merely placebo effect, but also as therapeutic for a range of medical conditions triggered by our emotions. What is most remarkable is the mounting of evidence-based results available — that, under certain conditions, such therapeutic interventions regulate and influence our autonomic bodily functions, such as heart rate, blood pressure and immune system function.

In this context, it would interesting to note that one of the most acknowledged validations for the upshot of our states of mind during medical treatment is, again, the placebo effect. Because just having faith in the therapy — or the therapist — and believing that it will work has by itself been found to be curative in a host of clinical situations, more so in certain functional disorders like irritable bowel syndrome.

This also makes it evident, again, that the mind-body interaction goes far beyond the placebo effect, although most researchers would assert that the outcome can “affect” only functional illness, not organic disease. On the contrary, however, yet another body of research submits to the fact that placebo may produce “organic” changes. Let us cull some common examples to place the idea in perspective. Healthy and loving relationships, as well as loneliness, can and the resolve to live. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, articulately proposed that health was a balance of mind and body in the proper environment, not merely the absence of disease. What does this connote? That the mind has a powerful effect on our physical health and vice versa. This is also a reason why most happy people are less sick or are ill less often than others who are not cheerful.

People who get angry readily are thought to have more health problems. This is simply because stress, angst, antipathy, depression and loneliness suppress the immune system, overload the heart, elevate blood pressure, augment blood clotting, amplify bone loss and harden the arteries (atherosclerosis) while raising our cholesterol levels and fat in one’s waist — the longer the belt, the shorter the life. The outcome is anybody’s guess: allergies, asthma, joint disorders, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and so on.

The placebo effect takes credence in the fact that belief is the cornerstone of conviction. It signifies the brain’s ability to foresee the future and get ready for action. In other words, our brain crystal-gazes, not just evaluates, and forecasts the body’s future. This is how it works: When you sense seeing what you hope to see, or deal with, it typically happens. This is more than just happenstance, which you have learned to expect. The same principle holds good for our mind-body fusion music too. So, there it is. When our brain submits to the placebo effect as being curative, it stimulates the cells and releases chemicals that switch on the healing process in anticipation of getting well again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Yet the fact is we all seem to know only too well that we do not often learn from history, not least because we tend to reduce history to our level of judgment.

“,” by British historian Lawrence James, is a riveting panorama published just over 20 years ago that brings this pivotal history to life. It is engaging and compelling thanks to the infectious enthusiasm for its mammoth subject, even when it is at times jagged. You’d think this is natural. More so, because James, who is known for his dance of discord, holds a certain status for his perceptive book,��“,” a subject close to his heart, aside from more than a handful of equally well-chiseled historical works. This would automatically mean that he’s on what is acknowledged as his familiar turf with��“Raj.”

Familiar Turf

“Raj” is a monumental work, immense in its form, range and sweep. James is equal to the task. Not once does he lose his sense of grand design, not to speak of telling detail — a surgical examination of a penetrating portrait of British India, the empire’s crown jewel. On a canvas encompassing extensive textual matter, diffused with three separate sections of illustrations and photographs, James recounts a stunning story of one of the most splendid chapters of modern history — a fascinating era of 200 years of colonial rule, a subject rich in incident and character.

James’ work provides a lens for a better understanding of historical facts. Apart from this, it gives British Raj history a tangible meaning in order to think critically about narratives that developed over time. In so doing, it also offers a kaleidoscopic view of meaningful interpretations necessary to examine the events that shaped Britain’s big push develop to India’s infrastructure, Western style of education and enduring commitment to democracy — the three major, positive legacies of colonial rule.

The book brings to the fore a lesson of intentions, experiments and proclivity of those who controlled the distribution of power and wealth — or what the British government really meant for the native population. In the process, James’ book contextualizes narratives and stories of humility, deceit, courage, wisdom and, most importantly, hope. It also establishes the essence of history —��that it teaches us to move forward, recognize our mistakes and learn from them and, more significantly, not repeat them, but create a better life for all.

James’ work is painstakingly researched. His tome is a lucid chronicle of India’s vanished supremacies, of fortunes, wars and a host of new, veiled and controversial subjects, such as the Sepoy Mutiny (or the Indian Rebellion of 1857), the Great Game between the Russian and the British Empires, and the taxing of the country, based on both old and newly released official and private papers. Yet what lets down James’ monumental effort is a host of typos and factual errors. For example, James gives credit to Jahangir, not Shah Jahan (fortunately corrected in the paperback edition), for having built the Taj Mahal — the love song in marble. What’s more, James has misspelt a handful of Indian names and places, often using outdated names of territories instead of their current designations.

To James’ credit, however, and if only one unobtrusively ignores his inadvertent blemishes, his effort is brilliant: The book is a labor of love. In this respect alone, his��“Raj” scores one of its major victories. It crystallizes a profusion of chapters of the British rule era — so massive and powerful from the outside, but always insecure. Not only that: It also provides a galvanizing exercise in benign autocracy and good will. This is more than a balancing act and one that X-rays the British mindset, including the hydra-headed chemistry of the East India Company and its bosses, not to speak of their powerful mission to make themselves masters of India through their famed divide-and-rule policy.

Take for instance the slaughter enacted in 1946-47 following independence, which James chronicles with sensitive objectivity. There is a persuasive plea in the midst of chaos that recognizes a broad expanse of why India and Pakistan owed so much to Britain. According to James’ fact sheet, British rule taught Indians to see themselves as Indians, and the “benefits” included the railways, roads, canals, schools, universities, hospitals, law, taxation, a universal language, parliamentary democracy and bureaucracy, not to speak of cricket.

Twilight and Beginning

James begins his work when the great was all but finished in the early 18^th century and in the twilight of its existence. He examines the power shift that gradually took place, thanks to the militaristic and expansionist aims of the East India Company that represented the interests of Great Britain in India. It was a time, reflects James, when , of the East India Company, a go-getter and England’s most unlikely conqueror, knocked the stuffing out of Bengal’s “paper tiger,” Siraj-ud Daulah, through tact, money, deceit and shrewd dispensation of promises to whoever was willing to toe his — or his employers’ — line. In so doing, Clive, notes James, set the stage for Britain’s takeover of India at one fell swoop.

Clive’s bottom line of success at all cost became the fundamental motif of every Englishman sent to “rule” India. The lessons were instinctive: The English powers that be, writes James, took India’s ancient mindset and psychology into consideration, deputing Englishmen born with status. The premise was obvious: Whenever a middle-class sahib was posted to India, acceptance wasn’t particularly forthcoming for more reasons than one. There’s no need to expand on India’s traditional veneration for “blue blood.” This is something that still has a magnetic hold on people from all walks of life, more so in the former princely states.

“Raj” is, however, less than charitable in its treatment of ‘s persona — a formidable warrior and one of India’s most enlightened and progressive rulers of his time. James has allocated just a few pages on Tipu’s powerful stand against the British. Tipu, it goes without saying, was England’s biggest worry and roadblock in East India Company’s ambitions. Once the “Tiger of Mysore” fell, thanks to perfidy — betrayed by one of his own confidants, a close relative, during the siege of Seringapatam — there was nobody to stall the rolling wheels of the British. The conquest of India by several enterprising men, whose predecessors first came as traders and smelled the abundant riches of a country divided under its own weight, was complete.

Interestingly, James’ flaws are not detracting in the whole context. The good thing is there are several highs in the midst of certain fuzzy fragments, and the arguments James has mustered with vigor and logic are noteworthy and farsighted. James, for instance, has not spared the wayward, inept Englishman or his Indian “stooge,” the spineless country prince, or Britain’s high-powered administrators who went against the ground rules. He comes down heavily on Governor General Warren Hastings for his dishonest and fraudulent conduct, and on Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British India, for his “politricks” in the culminating epoch of India’s freedom movement.

Lessons from History

“Raj,” overall, is an eminently readable work. It not only traces India’s ancient beliefs, a mixture of dualities and dichotomies, but it also takes an insightful��glance into one of the earliest invasions of the country, most notably by that inspired two millennia later, and France’s policies vis-à-vis Tipu and India. He also includes in his study several eccentric methodologies of the period — superstitious beliefs, ethnic, religious, diplomatic, militaristic dogmas and fancies.

Another clinical insight made in “Raj” suggests that none of the British ideas was planned. India’s development and progress during colonial rule, according to James, emerged through a fusion of compromises and sternness.

What also makes fascinating reading is James’ deft handling of the pressure-cooker atmosphere of pre-independence India — the power play and politics, outstanding leadership qualities, the rise of the Indian National Congress party, and growing insecurity. James touches upon , the architect of modern India, social non-conformist and statesman, and other leaders without profuse adjectives is as imperative as his simplistic references on Nehru’s love letters and relationship with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of the viceroy, and her feelings “for the older, wiser widower as those of a schoolgirl with a crush.”

That James tumbles down his own research, in some instances, may be every historian’s professional hazard. He seems, for example, to look at ‘s timeless axiom apropos of Gandhi, “Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth,” with skepticism. He thinks of Gandhi as “a vain man inside and humble outside.” This is a biased keynote of a scholar; it only reflects his latent partisanship.

Add to it his analogy of Brigadier General Reginald Dyer’s “killing fields” at , and his interpretation becomes anachronistic and discriminatory. Yet, considering the rumblings of more than a handful of India’s so-called leaders today, James’ incisive analysis brings home the fact that contemporary politicians, wherever they are, believe that they are answerable only to their stakeholders, and that they can wield their political power, or view people who do not toe their ideological line, with contempt.

The end of the colonial rule, in James’ words, marked the final resolution:

“In return for its moment of greatness on the world stage, the Raj had offered India regeneration on British terms. It had been the most perfect expression of what Britain took to be its duty to humanity as a whole. Its guiding ideals had sprung from the late-18th and early-19th-century Evangelical Enlightenment, which had dreamed of a world transformed for the better by Christianity and reason. The former made little headway in India, but the latter, in the form of Western education and the application of science, did.”

This also bids fair to James’s own acknowledgment that Great Britain treated its subjects, at times, in a discriminatory, hard-hearted manner. It highlights the fact that any rule by force has its limits as a congenial effect, or outcome. The credo also offers a crystal-clear appraisal, as James observes, of imperialistic intentions and the complexities it created for both the ruler and ruled alike. If this isn’t a lesson for any contemporary government nursing the idea of hegemonic territorial and economic expansion or influence, what is?

It also delineates James’��“Raj”— a heady mix of righteousness, vanity, honor, dignity and disgrace — as a refined summary of one of the finest and also of the most hideous of times. In short, James’ sprawling work is recommended reading for today’s audiences, in India and elsewhere, who want to understand history in all its splendid complexity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The concept of work is as old as civilization. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, used the expression praxis for doing something for its own purpose, and poiesis to designate an intention to produce something worthwhile. The two terms have had a huge impact on modern thinking in regard to the definition of work, where poiesis, rather than praxis, is aimed at a definitive purpose — doing something primarily for a certain outward result. It expresses not only the idea of income, but also contributes its mite to the foundation of what is called collective wealth.

Unemployment, especially over a protracted period, has numerous downsides. Prolonged to depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, just as much as having a steady job instills a sense of self-belief and self-esteem. This is not all. Lack of work can lead to social problems such as , , , including , on top of well-being and disjointed family relationships, among others.

Joblessness in the inner city is a gargantuan problem today. Studies suggest that this may also be the result of a seemingly obdurate spiral effect, primarily due to insufficient skills among the work force or profligate welfare states. Yet another question that pops up is whether geography is just as culpable? As highlighted in , John Kain, an economist at Harvard University, in a 1965 paper defined the “spatial-mismatch hypothesis” in which the unemployment rate in America was below 5% versus 40% in several black, inner-city communities.

This, according to Kain, was a result of jobs moving away from the inner city, compounded by the fact that people could not follow on to areas where jobs were now available owing to racial bias in housing. Subjected to discrimination by employers against those who came from “bad neighborhoods” and affected by poor transport infrastructure and prohibitive costs of owning a car, the chances of those in the inner city were stacked against them.

Yet this idea is often subtly disregarded because of the focus being placed primarily on poverty and its myriad consequences. Besides, the debate as to what causes a decline in employment opportunities is composite. It seeks, yet again, to blame rather than recognize or deal with the changing realities that have led to economic distress in any given population. The problem is further complicated by the fact that several explanations and proposed solutions are often ideologically driven, their templates being too often keyed to symbolic elements, not so much substance.

Bad Neighborhoods

There are certain schools of thought that approve of a liberal ideology with refocused emphasis on social and structural factors that influence economics, polity, education, family and social issues. There are others that endorse a conservative ideology with emphasis on values, attitudes and habits, including experiences, behavior and outcomes of groups — juxtaposed by differences that are reflected within the cultural framework. It is not that the two variables put together encompass the whole gamut or a possible answer to the problem. Far from it: It is only when social, structural and cultural variables are integrated into the whole spectrum would one get a clear, expansive view of such variables.

Not all social ideologists would agree with such a generalization. The reason is simple: Most of them are more likely to focus on a community’s problems, not its strengths. Their raison d’être would, perhaps, be aimed at stimulating thought, so that policymakers, decision-makers and journalists would have a basis for understanding issues and addressing them to good effect. Their concern, at the other end of the spectrum is, doubtless, genuine, yet critical. However, the fact is that it is imperative and pressing that like-minded social scientists got together with practical fervor, not bias, and emphasized their powerful and complex roles in guiding or shaping life experiences. This is certainly not an easy job.

Let us take the example of drug trafficking and crime. Studies reveal that the decline in legitimate employment opportunities or loss of jobs among inner-city residents increases the “enticement” to take refuge in, or to sell, . The inference is obvious: Neighborhoods affected by high levels of unemployment are more likely to experience low levels of social cohesion. What’s more, high rates of unemployment often unleash other local problems while undermining social structures, ranging from crime, gang and sexual violence, drug abuse or addiction to family break-up, among other problematic issues.

The disappearance of work is also partly related to a global decline in the fortunes of the less skilled worker, including through government policies, not to speak of urban renewal and forced migration. The construction of freeway and highway networks through the heart of several cities — Mumbai and Bengaluru, in India, for example — has produced dramatic changes, with many low-income communities finding it difficult to keep the “pecuniary wolf” from the door.

This leads us to a question that Brian D. Taylor, Eric A Morris, and Jeffrey R. Brown epitomize in their article, “Paved with Good Intentions: Fiscal Politics, Freeways and the 20th Century American City,” in : “Why are urban freeways not nimble, context-sensitive facilities but the large, ungainly ones we have today? Why did poor, predominantly minority communities in the inner-city, and newer low-density communities on the suburban fringe, bear the brunt of freeway construction, while established, better-heeled neighborhoods were spared? And, why did freeway-building explode onto the scene so dramatically, only to flame out just as spectacularly such a short time later?”

As Michael B. Teitz and Karen Chapple in their , “The Causes of Inner-City Poverty: Eight Hypotheses in Search of Reality,” provide yet another perspective:

“The inner-city poor do lack human capital to a profound degree in comparison with other groups. They are segregated and detached from the labor market. Demand for their skills at manual labor has declined. They face discrimination in employment and housing. They live in a social milieu that reinforces detachment from the mainstream economy, though how much that milieu results in a different set of values and behaviors is subject to much debate. Similarly, segregation has separated the inner-city poor physically from employment opportunities, but there is no clear agreement about the impact of that separation.”

The authors outline that whereas these communities have weakened over the course of the past 40 years, it is difficult to determine whether “this is due to outmigration by the middle class or has resulted in that migration.” Other factors that are hard to measure include the effects of new immigrants or the failure to generate new businesses in the area on employment opportunities, as well as the full effects of having “disproportionately experienced negative effects from public policy.”

The American economist Timothy J. Bartik explains in his , “Solving the Many Problems with Inner City Jobs,” that research suggests that the often proposed solution to inner-city poverty —��business development in the inner city —��is unlikely to “significantly increase employment or earnings of the inner city poor.” He suggests “creating more effective labor market intermediaries to make it easier for inner-city residents to find good jobs and for employers throughout the metropolitan area to find good inner-city workers” as well as “enhancing the job skills of the inner-city poor, particularly their ‘soft skills,’ by training programs that have closer ties to employers and incorporate subsidized employment experience.”

He concludes that “Given the magnitude of the poverty problem, any realistic policy to significantly reduce inner-city poverty through enhanced earnings will require tens of billions of dollars of annual government spending.” But, as the 2016 UN suggests,

“Not all urbanization is positive, however, especially if it is unplanned. It puts pressure on infrastructure and may lower residents’ quality of life. More than 1 billion people live in housing that is below minimum standards of comfort and sanitation, and new houses have to be built for 3 billion people by 2030. Some 880 million people live in slums, and nearly 40 percent of the world’s future urban expansion may occur in slums. Almost 700 million urban slumdwellers lack adequate sanitation, which — along with lack of safe drinking water — raises the risk of communicable diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea, particularly among children. Violence, drugs and crime also increase with rapid urbanization.”

This isn’t all. In 1996, the (ILO) estimated that there will be “1.2 billion new entrants to the world labor market by the year 2025 and, that, most new jobs, therefore, have to be created in the cities.” According to the , currently, 63.5% of the world’s working poor, who live on less than $3.10 a day, can be found in Asia and the Pacific.

Gloomy Impasse

Is there a way out of this gloomy impasse? Maybe, yes. But there is no halfway house either. The primal need of the hour is a credible focus and an emphasis on long-term solutions — not just one, but several, that can alleviate a great deal of economic distress currently plaguing the inner cities. Long-term solutions should broadly include the development of a system for “natural performance standard” in public schools and family policies to reinforce the learning system in schools, a national system of school-to-work transition and other modes to promote city-suburban integration and cooperation.

Once such seminal idea, albeit challenging to a fault, is implemented, the immediate problem for the disappearance of work in many inner-city neighborhoods could be confronted. The employment base in afflicted communities would increase and income levels would also rise, thanks to increased income levels. Add to this program universal health care and day care, and there could be increased attraction for low-wage jobs and “making work pay.”

As William Julius Wilson, a professor at Harvard University, sociologist and author of a perceptive , When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, which discusses the impact of growing joblessness and dwindling work opportunities on inner-city areas, puts it: “Increasing the employment base would have an enormous positive impact on social organization. As more people become employed, crime, including violent crime and drug use will subside; and families will be strengthened. As more people become employed and gain work experience, they will have a better chance of finding jobs in the private sector when they become available. … The attitude of employers toward inner-city workers will undergo (a) change, in part, because they would be dealing with job applicants who have (a) steady work experience and would furnish reference from their previous supervisors.”

Agreed —��this is a daunting, formidable task. Yet it is not a dizzy cul-de-sac, or impossibility, primarily because most workers in inner cities would also be ready, willing, able and anxious to hold a steady job. The inference is obvious: We owe it to ourselves and to the future of our children, especially the not-so-privileged kids, to help them “just do it” while deriving objective and subjective lessons from past failures. This is one among maybe a handful of realistic paths that can break the vicious cycle of joblessness, one that stems from the disappearance of blue-collar and other jobs and could improve peoples’ preparation for the new labor market in a “glocal,” or global, economy.

It is not that there’s no will to do it all, be it from the government, or thought leaders from all walks of life. The argument is also not just of volition alone, but its overall spiritedness in the whole phizog of the joblessness conundrum just as well. It is, doubtless, a mammoth question with no easy answers.��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Graham Greene — the legendary novelist, playwright, short story and screenplay writer, critic and journalist of the top draw — was always a mobile writer, never ever easy to pin down. His narrative quest was criminal-centered. His novels enveloped dissent, and his journalism championed disliked causes. His comedies were sad and his politics enigmatic. Greene left behind a monumental repertoire of 25 novels, numerous essays and even some children’s books, all witness to his literary genius. His work has been into 40 languages and sold more than 20 million copies in hardcover and paperback.

The son of the headmaster of the Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, Greene was a delicate, sensitive kid, bullied by fellow students. He went on to study history at Oxford, following which he began working for��The Times��in London. He chipped in as a freelance writer to augment his income, becoming a film critic for��The Spectator in 1935; five years later, Greene was named its literary editor. In the early 1940s, he started working for the British Foreign Office in West Africa, a posting that gave us The Heart of the Matter, set in Sierra Leone —��one of the many works based on Greene’s extensive travels.

Typically British

When Greene wrote his first travel book, Journey Without Maps, in 1936, the destination he chose for his maiden sojourn outside of Europe was Liberia. He traveled through what was then almost unchartered dense forest and tangled vegetation, with a sense of metaphysical forebodings — of uprightness and sin. He could have succumbed to fever during the journey, because he did not have his inseparable therapeutic companion with him, his medicine kit.

As a travel writer, Greene, as writes in The Atlantic, “was always on the outside of what he was observing, ever more English, seated in a corner, pouring abuse and scorn on the alien scene around him. Yet as soon as he worked up the material he’d seen in Mexico into a novel — The Power and the Glory — he was so deeply inside his characters, both the whisky priest protagonist and even the lieutenant in pursuit of him, that he wrote perhaps his most affecting and compassionate novel, and the one, liberatingly, without a single English character in it.”

Greene’s background was typically British, yet he always shielded popular movements struggling for freedom and democracy. While it would not be just to rationalize that he was oblivious of the shortcomings of Fidel Castro, whom he revered, Greene’s faith in the unusual politician was a result of his profoundly held beliefs that emerged long before he met the Cuban leader. This is evident in his work,��especially The Lawless Roads.

Greene was instrumental in hastening R. K. Narayan’s — one of India’s legendary English writers and the creator of the TV series Malgudi Days — entry into the literary world as a novelist in his own right. Greene also had a proclivity for exploration, in the hazardous light of things. His reverie from childhood was keyed to playing the Russian roulette. This trait extended to his writing: Greene was courageous with words. Yet the most vibrant was his profound sense of human beliefs and morals — of individuals as well as nations. His human opus, therefore, speaks to us in a straight line of our own experiences and annotations: of subjugation, politics, faith and conviction.

Greene, who shared his October 2 birthday with Mahatma Gandhi, recognized the presence of war — something to bear, or endure — like a certain repetitive, but not fatal, illness. If sin to him was like malaria in his veins, he conveyed in his every expression a remarkable and innate sense of political topicality. A germane writer, Greene grappled with everything that affected the human component — misery, capitalist cartels, turmoil, survival on the edge of the cliff, smuggling, espionage and anti-Americanism. His prose was uniformly sensitive, like delicate brush strokes. Greene carried the torch of English literature like a colossus, with authority and elegance. As he once : “The creative writer perceives the world once and for all in childhood and adolescence [so that] his whole career is an effort to illustrate his private world in terms of a great public world we all share.”

Least Parochial of Writers

He was grudgingly the least parochial of writers, and, in a way, elusive. He not only reconnoitered the peculiarity between ceremonies and rightfulness, but also faith, candor and justice. A subversive romantic, what made Greene distinctive — from other writers and in a league of his own — was his characteristic individuality. Greene never experimented with language, sabotaged conformist sequence of events or selected primarily sensational themes. He fluently used his imaginings as his own radar and sextant — a guided dream. In so doing, he epitomized the spectacle of the human psyche.

If his first novel,��The Man Within, published in 1929, bid fair to his first big success, his grand catalogue that followed makes it next to impossible to pick the best of his novels —��each one is a gem. In The End of the Affair, Sarah Miles — modelled on Catherine Walston, with whom Greene had a decade-long affair and who establish a voice for the character�� — has an extramarital tryst with the novelist Maurice Bendrix. Their affair ends, not because Bendrix is green-eyed over Sarah’s past, but also her future. He is proved wrong, and this transforms him to believe in god. The takeaway from the novel is simple, and also profound: Envy can disintegrate everything, and distrust can more than ruin even when one’s intention is unalloyed.

The Quiet American features the participation of British and American governments in the calamitous Vietnam War. The story revolves around a US officer whose skewed principles bring mayhem and death. A British journalist gets entangled in the web of deceit, even when he has the choice to keep himself away from the eerie turmoil and just do his job. What rivets the readers’ attention is Greene’s amazing hold on the plot — one that opens the dark lid of the American and British governments’ involvement in the unwinnable war.

The Power and the Glory is set in South Mexico in the time of the Red Shirts — a paramilitary organization founded by Tomás Garrido Canabal,��the atheist and anti-Catholic governor of Tabasco. It brings to the fore the lopsided nitty-gritty of religion and the wrecking of everything allied to it. The narrative anchor is a priest who is scampering from peril while grasping at straws for dear life. The pristine struggle of the priest opens a proverbial window to showcase faith and power, poignancy and adversity.

Brighton Rock is inarguably among Greene’s best work. It tells the tale of retribution after Pinkie Brown, murders a man in Brighton, a city devastated by gang war. The novel’s finest part is sculpted around Pinkie’s murky mind, while its engaging description celebrates Greene’s astounding grasp of his principal characters, including the skin of their thoughts.

In Our Man in Havana, Greene knits a transfixing tale of a salesman who gets drafted by the British Secret Service — a necessity borne of his daughter’s ever-swelling demands and shortage of cash. The plot is electrifying, with its splash of humor chuckling the reader through the life of a hapless spy.

The Ministry of Fear weaves the story of the lonesome Arthur Rowe. A simple ask of returning the cake he wins lands him in a woeful situation. He is promptly hounded by the Nazis and other shadowy powers. Just read the novel to figure out how Rowe gains his cake — it is as thrilling as diving into nowhere, in your dream, without a safety net.

Ahead of Time

Greene’s scope was breathtaking, his books read widely the world across. But how did Greene evaluate himself amidst all the adulation? “Writing,” he once , “is a form of therapy; sometimes, I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint, can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.” Yet rightly too, Greene began to take a detached view of success, or failure, of literary and other endeavors toward the end of his long innings. He once , “One falls in all sorts of ways in life, doesn’t one, which are more important than writing books. In human relations and that sort of thing.”

Greene disparagingly scanned his own convention and practiced his own sense of ethics — of not being at home in one’s own home. He could do without the Nobel Prize, for which he was twice, in 1966 and 1967. He was far ahead of his time. He never condoned the ethicality of religion, guilt and unscrupulousness. His works carried, still carry, a sense of profound logic, thanks to his own exposition of faith, coupled with political contemplation and spiritual reasoning. (Greene converted to Catholicism to marry Vivienne Dayrell-Browning, from whom he separated later, but never divorced.)

Greene’s classicist outlook, so to speak, was autobiographical — also, universal. Writers like him are not lost or forgotten. Yet Greene never really showed much concern in the abstract questions of literary theory. His novels dealt with the seamy underside of life, with or without poetic license — to bring home the truth, and its essence, of memories based on a primordial past.

Greene’s faith was dogged in the persistence of a kind of belief: something bitter to betray. By his own declaration, Greene wrote both entertaining and serious novels — most of them with the groundwork of a politically riveting roster. What, of course, made Greene Greene was his transcendent predilection for words and pithiness of expression. Take this passage from The Power and the Glory:

“What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought and how useless. … He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who had missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted — to be a saint.”

And another gem, from the same novel: “When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality god’s image carried with it.”

Greene hated to be photographed. Nevertheless, he was highly descriptive in his novels, his visual imagery always alluring. So was immorality, or sin. Some of Greene’s “heroes,” like Scobie in The Heart of the Matter, thought of themselves to be catastrophe-prone; they also sought their destiny with a kind of rapture. Yet another paradigm occurs in��Brighton Rock, when the murderer Pinkie is more sympathetic than the righteous avenger Ida. However this may be, Greene’s foremost critics, in phrase and idiom, maintain that Greene spoke of sin only in his books.

His biographer, Michael Shelden, perhaps, went a bit far when he called Greene a lecherous womanizer, an alcoholic, a spy who betrayed the trust of those who thought they were his allies. Greene’s friend, Leopoldo Durán, author of��the Graham Greene: Friend and Brother,��cogently refutes such outrageous charges, writing that Shelden was trying to destroy Graham, whom he saw as the greatest writer of the 20th century. A Catholic priest, Father Durán’s friendship provided the stimulus for Greene’s 1982 novel,��Monsignor Quixote. Durán does admit that Graham was unfaithful and drank limited amounts of alcohol. Having known Greene for nearly three decades, he refuted Shelden’s suggestion that Greene was a closet homosexual.

Greene, with his own sense of practical wisdom, saw it all emerging. As he once : “To render the highest justice to corruption, you must retain your innocence. You have to be conscious all the time within yourself of treachery to something valuable.” Call it Greene’s empathetic gear, perhaps, that speaks of an ambivalent play between the light and dark shades of truthfulness and cataclysm, virtue and flaw, optimism and gloom, romance and pragmatism. This was his evergreen canvas, a vision like no other — something beyond the outlands of danger. It was also, in essence, his true greatness and the magnitude of his writings. Timeless. Effulgent. Eternal. Enduring.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Audrey Hepburn’s philosophy of life was direct: never in flight before contemporary difficulties. Her vision was straight and simple — that of a humble utopia that began and percolated in her psyche, for a noble cause: the children of our world.

If gentle nature and great courage rarely manifest in one individual, she was a sublime exception. No wonder that she empathized with children — and they with her. She didn’t just work for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), she was its “fair lady” with a heart of gold, a true friend, a powerful and eloquent advocate.

Hepburn’s identity was that of an elfin charmer, a brilliant Hollywood star whose allure was unlike anyone else’s. She was simply different — a pure magic on celluloid, endowed with a regal elegance, a romantic magnetism and a subtle transcendent quality. Hepburn — Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, on May 4, 1929, in Belgium — was, in reality, far above the vain pursuits of traditional Hollywood beauty. In any given situation, she could be Holly Golightly —��her famous role in the 1961 film adaptation of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s — fragile, exotic, liberated, loony bohemian. It was a mix that transcended all gloom.

Versatility was her forte. A trained dancer, Hepburn’s physical fragility was an unusual contrast with a certain ancient wisdom — an amalgamation that dazzled against her romantic leads, who were often men almost twice her age. In Funny Face (1957) she was 28, Fred Astaire 58; in Sabrina (1954) she was 25, Humphrey Bogart 54; and, in Love in the Afternoon (1957) she was 28, Gary Cooper 56. Hepburn was the perfect free-spirited Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady (1964); a natural princess in Roman Holiday (1953), where she played a royal heiress who pretends to be a commoner and falls in love with a newspaper reporter (Gregory Peck).

Her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Charade in 1963, alongside Cary Grant, delighted with elegance and histrionic finesse. In a characteristically humorous scene, Hepburn puts her finger inside Grant’s famed cleft skin and wonders, “How do you shave in there?”

Center Stage

Hepburn was synonymous with elegance, her diminutive frame and her pensiveness riveting the cinemagoer’s attention against the men on screen next to her. She was visually magnetic, possessing a certain quality of not being happy, yet happy at the same time. As , who directed Hepburn in two films, recalled: “You looked around and suddenly there was this dazzling creature looking like a wild-eyed doe prancing in the forest. Everybody on the set was in love within five minutes.” This was, perhaps, the secret of her cinematic success in holding the center stage.

While Roman Holiday was a charming reverie, The Nun’s Story (1959) was all about convent life, and Wait Until Dark (1967) a suspenseful, adventurous medley, just as Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a blustery story of a naïve young girl sought by affluent, vacuous men. War and Peace (1956), where Hepburn played Natasha, was a stunning recreation of Russian history. This was her fabulous range, awesome repertoire and talent. As , who “terrorized” Hepburn in Wait Until Dark, once said that “she has the ability to elevate every character she plays to a higher level than was originally conceived.” Hepburn lived her roles to the full, without ever overdoing or underplaying any facet of expression or character. If this wasn’t a triumph for creativity at its zenith, what is?

Hepburn was marvelous in Love in the Afternoon, where her puppy admiration for an aging playboy was no mere flirtation. Her portrayal was delicate, a visage of sheer brilliance. She’d do it all so effortlessly. More than anything else, Hepburn transcended Hollywood phoniness, not to speak of the less savory aspects often attached to her profession. As (who appeared with Hepburn in the 1987 TV movie, Love Among Thieves) eulogized: “She was in the moment — always. Those close-ups of her when she looks and you see into her eyes, there is no diffusion. You are looking into her soul and spirit. She had a great soul and she had great spirit of life.”

Humanitarian Calling

Hepburn’s humanitarian work as a UNICEF, first as special ambassador and then as — a calling she herself and remained devoted to until her death in 1993 —��first took off with her mission to Ethiopia in 1988, where chronic drought had brought on a devastating famine. Hepburn made heartfelt pleas to the media, giving interviews a day. She visited areas bereft of water, basic health-care facilities and sanitation. She made earnest attempts to use her fame to draw the world’s stoical insensitivity to the cauldron of human suffering that was Ethiopia. There was no rhetoric. Hepburn simply felt that it was her call — not just a role.

In 1989, she took part in in Sudan, ravaged by a bloody civil war. In the course of her mission, Hepburn visited dozens of refugee camps and witnessed first-hand the relief measures, including delivery of life-saving drugs and food packets. Hepburn’s dedication took her from the deserts of arid Africa to the muggy slums of Asia, to Bangladesh, Kenya, Guatemala, Venezuela, Vietnam, Somalia, among others — wherever there were children living in abject poverty, with no access to food, water or basic education.

Back in the United States, Hepburn in front of the House Select Subcommittee on Hunger in 1989, and again two years later to call for a boost in aid to Africa. Her dedication won her America’s highest civilian honor —��the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Hepburn was also a posthumous recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an given to an “individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.” But��honors and accolades were only secondary to Hepburn — her mission to help the needy, the deprived, the disadvantaged, especially children, irrespective of their color, faith or belief, was to her: “I have been given the privilege of speaking for children who cannot speak for themselves, and my task is an easy one, because children have no political enemies. To save a child is a blessing: to save a million is a god-given opportunity.”

Hepburn always thought that her own life had been much more than a fairy tale, saying that “I’ve had my share of difficult moments, but whatever difficulties I’ve gone through, I’ve always gotten the prize at the end.” With characteristic, quiet modesty she the secret behind her great stardom: “I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.”

Hepburn never made it big in the gossip columns —��a great achievement. Her two marriages failed, yes. Yet her sparkling warmth and refined, dignified personality prevailed over the clutter of the yellow press. Even cruel cancer could not wobble her; she carried on spiritedly making this world a better place for those less fortunate than herself. When Audrey Hepburn died, on January 20, 1993, in Switzerland, aged 63, she left a void palpable across the world. This was the true apogee of her life —��that of true respect bestowed on her with unequivocal adoration that would have meant far more to her than the Oscar and statuettes.

Hepburn was ethereal —��the Asteroid 4238 Audrey is named after her. But she was also real. She wore her badge of love and compassion with a purpose, and for a higher purpose too. There won’t be another like her again.

*[Update: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Audrey Hepburn had starred in On the Waterfront (1954).]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, who died in London, aged 85, on August 11, had a great sensitivity for ambivalence, not to speak of his attached sense of detachment — emotional as well as environmental. As he himself ��so succinctly: “I can only write about a place when I’m away from it. The experience must be complete and I must be able to look back.”

Although Naipaul’s first three books,��The Mystic Masseur (1957),��The Suffrage of Elvira (1958) and��Miguel Street��(1959), were published in quick succession, the writer in him made a living by sculpting book reviews and literary programs on the radio. Yet, when he was just 29, Naipaul wrote his��magnum opus,��A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), based on his father’s life, about a man who inspired him to become a writer — and a great one at that.

A House for Mr. Biswas��is Dickensian in its essence —��a huge family narrative that spotlights one man’s dream of independence. It also emerges, and evolves, to represent Naipaul’s childhood identity in ancestral India and the colonial world — “two spheres of darkness,” in which he comes to grips with his variance, the fundamental element in his life.

However, it was with��Guerrillas��(1975) that Naipaul won a legion of fans, thanks to his assault on revolution. It also apparently elevated him, as a rebel, with all his conservative hues. A fact that celebrated the man in the writer, one who was beyond partisanship, yet one who was a disillusioned idealist believing in the possibility of Homo sapiens��improving the world.

Among Naipaul’s huge body of work are��the noteworthy In a Free State (1971), which won him the Booker Prize,��The Enigma of Arrival (1987), a semi-autobiographical memoir, and Half A Life��(2001), which focuses on an aging author.��Naipaul wrote Half a Life��long after he mused that the novel was dead. It is quite unlike a Naipaul novel, yet it is in effect daintily replete with unalloyed imaginings, notwithstanding its all-too ubiquitous Naipaulesque trappings and distinctive multifaceted fixations.

It is also a “swot” on separation and inward exclusion. Willie Somerset Chandran, who’s chirpily named after Somerset Maugham, has a proclivity for Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace, in his neurons. He rejects and “absolves” himself from the acquisitive world of desire, ambition and selfishness, and weds the penniless, low-caste daughter of a restive fundamentalist — a fervent, firebrand revolutionary of the deprived. The work not only came as a pleasant surprise for Naipaul’s legion of fans, but it also added a velvety canvas to his versatility on the literary radar.

The Enigma of Arrival textures the tale of a young Indian from the Caribbean in post-imperial Britain who, over many moons, discovers the “resident” wordsmith in himself. A transfixing narrative of voyage, from one location to another — from Trinidad to the primeval British countryside, and from one frame of mind to another — it is by far Naipaul’s most autobiographical novel. What makes it a memorable, and also riveting, read is its rich tapestry of composite invention and laser-sharp reflection, of ringing out the old world and ushering in a whole new era of development and progress — something that is remarkably told with amplified poise, empathy and forthrightness.

In a Free State consists of a trapping narrative and three short stories. The work is orchestral, with diverse underpinnings, juxtaposed by an intervening yet blurred leitmotif. The first has a servant from India, who accompanies his master on a diplomatic assignment to the US. The duo writhe dreadfully from the lowly value of the Indian rupee. The second has an fly-by-night raconteur and chronicles a rural Caribbean family — a band of cousins — where one of them, when the situation is loaded in their favor, prevails to disgrace the storyteller. The third and principal story, relates to a gay official and his colleague’s wife traveling to a newly independent African state caught in the quagmire of a revolution and civil strife — a ruthless rumination on exile, displacement��post-colonial rootlessness.

A Way in the World (1994) is yet another first-rate book that will stand the test of time — an epic series of narratives based on the history of Naipaul’s “native” Trinidad and the European colonization of the Americas. Among his long, brilliant essays are��India: A Wounded Civilization (1977),��Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) and��Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted��Peoples (1998).

Naipaul’s writings may, at best, be described as toxically gloomy, a process of political incorrectness — of hopelessness, anxiety and alarm. They are also a reflection of Naipaul’s nature and nurture — tangibly, yet subtly, demarcated by his own sense of alienation, a pivot of his own desolation. As he once told his : “I think if I made a lot of money, the real despair and real panic might be dissipated. I do need that stimulus.” Naipaul had no qualms in saying that he wrote for money — and for himself. In his own words, “It’s my profession.”

As����points out in Frontline:

“Naipaul has been controversial all the way. … While he is universally recognized as the finest prose writer of his time — even his worst critics grudgingly acknowledge the precision and economy with which he handles the English language (Evelyn Waugh, a fastidious critic, at the best of times, once remarked that Naipaul’s mastery of the English language should ‘put to shame his British contemporaries’) — the problem is with his view of post-colonial societies and their people.

Derek Walcott, a fellow West Indian Nobel laureate, called him ‘V S Nightfall’ because of his dark, Conradian vision of Africa which, according to Sir Vidia, ‘has no future.’ Walcott acknowledged him as ‘our finest writer of the English sentence,’ but said his otherwise compelling prose was ‘scarred by scrofula’ and his ‘repulsion towards Negroes.’”

Naipaul was a fastidious wordsmith, yet a reclusive writer — a man without a nationality or culture. What made him a truly brilliant writer, even if enormously controversial, was his amazing gift for surgical exploration of thoughtlessness and rage in not only individuals, but also civilizations. He was agog with delusions. However, to his credit, they were genuine, even if cynical. They encompass, among other things, his hostile views on Islam — a religion that is today caught in a quagmire of its own, sans intellectual or cultural resurgence.

This also explains why Naipaul’s writings celebrate the hesitant complexities of an��émigré writer, a characteristic of his own understanding as an Indian in the Caribbean, a West Indian in good, old London, and an itinerant intellectual in a post-colonial world. He fully deserved the Nobel and a harvest of other prestigious accolades — a signal honor to his bespoke, or distinctive, style that also exemplified his “polemical” literary compass and radar.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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You need not switch on your TV to picture in your mind a child running across a battle-scarred terrain, while snipers try to shoot him down; or, maybe, fly-covered faces and bloated bodies of a thousand starving children, somewhere; or of children being incinerated, bombed and shelled in innumerable battle zones — the killing fields of a planet that has gone increasingly mad.

Yes, the statistical roll call of children who are shot each hour, raped, rendered homeless and exploited worldwide reads like something straight out of gory fiction. And, if film documentaries, newspapers and magazines have recorded the “diabolical fare” with drama, restraint and (in)sensitive ambivalence, from the turn of the last century, TV, with all its technological finesse, has now brought practically every facet of the world’s worst nightmares right into the privacy of our living rooms.

How can we thrive as a people if our progeny continues to be treated as lesser human beings, almost like compost? Answer: We need to change what we are doing now. Also, unless we reorient our attitudes toward children, our race will end up so gutted of its decency that it will matter little whether it physically survives or not. Besides, how at ease we are with what’s going on around us. It’s not just a question of our existence, but also of what is increasingly referred to as our spiritual existence. It’s an old-new concept that is making new friends and adherents on a global footing. Not just through self-help books or gurus, but also workshops where it is taught for a “fee”: the more renowned the new age “messiah,” the higher the “price.”

However this may be, a spiritual inclination toward parental tasks is an idea whose time has come, with or without initiation. It is a vision that is tied to a deep personal conviction — parenting as a spiritual force, a structure or worship, and also an acceptable attitude toward children — the heart of any reverential approach to life. Because, in many ways, a teacher is a parent; a coach is a parent; a counsellor is a parent; a politician, believe it or not, is a parent; or, even a simple voter is a parent. Also, we should think of ourselves as parents in the gentlest sense of the term — as guardians of the young,��because our relationship with a child is that of a sacred trust. The reason is simple and also profound: Under no circumstance can anything be more important than protecting and nourishing children in our care.

It goes without saying that none of the heinous acts recorded in human history would have occurred if children had been the world’s priority. As inspirational writers Hugh and Gayle Prather articulate in their perceptive book, :

“Nothing justifies anger towards your child … You may get angry — most of us quite frequently do — but never is it justified. There will be times when you need to be firm even with an infant; times when you must intervene in your teenager’s life and say no; times when you will have to pick up your three-year-old and carry them kicking and screaming from the room. But, there will never be a time when you must speak or act from anger rather than love. No matter how long you have pursued an arbitrary punishment, or how deep into your abusive lecture you have gone, it is never too late to change your course.”

If discipline with the wisdom of a sustained commitment to a goal is strength worth pursuing, one is often appalled at the way this term is habitually used vis-à-vis children.��As the Prathers add: “By way of generalization, discipline means punishment, and vice versa: a concept that is in direct conflict, if not a corollary, for those who wish to approach parenting as a spiritual pursuit.��The guidance you envisage to give your child should be more like the touch of a butterfly on a flower than the heavy hand of domination that breaks the will.��In other words, one should always seek to assist children to see the path clearly: a route, which does not place precedence in dispensing rules, regulations and righteousness.”

Says Nelressa Stallings-Faye, a copywriter, teacher and life coach:

“It is a simple fact of life that most of us summon our spiritual strength, or at least seek guidance, when we, and our children, are in a crisis.��But, the more difficult challenge of good parenting is remembering to turning off our conflicted mind to our peaceful mind when making those little everyday, non-dramatic choices that have such a powerful, cumulative effect on our children. On the other hand, one finds it shocking when parents use their kids’ desires as leverage.��This is not loving. In other words, it is only a cheap way of asking them to sell their souls.��For some parents, such manipulation maybe in the form of (un)conscious response: ‘You can have it as soon as you become the person I want you to be.’”

There are many examples, like forcing children to be neat and tidy; punctual; academically-oriented; and/or anything else.��This approach is not practical for one simple reason: Most of the world’s geniuses, mystics and innovators were not tidy, out-going, punctual or especially polite. You’d reel off a few names — without difficulty.

Says Vinita Shenoy, a mother of two grown-up kids and academician, who has a knack of helping children realize their own potential:

“Our children are not perfect, but their intuitions are often more appropriate. Kids often — in fact, very often — pick up on hidden thoughts and motivations in their relatives and their parents’ friends and acquaintances.��They also can be extremely sensitive to unseen atmosphere at parties, in stores, or while visiting a new school or child-care centre.��For example, many children are not happy at ‘the happiest place on Earth,’ or other large amusement parks.��Children’s — even older kids’ — overall state of mind is a better indicator of what they are aware of than their words.”

Parenting is a “difficult” task. Is there a way out, or maybe a better way of dealing with it successfully?��To look at one example, as Dr. Rakesh Ghildiyal, a psychiatrist, explains: “To do the impossible and receive the gifts your child has brought you, it is imperative for you to meet your child at their level.��You must also accept their sense of love, time, fun, priorities, and values.��And, above all, you must see and work within your child’s view of your function, not brusquely outside of it.”

This is easier said than done, or so you’d think.��Because, there are no rules, no magic formulas, doctrine, science, teaching or philosophy that parents can safely consult in any given situation and with a particular child.��Yet, spiritual parenting, which you on your own could cultivate as a concept, may be practiced to help you become a better parent.��However, it all boils down to one thing. It is advisable to approach child-care as a spiritual task, and also as a radically new, essential focus amidst the perplexing complexities involved in guiding children toward adulthood — irrespective of the fact whether you, as a parent, believe in god, spirituality, religion or not.

The most important part is — you, as a parent or teacher — need to be action-oriented, and also explore, understand and nurture the heart of your child in the best manner possible. All of this with, of course, lots of patience, warmth, love, resolve, and sympathy. The results would be more than worth their weight in gold. So, there it is. In the chaotic��cauldron��that exists around us, and where children are under grave threat, the onus is on parents — teachers and each of us — to explore, understand and nurture the heart of every child with patience, warmth, love, resolve and empathy. This would be a small step, yes, but a big leap for a better, child-friendly, world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For a man who did not relish writing, Mexico’s most renowned poet, Octavio Paz, simply savored and enjoyed its result, be it plaudits, or brickbats. He never used the good old typewriter, the word processor or computer. He always wrote by hand — the creator’s most simple yet powerful tool — the oracle and symbol of human creativity. Not only that: Paz worked just a little each day, read poetry and the companionable dictionary — something which he often called his adviser, his elder — the awesome threesome that made him perceive the light and shadow effect of our living planet as one whole.

Octavio Paz’s writing is eternal. It’s not only renowned for its vibrant mellowness, but also for its trance-like allegory in dealing with metaphysical questions. Paz’s work is also a quintessential, artistically crafted canvas of surrealism — of a classy framework that exerts more than a profound alchemy on Paz’s towering, uplifting genius and wordy luminescence, juxtaposed by their myriad underpinnings, or trappings, of Marxism, existentialism, Buddhism and Hinduism, among other influences. The bearing is obvious: Paz’s most prominent motif is every human being’s natural, or inherent, ability to overcome one’s existential solitude through sublime love and artistic creativity.

Paz’s sense of surrealism was intense, almost phosphorescent, political, passionate, complex, moralistic, fervent and, perforce, delicately lonely. The world’s pride and delight, Paz was an institution in himself, and more than just man and talent. He was doubtless a great author — of more than 20 books, founder of a host of journals, including Mexico’s most erudite magazine,��Vuelta (1976-1998), a professor at Harvard (among others) and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for literature. Peruvian novelist and Nobel laureate, , considered Paz “one of the greatest poets that the Spanish-language world has produced.”

Conscious Evolution

Born on March 31, 1914, in Mexico City, Paz’s background mirrored several elements of conscious evolution, especially of his gifted mind. His father, a lawyer, was of Mexican-Indian descent; his mother was a Spanish immigrant. His family was quite well off, until the Mexican Civil War played havoc and ruined them financially, taking away wealth and dreams. Paz’s early years were spent in poverty, on the outskirts of his hometown. The changed status, not to speak of its accompanying pain, left its mark and manner, and more than just a deep imprint, on the future poet and his fertile yet troubled psyche.

It was a Freudian setting, but it made Paz decipher objects through an artist’s mind and eye. Paz’s canvas was Freudian, his color perception Jungian and his framed representation, possibly, Skinnerian. The outcome? Simple — genius unbound, a genius with more than an element of Plato’s divine frenzy.

Paz attended Catholic schools. But their teachings never appealed or attracted him. He wasn’t a great student either. His forays into academia at the National University of Mexico were unproductive, and he left without getting a degree. Yet destiny was manifest. Aged just 19, Paz published his first book of poetry,��Luna Silvestre (Forest Moon), followed by more volumes, which gave him the pedestal, and status, as a writer of promise and substance, one who had a great future in the world of words.

In 1944, Paz first came to the US on a fellowship. Money was a problem again, but it propped him on — he never ran short of ideas. A year later, Paz joined Mexico’s diplomatic corps. The job took him to France, Switzerland, US, Japan and India — a country that was to influence him profoundly.

For the next two decades, Paz wrote prodigiously. He did what he liked best — discovering Oriental traditions. In 1950, one of his essays,��The Labyrinth of Solitude, hit Mexico like a storm and changed its philosophical landscape. It was published in English five years later and penetrated what Paz called the “underbelly” of Mexico. It was also a watershed — a work that highlighted the “indecipherable anguish of a race born in violence and obsessed with the past.” “The Mexican,” wrote Paz, in��,��“seems to me to be a person who shuts himself; his face is a mask and so is his smile. … The Mexican is always remote, from the world and other people. And also from himself.” Perfect words, embellished with a profound, yet delicate, sense of logic, and poignancy.

The entire chemistry of Paz’s feelings was typically Mexican, its heart and soul. A passage from��“”��(1957), his most celebrated poem, brings the point home: “a bright hallucination of many wings/when they all open at the height of the sky … the sun has forced an entrance through my forehead,/has opened my eyelids at last that were kept closed.” Call it universal appeal or what you may, and you have Paz, the quintessential craftsman, with a dexterous flair for words and sequence.

It goes without saying that Paz, notwithstanding his synthesis of world experience and clear vision, was relatively unknown outside Latin America, until many of his monumental works were translated into English in the 1960s and the 1970s. The rest — as the cliché would go — is both poetry and history.

Paz, the diplomat and writer, came to love India. It was during his time there, between 1962 and 1968, that he met the charming Frenchwoman, Marle-José Tramini, and married her in 1965. All was hunky-dory. However, Paz’s ambassadorial calling in New Delhi came to an abrupt end when he resigned in protest of the somber massacre of students by government troops at Mexico University in 1968. He was back to teaching — now at Cambridge and Cornell Universities.

While it signals honor that Paz has been acknowledged as one of Latin America’s greatest writers, it is a travesty that his essays, which offer a sophisticated critique of global modernity and a refined line of reasoning on contemporary thought in the social sciences and philosophy, have not been embraced in these two disciplines. As , the editor of Octavio Paz: Humanism and Critique, explains and sums up the paradox, “Paz’s work is intimidating! Its scope, in terms of both topics and forms, being difficult for the conventional academic disciplines to deal with.”

Privileges of Vision

A closet Marxist in his youth, Paz became sobered through experience. He denounced “the simplistic and simplifying ideologies of the Left” — a clear��volte-face��from his��The��Labyrinth of Solitude��days. It was something that made him a sitting duck to critics. Paz’s tenets on free-market economy drew more than just flak from Mexico’s political spectrum. What’s more, the right wing cajoled Paz for his hypocritical views. That he had a clear sympathy for the right complicated his image somewhat too — the difference being of degree, if not substance. All the same, such complexities did nothing to deter Paz in his pursuit of truth — of truth which he thought was not only just, with changing global equations, but equitable too.

Paz was appointed the curator of the Privileges of Vision — a representative autobiography of his life and work — at Mexico City’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 1990. The exhibit is a revelation of a definitive connection between culture, time and language — of ideologies closely related to Paz’s own perceptions. His poem “This Side” bids fair to the simile: “With shadows I draw worlds/I scatter worlds with shadows/I hear the light beat on the other side.”

If a poet is said to translate the language of the universe, Paz’s saga was a refined epitome with such a transaction. More than that, his poetry, exquisite and visual, was also a slick, fruitful union of culture and love: of the old with the new, of the modern. Maybe one could think that verse isn’t just a popular form, at present. Not really. For Paz, poetry was an essential part of human life — a memory of a country, of language.

Paz, who died on April 19, 1998, was beyond question a great admirer of technology and the infobahn. He always felt that it was folly to say that the world was at the end of the arts if one contends that modern culture and communication could lead to bland, soporific artistic standards. He argued we are at the end of some kind of art, nothing more. It sums up Paz, a visionary who thought that the 21st century was just not a monologue of reason, but a dialogue between human beings and cultures — all thanks to the new “borderless” cultural ball that has been set rolling in the world of art, and its environs, today. There won’t be another like him again.

*[A version of this article was originally published by��.]

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Science is truth, candor, fidelity, damage and destruction — a loud and clear call of modern civilization — more so, in today’s context, the epoch of wonders and also devastation. It bids fair to a maxim erroneously accredited to Friedrich Nietzsche, that aesthetics, in art or science, is no longer a question of “I do my thing, you do yours.” Yet, in a point of fact, integrating artistic verdict with truth, prettiness and forthrightness is, in the times we now live in, more than obligatory than ever before. Not only because the United States, or our whole world, has woken up to reality and vowed to exterminate Frankenstein’s monsters that it once created or encouraged.

Scholar puts the idea in perspective: “We live in strange times — amazing and scary. We are bombarded with bizarre and unfamiliar images, and the interpretations we are given are contradictory and confusing.” The inference is obvious — of two postulates, one promising a marvelous future, the other environmental and human calamity. Not only that. The two paradigms also question the fundamental principle of science: the credo of beauty, or truth, aside from its perilous connotations.

It is apparent in popular parlance that every hypothesis of knowledge that is aesthetic is simply precise. Far from it. Not only does such a theory fail to deal with inter-subjective veracity, but it quells any objective facet of any kind of truth. So, a middle path, as our spiritual scholars advocate, would be a key pitch for bringing about a sense of balance in such a complex configuration. Of a composition, where beauty is the sign of truth, a panorama that does good for all and also endeavors to include the moment of truth, right from empiricism to constructivism and from relativism to aestheticism. In straightforward terms, this relates to a truly existential approach that would liberate them from their inconsistencies and place them, as it were, into a glittering multihued synthesis.

Mysterious Thing

It goes without saying that when any new scientific theory is put forward, scientists would want to know how close it is to the truth. Forget about conflicts, or objections, to any new percept. Here’s why: For some time, scientists have used experimental data to approximate how close a theory is to the truth. Yet not all theories could be weighed up in that manner for a surfeit of reasons. For instance, in areas such as string theory, cosmology and evolutionary biology, arriving at how close a theory is to the truth is next to impracticable.

On the other hand, just about anybody would be able to assess how attractive an object is. The conspicuous, or key, features of the object in question are promptly accessible to most of us. It also corresponds to basic constituents required to scrutinize the object with artistic judgment: one that delivers a decisive assertion of its beauty. It is not so simple, though. Because such a subjective ascent or descent may make us marvel over whether we’d all use our aesthetic perceptions at the drop of a hat to determine how a scientific theory is closest to truth.

As summed it up : “It is a mysterious thing, in fact, how something that looks attractive may have a better chance of being true than something which looks ugly. I have noticed on many occasions (in my own work) where there might, for example, be two guesses that could be made as to the solution of a problem, and in the first case I’d think how nice it would be if it were true; whereas in the second case I’d not care very much about the result even if it were true. So often, in fact, it turns out that the more attractive possibility is the true one.”

It is not that all scientific revolution theories have a set of connections with aesthetically pioneering attributes. It is also not exceptional that most scientists have called several old and new theories — when these were first put forward — ugly. Many astronomers, for instance, regarded Johannes Kepler’s theory of planetary motions as unappealing because Kepler’s blueprint portrayed planetary orbits as ellipses, not a grouping of circles. Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity was, likewise, detested by many of his confrères as being aesthetically unpleasant — for postulating action at a distance. In recent times, quantum electrodynamics was regarded as dull for relying far too much on non-standard mathematical operations for renormalization. The list is endless. Yet one central fact remains: Just as such revolutionary theories built up their remarkable track record, they were all, slowly but surely, declared as aesthetically appealing. As Francis Bacon epitomized, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

Too Pretty Not to Be True

Let’s look at the whole credo differently. It is construed that physicists, for example, aren’t the only scientific group to be steered by their sense of beauty in developing new theories. They have learned, to their original advantage, how to foresee the beauty of nature at its most fundamental level, just like geneticists. To illustrate a classic archetype: When “learned” of Francis Crick and James D. Watson’s model of the DNA, she “accepted the fact that the structure was too pretty not to be true.” It was a basic proclamation that beauty was, indeed, a tangible gauge of truth in scientific theories. Hence, you may well ask: What is the corroboration for this proposal?

Most scientists discern objective properties of theories from the subjective sense of beauty in considering a theory. However, not all scientists concur as to what aesthetic properties a theory must have to persuade one as pretty. Yet one thing is clear: They are often in accord with beauty in theories that include simple mathematical equations, the grandeur of truth and beauty of the universe, symmetries of nature, an alluring model’s basic face, etc. In other words, it all leads to a noteworthy ensemble, also an elementary or scientific variation that explains why scientists are occupied — albeit unwittingly or partly instinctively — in a methodical, inductive (re)search for aesthetic properties that make up the presage that beauty is truth, although they are also just as much concerned about the wonders of technological advance falling into ominous hands.

There hangs a saga — a tale of what we have come to, thanks to scientific contradiction. It’s a celebration and also repudiation that is sure going to dazzle and perturb each of us and our future generations, no more, no less.

*[This article was updated on September 26, 2017.]

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The inference is simple: There exists a definitive, albeit subtle, social force that, more than any other, conducts��a sort of free-floating or psychological dialogue with us all. More so within our family. It’s the one that’s influencing, reflecting and refracting the other. Its identity: TV. It’s a propelling force, a coincidence of technology. Yet there’s a paradox. Force or no force, TV was and is fully, and also exponentially, bound up with the family from the beginning.

In its initial glut, TV seemed to be just one more essentiality in a long line of mechanical devices—one for home entertainment. Soon, its impact was tremendous. It began to fulfill a cultural function—a way in which family values could be acted out and maintained.

The number of��, to cull one classical example, increased from 9��million in early 1987 to around 47��million in 1994. The average child reportedly watched TV for����(six hours, or more, in 2015)—on par with their Western counterpart, a habit that fans their��, not to speak of violence.

Cultural Wasteland

We all know that TV is no panacea. You also need not be a social scientist, newspaper critic, etc., to be aware of its dark side too. TV has not only eroded values. It has also tended to crowd out old-fashioned conversation and more wholesome amusements like reading. Family members have now retreated into a cocoon to watch separate programs. TV, today, seems to chomp up so much of our time, leaving the addict bleary-eyed and restless. Yet not many people complain.

It’s a monumental cultural wasteland on TV—a travesty of game shows, violence, sadism, murder, bad men, good men, private detectives, cartoons, endless commercials, screaming presenters, tacky shows, cajoling and offensive. Compare it with the movies. It’s almost the same. The only difference, perhaps, is that TV happens to be domestic. Yet the staple diet of TV programs has turned out to be more of mild comedy—if you can call it that—about extraordinary families. It is what we call a sitcom: a matter of economics, given the sheer volume of “pro-gaming,” or electronic hearth, where people don’t really like to watch themselves on the screen.

Most TV programs are parodies today, not dramas—especially in emerging India. They also often display a high level of tension, frustration and conflict within the family. The norm is middle to upper middle, or high, class families that often live in plush homes in virtually interchangeable suburbs. Popular culture, as everyone knows, works in strange ways, and it’s no coincidence that cracks have become commonplace in every picture window—more so in a televised depiction of the family being resolute, insistent and almost blind to any flaw.

That TV is wearing blinders is now passé. It makes a case for a host of treatments, with issues, both good and bad. It wants to be subtle. Hence, the common trend is that most TV folks think that the only way television could transform this charged atmosphere is through the extreme route—indirectly.

This is also one primal reason why many TV serials look like documentaries with a message, but one that is notoriously clichéd. Every sitcom allows the camera to reveal how deeply and irrevocably the notion of a family as a private sanctuary has unraveled, with all its moles and fissures. Still, it’s not everything. You can’t, obviously, solve your problems in 30 minutes. That would call for miracles—miracles out of bounds even from the technological angle or nirvana.

Modern Family

In more recent times, TV comedy has turned its back on the contemporary family. Yet TV has ironically scored a facile victory in the slapstick category—a genre of unprecedented staying power. Their mores have also, in more ways than one, allowed for a diversity of family representations on TV.

There’s also no denying the fact that there are any number of shows, on TV today, that are unusual, outlandish and utterly hackneyed. However, it is heartening to see that mounting desperation has led some TV producers and directors to go in for something new—a variation. As of now, the decision to let a thousand different families bloom could also invite us to recognize a new and uncertain gender and parental role: a fall from statistical preeminence of the traditional family.

We all know that the early hopes of TV as an agent of family unity may have not achieved fruition. What’s more, TV is one of the things that is also keeping families apart, thanks to the growing number of channels. Also, with a few exceptions, every TV program today is geared to a specific age. So, the odds don’t really favor a whole group sitting together to watch something everyone will enjoy. If it doesn’t happen at home, how can it happen elsewhere?

There we are, with no more than a few illusions about TV today. This itself is a heartening change. We also no longer have the delusion that the box, managed by highly qualified professionals, would solve (y)our family’s problems. So, if anybody’s ever going to do that, it’s going to have to be us.

Well, if we can’t do that, we have a choice. Forget about change and switch off your set. For one simple reason: Comedy, as William Shakespeare and Mark Twain, or one of India’s greatest cartoonists, R.K. Laxman, understood need not be docile or insipid.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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To borrow��from Charles Dickens, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. To highlight another paradigm, we are traversing along in a society where impulse is given its way. In the process, we are increasingly not willing to grow up. We are growing up, in a way, but only as half-adults. More than that, we are simply running after our fantasies and��illusions.

You need not search the horizons for a functional retort to such dilemmas: a dilemma compounded by perplexity. We are just not able to catch up with ourselves. We are often defeated by our own creation—a simple extension. Its identity? You got it right: speed.

What’s more, there are��crowds everywhere, and we are almost lost to ourselves and bored on the basis of a mundane existence. Blame it on the mores of our highly-inflationary world and you have a parody: People seem to look alike. You look like somebody else with the same element of stress and tension; and that somebody looks so much like you.

Birth-Writes

While our kids are growing up on a TV diet—their surrogate mother, or babysitter—we grown-ups are leading a lateral life, catching glimpses out of the corners of our eyes, not minds. We keep the TV or the ubiquitous remote control on and change channels, or watch the latest sporting event, for the heck of it. Perish the thought whether or not one has had a feel of the willow, racquet or the club, at any level. It’s not needed. Just like with music, you needn’t be a trained musician to appreciate or write about it. Thanks to TV, just about everybody is an expert on any, or every, subject—maybe even a successful blogger in their own right. And, why not?

This is, after all, the happening age, where things happen by birth-write.

It’s not that we don’t see what’s coming out of the side-view mirror. We call such elements intimacy, not proximity, or sameness. So, when we see millions like ourselves all over the world, our eyes get focused on the familiar—uniformity, likeness or resemblance. Not distinction and difference—as the Indian philosopher Madhvacárya, the founder of Dvaita (Dualist) school of Vedanta, or Immanuel Kant in the West, expounded and initiated us to follow if only we could, provided we were not bound by our own prejudices.

This leads us to hope—of a visage, and also vision, being propelled by hope. Hope has always been the long-cherished possibility of community life. That’s how our modern, mass society has evolved—a mass society with a gigantic army of rival siblings. Yet in today’s world, the word sibling is representative of the family, not a metaphor. The term holds on its own, while bringing into play certain tendencies, habits and heartaches. The outcome? Grown-up adults regress toward adolescence, while more and more adults prefer not to become adults. Worse still, most of us are too reluctant to imagine any life coming from the vertical plane, or from tradition and religion, devotion and spirituality.

We all agree that only some sections of our society have a certain hold on the development of such new sibling qualities. As poet, storyteller, translator and worldwide lecturer Robert Bly puts it, the rest of us are slowly moving in that direction—even if we don’t fancy that course. The fact of the matter is we have all somehow arrived.��You know why.

Participative Mystique

You just can’t speak to any individual who’s not of your age today. She or he won’t listen to you. She or he will think that you are not worth listening to, more so if you are not within that age-frame. It means just one thing: We cannot stop our slide into antediluvian existence. As Bly emphasizes succinctly:

“Drastic change (has produced) this social primitivism … a new identity is found in embracing a mass movement … (the) mass movement absorbs and assimilates the individual … (who) is thereby reduced to an infantile state, for this is what a new birth really means: to become like a child. Well, children are primitive beings — they are credulous, follow the leader, and/or readily become members of the pack … Finally, primitivism follows, more so when people seek a new identity by plunging into ceaseless action and hustling. It obviously takes leisure to mature. People in a hurry can neither grow nor decay; they are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.”

It’s true that our society of half-adults has advanced far too much in several countries, more so in nations built on technology and affluence. It’s catching up fast elsewhere and rapidly at that. You may also be a part of such a revolution already. If you aren’t one, it’s time you joined. So, what are you waiting for? Just register. Just do it. Only then will you be able to savor some of its characteristics—or peculiarities.

It is a formidable proposition, in today’s context, to decide what’s real. Because a sibling society participates in a plethora of non-events, but events all the same—like a beauty pageant everyday; or a truly democratic film awards ceremony, with a fixed script, or a listless TV serial as a family get-together. Such excursions are au fait in our society—something that no one really objects to. It is a sort of trance, induced without hypnosis. Just think of it. You watch two events—a live and a replay—simultaneously. You may call such a foray, which we are all so adept at imposing on ourselves, to quote Bly, as contemporary primitivism, or “participative mystique.”

This is not all. Most of us have the baptism of water, not fire, in every aspect of life too. For example, the launch of a new book, authored by a celebrity. Or a dance, or singing debut, at the proverbial drop of a prelude. The assortment of views, on such occasions, is universal. Tons of praise for the artist who has learned and, in some cases, even mastered their art—of what would otherwise take more than 8-10 years, or a lifetime, to achieve—in a year or two. This is genius, of course. The plaudits are well-channeled, because the compere is game to the idea, or vocation.

Spiritual Pollution

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Most jaunts or non-events have, inextricably, become a part of our psyche—a regular global feature. Add to that TV and the internet, and you’ve a host of contests, with prizes and gifts. Perhaps it’s pretty hard for some of us to get away from envy when we look at the electronic razzmatazz. Well, there are too many of them, out there, waiting. You could pick and choose your own trump card—for a good copy—even if you don’t belong to the tabloid press. Too bad? Maybe. But that’s the way it is. Because it’s too hard to be as popular as you are supposed to be. You know why. Sigmund Freud’s super-ego, or Interior Judge, has altered its requirements in our age and we just can’t do a thing about it. Freud’s benchmark today is also insistent on early success, at age 20��or 21. It has changed our perceptions, and made our youth quite snooty and too proud to stand on somebody else’s legs—if not their own—which is just fine. Yet they are firing on all cylinders, and trying to attain instant fame, not excellence.

Picture this. In the past, our conduct was dictated by one primal motif: obedience to parents, sexual purity and high morals. The super-ego today, with some exceptions, no longer has a Mahatma Gandhi, Jesse Owens or Pele to hold its bearings. The focus, instead, is on a celebrity, movie stars and models in several “adverteasements,” and TV serials and soap operas. Not that it’s all bad—a sort of spiritual pollution. It’s a major paradigm-shift because, for one who isn’t or doesn’t become successful and well-loved, punishment today is swift and ruthless. When that happens, god forbid, our self-esteem receives a battering from inside.

The inevitable fallout is that one makes it to a TV talk show and bares it all. What next? Dud, not voila. Bly again puts the imbroglio in perspective. He says that the furious competition of peers or siblings has led to a new template: Strive not to be good or great, but famous, or rich because our community has been supplanted by TV and entertainment.

So you’d ask a valid question, “Where have all the grown-ups gone?” Grown-ups who inculcate the value of good grounding and also reading in their kids and themselves, spend time with them at the dinner table, with the TV switched off, or share a thought or two in their problems and pleasures. Not that all adults need dazzling breadth and insight—to inspire, console, enlighten and renew our understanding, or have the capacity to transforming the world. Far from it. Some certainly do. What we actually need today is a clear expression. As philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti put it so perceptively, “When you live everyday with what is and observe what is, not only out there but inwardly, then you will create a society that will be without conflict.”

It is a tall order, yes, but not impossible. It also, in more ways than one, sums up our responsibility—a vital call for rediscovering our adulthood. Of an adulthood that is strong enough to approach our children and teach them what to stand up for—or what to go along with—more so in a world that’s gone increasingly mad.

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We all know much about noise, because noise has become part of our being. Not silence—as our consciousness, or philosophy, would want us to know, observe and, also, if possible, practice. In today’s mad rush for instant materialistic nirvana, silence has practically ceased to exist. Or, so it’d seem.

There’s now more noise than ever before inside our homes and our minds. It would be most surprising for one not to hear��a TV set gabble away somewhere, even if you aren’t actually watching it. Besides, there is the radio, the music player, the computer and the video games. In fact, the only sound that is largely extinct from our homes today is our own voice—engaged in communication with one another.

Inner��Noise

As scholar and historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto puts it, “Everyone is familiar with the idea that your language determines the way you think—although all our perceptions may not be imprisoned by language alone.” There are limitations, all right. Yet, language has always had wider dimensions. It is an almost physical thing. It is something that cleaves the air with gestures, booms in the chest and belly, makes ganglions tremble and lips twitch. It is also an instinct that we all share with other animals—an innate power of the mind, like that of the limbs to run, or reach and hands to craft and hold.

Words, according to Fernández-Armesto, are part of the mind, generated by neural activity, and by the electrical chemistry of the physical brain. He elaborates: “Words which relate to other words call a whole world into being … a guarantee of the world of which it is part.”

This includes silence. How? Silence implies sound. Silence is also a part of speech—of gaps without which no communication works. Not only that: Even the void of mystical experience is lapped by language. The best part is that we all express language for ourselves and for others. Hence, it is always evolving and changing—even in the silence of our expression and/or being.

Noise is essentially disturbing, annoying. It isn’t like the chirping of birds, or the zephyr caressing us softly—to ease our thoughts and souls. Mechanical noise hits us most with its rip-tide of agitation. It’s stress-causing, not relieving. This explains why a lack of quietness has made us unused to silence. Besides, we’re also awfully scared of silence. It brings us a peculiar feeling of almost being alone. Isn’t this a disgrace? Because, in reality, silence is one of our best friends. More so, because it can have a powerfully beneficial outcome on us, thanks to its therapeutic effects.

Besides, we ought to blame our present agitation in life to the inner noise within us, the most serious consequence of our inner gibberish and the noise and activity of the modern world, which separates us from our true selves. It isn’t a good thing at all. However, experiencing silence, or the consciousness-in-itself within us, can have a massively relaxing effect. It brings a sense of being firmly rooted in ourselves, of being truly who we are. It also brings us the divine core of��everything else, since pure consciousness inside us is the same pure consciousness of the universe.

Rhythms of Soundlessness

It is silence that also holds the key to the attainment of knowledge. To remain physically silent is no great hardship to most of us. But to attain silence in the metaphysical sense calls for something more than merely refraining from making a noise. It means the absolute stillness of all thought processes in our wakeful state.

Sleep is a fascinating analogy to this kind of silence. As we all know, nature stills the mind to sense impressions periodically by putting us to sleep. Silence, therefore, is as vital to our well-being as sleep.

Because we all need silence, and also stillness, to become our true selves—more so, to being truly happy and, in so doing, to finding our own veritable self.

The inference is obvious. We need to get in touch with this a classical part of ourselves, right now, but if we haven’t got a feel of it, then how do we proceed? Simple. Through meditation: by being one with the cosmos. Reason? Meditation is a relatively slow-paced, silent and stress-free experience. Meditation is one of the primal, major steps in attaining silence. It provides us with the energy to turn our mind inwards upon the self; to hold it as still as a placid lake.

When you begin, there will be difficulties: Little thought-ripples intrude upon your silence. Have patience. You’ll overcome their hold on your mind when you find the rhythms of soundlessness. The best mode to intercede is to meditate upon the universal mind, initially, in whatever familiar mode you construe it.

The next step is visualization: to envisage a force at work, and realize that the energy of the universe is a warm, co-operative energy that understands the laws of the cosmos. For this, one must be receptive, just as you would know the elements of computer hardware in order to be a computer technician.

There’s yet another credo you’d use. Think of meditation as the mode by which you tap into the currents along which the absolute transmits creative vibrations. This leads you to the natural conclusion that the laws of the absolute always operate in the same way; that they allow us to attain our fullest perfection, once we understand them and flow with them.

Profound Balance

Language today seems to have brought a profound balance, a wonderful analogy between René Descartes and Albert Einstein and, also in its subtle metaphor, silence. What’s more, our language at present does not in anyway reduce anything. Instead, it now includes everything—scientific or not.

Besides, we have got to accept that there is a peculiar dualism at work here, with its profound analogy being obvious. We are also now talking of concepts. We are talking of ideas. We are talking of experiences, behaviors, sensations, intentions, feelings too. Most importantly, we are communicating ideas through our experiences and stories. The idea—language as likeness of both mind and the body— is beyond a shadow of doubt critical to us all. It is, in other words, our own mind-body lexicon, with its own monumental feat of virtuosity, or vitality, a magical carpet of the narrative.

Take a look at ancient societies, in spite of turbulence by way of war, or conquest, and how our philosophers, thinkers and even the common man went about their day-to-day activities, and it will all make sense. There was a palpable sense of contentment. This may also, perhaps, explain why native people still possess a natural sense of fulfillment we modern city residents don’t have, or seek. Furthermore, it may also be one reason why so many people today seem to live in a state of apathy, because they have lost contact with silence— in other words, the natural happiness inside themselves. This natural happiness has been put away beneath external stimuli, or what may best be described as the tempest of our inward thoughts.

It is high time that we go all out to cultivate silence within ourselves and figure it out—right now. Because we all need silence, and also stillness, to become our true selves—more so, to being truly happy and, in so doing, to finding our own veritable self—or, the god in ourselves—in the endless rush and agitation of modern life.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“That is no country for old men. The young / In one another’s arms, birds in the trees / — Those dying generations — at their song, / The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, /Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long / Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. / Caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect.”

Thus wrote William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) when he was 62—a sort of a complaint, perforce, as he was growing old.

Today, things haven’t truly changed. So much so we could conjure up images of such Yeatsian similes or metaphors. Like the abundant sexuality of our young populace, the profusion of city folks, the neurosis in our society—“whatever is begotten, born, and dies.” Agreed that the great Irishman was ageing but, in reality, the dissimilitude between sexuality and the ageless was always a fundamental component in his thought since a young age—in heart and spirit. One that is akin to India, or the world, of our age.

Monuments of Intellect

Yeats’ idea of sensual music was, likewise, something that more than meets the eye, or the ear, or even conventional thought and wisdom. It is an extremely disturbing aspect of what is often forgotten in the reckless quest of sexuality. So also his “monuments” of the word “intellect.”

Yeats does not, of course, relate to practical intellect—the reasoning power of the scientist. What he tries to connect is the spiritual intellect—the intellect of Dante’s��Divine Comedy, or in the eastern context, the intellect of great seers and saints like Confucius,��Lao-Tzu,��Sankaracárya, Ramanujacárya, Madhvacárya, Chaitanya or Kabir. This is also the intellect of the Buddha, Plato, Plotinus, St. Patrick, St. Paul and Rumi, in another context: of what the spiritual intellect creates does not die. It is something that is imperishable. Or simply permanent.

Yeats never believed in the language of the absolute vis-à-vis sensuality and spiritual intellect. He thought of the two parallels as day and night, and vice versa. He often talked of what is so easily forgotten in different cultures, East or West. Yeats’ spiritual intelligence was based on sensuality, on which everything else rests. Be that as it may, in the India of today, or any other milieu, not many would care about the afterlife.

As one perceptive writer remarked jocularly, “Now that no one believes in the afterlife, everyone writes.”

Vertical Thought

The inference is obvious. Many of our attempts have been geared to create immortality without the help of the immortals, because most of our forebears lived in simple communities, although they built enormous, permanent mansions, or nectars in stone, for the gods. Today, we seem to build such “castles” for politicians and financial wizards.

There’s an old belief that says that whenever one makes a decision, one should think of its effect down to the 7^th or 8^th generation. This may, quite neatly, be linked to Yeatsian reflection. Or what is called vertical thought. Of a positive effect in a chaotic world that is also planet Earth’s endowment in the new millennium. Vertical thought is just the opposite of what would often be a decision based on short-term profits—in other words, a refusal to invest in the unit, or people who work in it.

As��Mahatma Gandhi��demonstrated, the most he could say of his life was that he was steadfast in his commitment to understanding truth and helping make it manifest in the world.

In vertical thought, there’s no disparity between men and women. Because one automatically becomes wiser when one learns to think vertically. As a matter of fact, vertical art is quite similar to imagining the patterns of water flowing under your feet—of ogres exploding out of Earth’s waters and rising into the clouds. It’s also something similar to the vast distances between the stars.

Today, more than any time before, we are all struggling with moral questions too. They are also moral dilemmas that not only define how we live, but directly affect other people’s lives. Moral questions, in any age, past or present, are often difficult. They often involve risk and daring. They can lead to discomfort, just as much as they can lead to the deepest kind of comfort when you feel that you are an upright person, a person of integrity, not a wily politician.

New Age Diet

In the modern world, such decisions involve specific situations: spending more time at home, or work, mustering the courage to oppose conflicts— environmental and social issues, or human rights in society—or, keeping silent. Put simply, moral life is a constant backdrop in our personal and social lives. Its implications may call us to comply with or defy cultural parameters, or even definitions. It is, therefore, lived in the particular, and in the imminent challenges of our everyday lives.

The decisions in today’s framework call upon personal qualities like courage, responsibility, empathy, humor, integrity and generosity. Words full of meaning, yes, but totally neglected where they matter most. Yet one primal fact remains: They are often tested through moral action. While it’s agreed that it is possible for one to have a general set of guiding moral principles, the practical implications of thought and action are not served well through an overly simplistic attitude, or black-and-white approach to morality.

We live at a time when moral questions are being raised with a great sense of urgency. We have a long way to go in achieving moral integrity as a society and as citizens in it. More so in the present dispensation, where more and more youngsters are being brought up by the all-pervading, surrogate mother called television, the New Age diet—call it what you may. On the bright side, as has been history’s theme song, human struggle between self-interest and human interest is forever inspired by the imaginations of the intellect—by our artists, and our imaginations.

Yet the equation isn’t as simplistic. Our imaginations today are occupied by fear and culpability. The results, therefore, have been devastating. Yet there’s hope. When human beings are informed by love that is spiritual, dutiful or secular, it envelops reverence for all living things. When we reach such a plateau, our imaginations become the driving force of moral action, not otherwise.

Yeats’ idea of sensual music was, likewise, something that more than meets the eye, or the ear, or even conventional thought and wisdom. It is an extremely disturbing aspect of what is often forgotten in the reckless quest of sexuality.

To return to Yeats again—in the aftermath of every political, racial, ethnical, religious, militant, terrorist, sectarian, or geographical, imbroglio—his meditations on the horrors of war and the need for healing in morally uncertain times are as relevant today than ever before.

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), another great Irishman, called Yeats’ work “necessary poetry.” “Yeats,” he said, “touches the (very) base of our sympathetic nature while taking in at the same time the unsympathetic reality of the world to which (that) nature is constantly exposed … to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they too are an earnest of our veritable human being.”

The deepest and most personal moral concerns today coincide with the expanding chapter of profound moral reassessment in our society. We are in conflict about what we expect of our young and our old, what we expect of employers and employees, how we assess rights and responsibilities, and how we value the lives of the poor and the otherwise needy. It is surely a moral failing.

The task is difficult, but not impossible. As����demonstrated, the most he could say of his life was that he was steadfast in his commitment to understanding truth and helping make it manifest in the world. It is a perfect call to reassembling what has been scattered in India, or the globe, of our age, and beyond. It is also something that tells us not about just being right, but about being awake, as Yeats outlined, and wakeful to suffering around us and aiming to reduce it, not add to it.

It is a formidable formula because the complexity of contemporary life does not yield itself to elementary formulaic solutions. More so because we live in our imaginations. In other words, the ideas we unravel can free or imprison us. How we approach such ideas and how we act would, therefore, define who we are, and what kind of society we live in. In the words of Robert Browning (1812-1889), the great English poet and playwright:��“The common problem, yours, mine, everyone’s / Is—not to fancy what were fair in life / Provided it could be — but finding first / What maybe, then find how to make it fair / Up to our means.”

The onus is on us all—a clarion call that seeks ways to reaffirm our faith in our ability to live in harmony with ourselves, with each other, and Mother Earth. It’s a simile Yeats would have certainly acquiesced to.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The memoir of Robert S. McNamara, published 20 years ago, runs through and “presents” situations akin to the tragic drama (re)enacted today—a “repeat performance” of a monumental miscalculation gone awry.

The lessons of history have��not been forgotten, unlike our far too clichéd or fixated norm, as our new history of����unfolds just in the wake of yet another, convoluted imbroglio in Afghanistan��and Syria.��It��reminds us of one of the greatest debacles ever recorded in contemporary history:��. Besides, it would be no exaggeration to say that the abject fiasco of “whose war [is it anyway]?” did not end in that country. It has now extended to the “righteous,” albeit fanatical, wars we are��witnessing today in the Middle East.

Back in Time

As we go back in history, through McNamara’s memoir,��, we run through situations that are akin, for example, to the drama of Saddam Hussein’s ignoble downfall—including the militaristic, political and diplomatic “excursions”—the difference being the magnificent canvas of high-tech weaponry and worldwide TV and media coverage, 24 hours a day.

Fast forward to 2016, the names of the actors in this drama of��the 1960s (John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy) have been replaced with US “think tanks”��of the 21^st��century (George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the present Obama administration). We seem to have a near��“repeat performance” of monumental miscalculations gone awry.

McNamara’s poignant memoir not only answers the lingering, albeit urgent questions that surrounded the US debacle in Vietnam, a disastrous episode in US history, but it also reveals articulately and forcefully a host of fatal misconceptions behind American involvement in Vietnam. Written with unsparing frankness and candor, McNamara’s portrait, drawn from a wealth of declassified documents, commands everybody’s attention. It has a lesson for us all even today.

When the newly elected President John F. Kennedy offered McNamara the post of secretary of defense in 1960—soon after he became president of Ford Motor Company—his reply was, “I’m not qualified.” As he himself confesses, “I had entered the Pentagon with a limited grasp of military matters and even less of covert operations.”

McNamara writes: “We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation … We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet, we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” Courageous words, although belated, from the most unlikely US secretary of defense.

President Kennedy and Secretary McNamara

McNamara also knew nothing of Vietnam. And so did all the others—President Kennedy, military adviser General Taylor and National Security Adviser Bundy, to mention just a few names. Why did McNamara accept the coveted job? Simply because Kennedy told him that there were no schools for defense secretaries, or for presidents.

If the “falling-domino” effect haunted the US throughout the Vietnam War, and beyond, McNamara always urged that US policy, so deeply frustrated by its inability to bring the war to a quick conclusion, be based on two principles: “[First, US commitment is] only to see that the people of South Vietnam are permitted to determine their own future … [and second,] this commitment ceases if the country ceases to help itself.”

It is a different matter that, in practice, McNamara did not go so far. Instead, he proposed “a politico-military strategy that raised the possibility of compromise.” What’s more, McNamara, much to the chagrin of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also made, even if indirectly, a resolute effort to cut short the “bloody” war without a military victory. His problem was that he was willing to go so far and no further. Yet he never advised his bosses to have a solid exit strategy for Vietnam—something that he candidly admits was his “Himalayan” blunder.

This colossal mistake may have something that more than meets the eye, or the ear: The “S” in McNamara’s name stands for “Strange,” his mother’s maiden name. But what was still stranger was that this unusual word took a totally different turn during the Vietnam War: Far from being mild and apart from apparently contradictory epithets like “murderer,” “war criminal” and “peacenik,” the conflict was also called “McNamara’s War.” This, of course, is utterly ridiculous. For the simple reason that it misdirected the blame from a group effort, led by a brace of presidents, to just one individual.

Mistakes of the Future

What are the good things that come out of McNamara’s bold, remorseful, self-critical tome? First, his intention of publishing his memoir was not to justify his political decisions, but to expose them at whatever personal costs. Second, to set the record straight for public scrutiny. Third, and most importantly, it goes to McNamara’s credit—a pattern unknown in any nation’s public life—that��and hopes that the lessons learned too late in Vietnam could be related to avoid similar mistakes in the future. If this is not honesty, a duty to one’s country, in spite of a host of dominoes falling by the wayside, what is?

As McNamara outlines, “Failure in one area contributed to or compounded failure in another. Each became a turn in a terrible knot. Pointing out these mistakes allows us to map the lessons of Vietnam, and places us in a position to applying them to the post-Cold War world. Although clear evidence has existed since the mid-1980s that the Cold War was ending, nations throughout the world have been slow to revise their foreign and defense policies, in part because they do not see clearly what lies ahead.”

McNamara, in so doing, also takes a logical look into the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the civil war in former Yugoslavia, and the turmoil in Chechnya, Burundi and elsewhere. He argues cogently that the world of the future will not be without conflict and racial ethnic tensions. He is also convinced that nationalism will be a powerful force across the globe. Political revolutions, he says, will erupt as societies advance. “In these respects,” McNamara notes, “the world of the future will not be different from the world of the past—conflicts within and among nations will not disappear. [However,] relations between nations will change dramatically…”���մdzܳ���é!

There are shades of Vietnam in Iraq, Afghanistan and other fronts to come. Is anyone at the helm listening, much less willing to turning the tide for a better world?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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One had always thought that global war, or the somber chronicle of religious strife, was over—a case of not just an allegory agreed upon, but old hash. But history, or war, isn’t over as yet. This is because we still haven’t arrived at the magical intersection: the promised land of happiness, or harmonious coexistence, as prophesied by futuristic technologists or instant spiritualists.

To cull just one example, as progressive socialists had ordained, the collapse of communism hasn’t yet led people to a nirvana—or a safe democratic haven. Add to this the continuing specter of civil strife, and discord, which has showed no signs of ending, or even dying a slow, progressive death, and you have the primitive slaughter bench reenacted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and the wider Middle East.

Today, we are caught in a vice-like grip: the deadly, venomous hold of not only ethnic, but also emotional, even fanatical, cauldron. A case of human perfidy: the undulating, changing evolution of the worst of times. From high-tech to low-tech progression. Here’s more: As the monstrous threat of natural calamities is juxtaposed by war clouds, wherever you look, a sudden encounter with grievous injury, or even death, can also occur in a moment of celebration, merriment or excitement. The car crash, or a gun-wielding terrorist, excited fans at a football match, or just about anything—from a trivial verbal skirmish to enmity—can bring misery.

Social by Nature

Yet at the other end of the spectrum, it is nothing short of a miracle that human beings often display tremendous resilience, courage and understanding even for individuals who may sometimes be the offenders themselves.

Curiously, our own myopia has robbed us from evaluating things as they are. For one simple reason: the monster that rules our psyche. Call it war, violence, terrorism or what you may. In other words, the haunting legacy of disaster—the paramount quality of intrusiveness it brings to a witness exposed to a creepy episode. Besides, the reaction per se is usually documented by one’s unstoppable repetition of the traumatic event.

What needs to be highlighted in this context is the fundamental, inherent camaraderie that is brought to the forefront in the face of war, calamity, loss or bereavement. The reason? Human beings are social by nature. As psychologists would point out, togetherness and shared experiences have always helped people to cope with such events. This is primarily because adversity and stress can bring out the best qualities in people, while social contact can be a great source for succor, comfort and recovery, no less.

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Not only that. The clicking of the hour hand is the best healer, to use a platitude—a time-honored dictum, because any single historical event is always subject to transcend time and place and, thus, becomes a symbol of human response to it and its emergent catastrophe.

On Hope

Resilience is a bright prospect that links itself to one primal human element: hope. Hope is a quality of character that carries us through the worst moments of crises. It wells up from some deep pool, in a cruel and unbearable world, and extends itself beyond overcoming suffering. Hope is also an active principle; it sustains belief. It offers us dreams and visions—to guide us through the present and also project alternative realities. Besides, it permits us to insist that the world can be changed.

“Hope,” as the distinguished Czech writer and statesman Vaclav Havel put it, “is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Hope is not, of course, the conviction that something will turn out well, but rather the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. The more adverse the circumstances, the deeper our hope. It gives us the desire to live with reality. To remember William Shakespeare: “O! Who can hold a fire in his hand/By thinking on the frosty Caucuses?/Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite/By bare imagination of a feast?/Or wallow naked in December snow/By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?/O no! the apprehension of the good/Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.”

Hope represents the triumph of the constructive imagination over existential anxieties. It isn’t a flight from reality, or a mere emotional font confined to the individual self. Yet the point is, hope becomes meaningful only when it expresses a long-range goal—one that allows us to explore the relationship between the envisioned and the possible, or what allows us to project ourselves creatively. This is simply because all possible goals are more or less attainable, when inspired by the love for the miracle of life, as has been enshrined in such traditional epics as the��Ramayana, the��Mahabharata, and Homer’s��Iliad��and��Odyssey.

These meditations are, in essence, a celebration of strength and hope that embrace the world with its beauty and its terror, including the tribulations that the protagonists undergo—be it Sita, Rama, the Pandavas or Odysseus—while striving to maintain their integrity, goodness or sense of purpose, aside from emoting a dignified resolve to confront experience and overcome obstacles placed in their path.

This explains why a host of events related to war and conflict has been buried, from time to time—while others with their own peculiar constellation of psychical, ethnic, political and religious interpolations have also had the better of logic, not emotion alone. Yet the irony is they have been dug up just as well from the deep pit and made into raging issues for whatever gain. Not merely because the history of war is a stream of appraisal, which only the victor has been allowed to engrave, but also because of life’s own inequities.

Flames of Hate

The hyperbolic rigmarole of mental nightmares, or flashbacks, to scenes of war and crime—as Shakespeare etched in��Macbeth—“Is this the dagger I see before me?”—have all been reported in soldiers and also others who return from the zone of conflict and destruction. In other words, people affected by war, terrorism or ethnic tragedy are most likely to show feelings of alienation, sleep difficulties and lapse of concentration.

It’s a typical aphorism of our difficult times, where we live in fear and hope, hope and despair. Yes, such images, gory and painful, emanate with cascading effect. Think of September 11, 2001, in New York; July 26, 2008, in Mumbai; November 13, 2015, in Paris; or other “hate” frames that bled an ancient heritage to gloom and abject anguish.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have also in the same breath been witness to another travesty. That while one has often heard of the need for rapprochement, there has not been a definitive movement on either side of the divide toward achieving the goal of tranquility, simply because most of us have forgotten to live in concord, not only with oneself, but also one’s environs.

Blame it all on flared emotions, or fanaticism, which aren’t part of what might be called the Modern Age—the epoch of science and technology. Also, perish the thought of using borrowed phrases such as culture, compassion, harmony and unity, because none of our forebears ever wanted nations that would spew malice on the basis of belief, race, color or creed.

Put simply, we have not only failed them, but botched ourselves too—more so, because there is no real respite in sight, unless things are turned around with purpose, diligence and fidelity.

Is this asking for too much, too soon?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Earnestness, it is aptly said, is the font of authority or authenticity, where “auto” means “self”—your original instrument and��“entea”—or tool connotes communication. This explains why our credibility as a speaker or leader in any field of activity, for example, is directly correlated to the extent to which the audience perceives our genuineness. In other words, our greatest effectiveness comes from being oneself, because who you��are��communicates more than what you��say.

A classical paradigm would bring home this “canon” best. A journalist once asked Mahadev Desai, ’s personal secretary, to be “let in” on the “secret chemistry” of the Mahatma’s ability to hold audiences in rapt—if not hypnotic—enchantment for hours without a script or notes. Desai responded: “What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does, are all the same. He does not need notes.”

This is precisely the power of inner alignment.

Yet it all emerges as a paradox in the times we now live in—a case of unambiguous��raison��d’être. Gandhi has virtually become a non-entity, albeit his face—thanks to official iconography—remains familiar. What’s more, while the man and his monumental deeds have since long faded into near-oblivion, his once-hallowed sagacity sounds superfluous and droll.

Besides, the most honored man in history, to cull Albert Einstein’s famous aphorism—“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”—has proved prophetic. Gandhi is a forgotten man. Well, almost. He is, at the moment, confined to school textbooks or one’s wallet, not our hearts.

Conversely, there’s a cog—the visage for those who care for values. For them, Gandhi remains a colossal figure—larger and taller than Mount Everest, notwithstanding the fact that most of their own progeny has lost sight of his greatness. A phizog that is symptomatic of what ails India, or the world, today—and our inability to recognize true character and leadership.

Gandhi was an inspirational leader. To use a cliché, he was a great human being. What guided his conduct was a virtual obsession with reputation. He always thought that failure in a worthy enterprise could be forgiven, but dishonor was inexpugnably a blot, a shame. He often said: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” He also firmly believed that moral and effective leadership comes from trust. He observed that immoral leaders always fail not because of themselves, but because their followers feel disrespected.

It is high time we all found a tad of Gandhi in ourselves—a Gandhi that aims to inspire and respect…

The imperative today, therefore, is not familiarity with our political “leaders,” with their quanta of rip-offs, accusations, duplicity and impropriety in high places, but a revival of dignity and veneration. How do we achieve that “balance?” Simple. Difficult. Through Gandhi. He’s our only��aide memoire��at a time of monumental change—when we have managed to perplex ourselves with the most elementary matters.

All things considered, Gandhi was the putative head of the family—the national family. He took enormous interest in every person he came across in daily life. Today, the problem is not so much with Gandhi, or Gandhian thought.

The folly is directly connected with the basic concept of kinfolk, and the role customarily attributed to fathers within the household unit: the family. There emerges a negation, more so because modern thinkers regard the family as a prop for patriarchy, a metaphor for oppression, and denial of freedom. This, indeed, is the fundamental reason for the palpable barrier that now exists between our��understanding��of Gandhian ideals and the Mahatma himself—the greatest breach between��him and us.

This isn’t all. Gandhi often pointed out that there’s more to life than increasing its speed. Yet the incongruity is most of us with uptight goals and ambitions rush forward in a tizzy, fueling our momentum with self-imposed stress. This stress is a recurring cycle of rapidity; it is hard to break. It would do us all a world of good, if only we imbibed the import of Gandhi’s timeless assertion, in the difficult times we now live in and, in so doing, curtailed our stressful fixations.

It is high time we all found a tad of Gandhi in ourselves—a Gandhi that aims to inspire and respect and, in so doing, “restore” him to his hallowed place in us.

A tall order, agreed. Maybe, a goal beyond reach, if one takes into account our waning values, decrepit variance, societal and political erosion that has set in and encrusted itself into the roots of our life and beyond—yet it is worth trying. Because winning half the battle would be tantamount to turning things around for a better world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: ��/ ��

We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your����is tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be a��.

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