Us and them - philosophically speaking

(This is an exact copy of a mail sent, on a Saturday morning, to a colleague, who is into reading a lot of high quality self-help books emanating from the West)

I was reading the HBS speech by Clayton Christensen, titled "How will you measure your life?", which later on became the core of the book you are reading. As I read it, I was slowly discerning the similarities of approach between him and Covey. In both cases, there is a hidden zealot of the hard line Christian thought. So I wasn't surprised when I found out that he was born in Salt Lake City, to Mormon parents.

The middle eastern religions provide instructions and dictats, and are more application oriented, in the external world. The Hellenic influence on Christian thought has brought a lot of focus on reason and certainty. Thus the western thought is about how you should behave in the external world, with a huge emphasis on determinism. Only recently they have started looking inward, and even then their analysis of self is in light of the external world. It is struggling to flow from outside to inside.

The oriental thought, on the other hand recognises that we still, after 2500 years since Buddha, do not know more than 0.05% of the universe, and thus real knowledge attainable by us is not the knowledge of material world, but our own selves. Our discourses are thus flowing a little more fluidly from inside to outside.

This isn't a critique of the western thought, for there is nothing good or bad in things that exist or come into being. It is just the way they are.

The matter in hand is our situation. We come from a diverse thought culture which in one sweep embraces, the profoundly philosophical, rational and almost atheistic treatise of Kapil's samkhyasutra, deeply spiritual and only symbolically religious Mohamudgar, or Nirvana Shatakam of Shankaracharya, and pantheistic tendencies of the semi-religion, wrongly known as Hinduism. On this, when the deterministic and narrowly focused western thought on work and god and country is imposed, for almost 400 years, it is bound to create some terrible confusion in our minds.

China, has avoided that to a great extent. And I believe that is a key difference (not necessarily bad or good) between us and them.

Have a great weekend!!

:-)

music and those things

I was listening to a CD of S D Burman's Bangla songs. On a Sunday morning. An agenda less Sunday morning which comes with that indescribable restlessness that modern urban living brings to us when we find we have nothing to accomplish that day. Music is a legitimate way to distract on such occasions, without extracting any commitment. Rostropovich would not like it. In the introduction to "The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection", he writes: "Real, great music should never serve as a background for activities or chores not connected with it. Our world has been cursed with "Elevator Music". Waiting in an airport or visiting the doctor or dentist, we are so often beset with canned "Classical Music". I will even visit cafes, especially in Japan that serve classical music as they serve your food. Many's the time that I would leave, paying my bill for food and drink I had neither eaten nor drunk. Because my attention has been captured by the music playing in the background."

Good man Mstislav would not like us to use music as a background. But unable to run away from our banausic lives, while longing nothing less but a total escape, we continue to use it that way. However Music is a clever master.  Relegated to background, it stills works its ways to the resonating ear, to the restless mind and to the heart ready to give in. And before you know, something else is happening to you than just getting distracted.

Actually I started writing this not because S D Burman’s music worked on me to write this.  I was not even planning to write about that music or any music at all. I was not even planning to write. But in fact I started writing to distract me; to distract me from completely breaking down in tears.  Tears, which had no reason, absolutely no reason whatsoever to burst forth. The tears were caused, in a way by the music, but not by it again.

So, as I was saying, on a bright Sunday morning, I put some old Bangla classic by the maestro S D Burman and lolled on the couch with news paper.  As the music filled the room, I was kind of swaying to the melody in a prone position. Medha came into the room, and settling down at the table to drink her milk, started complaining mildly about “old and boring music”.  I got up from the sofa, and to sort of taunt her, started making exaggerated and slow dancing gestures to the music.  But soon I was lost in my own mind and my own thoughts, or no thoughts at all, while my body kept moving in a slow pace, much, I am sure, to the amusement of my family and the maids.  Soon there was some song on the speakers which I cannot recall at all, and the melody, the interim music that goes in Indian songs between two stanzas of lyrics, started to work on my mind. It started to conjure something, which I could not touch although it was almost tangible. I could not see it but it had a picture and hues. I could not identify the flavor but it had some and more.  It created that sense of déjà vu that visits me occasionally, and always completely without any announcement. While I say déjà vu, I have this premonition that it may not be from my past, or from my life at all, at least not this life.  These fragments, intense and almost tactile, show themselves up, and saunter albeit rather transiently, just outside that invisible line beyond which I cannot reach out and capture them.  I stand there, lost in that moment, feeling inadequate every moment. Inadequate, for not having the perseverance, the dedication, the commitment to go chasing it.  And perhaps not having the tools or dexterity to capture it so that I can show and or tell about it to others.

I grope around desperately for a few moments, looking for something but not knowing what it is. I stand or sit or lie there, enjoying the color, hue, melody, texture, taste, smell and everything apparently sensory but actually unreal, associated with that ephemeral object. And I suffer my intense inability to catch hold on to it and paste on a piece of paper. And my throat chokes, my eyes start welling up and I slowly start descending to the prosaic surrounding that I am never to escape.

It’s not about music. But I have observed that music has been the trigger for most times when I have had these visitations, these satoris, that make life worthwhile.  Perhaps someday, I will be able to catch the note, the notes and the melody and put them on a ruled papyrus for others to listen to.

Till then….

catharsis in D minor (on a friday morning)

my journey into western classical music started when i picked up a slightly scratched LP of Brahms (i forget the work) from a pawn shop in mirza ghalib street (erstwhile free school street).


then it went through the usual johan strauss jr's waltzes (my favorite is not 'blue danube' but 'tales from the vienna wood'), and vivaldi's 'fours seasons', both of which I liked.

i loved (and still do) brahms's 'die ungerishe tanze' - the hungarian dances. i love his short pieces. havent heard enough of his symphonies though.

and of course johan sebastian bach. who can forget the prolific master?!! i have two cassettes of bach - the second one is the deservedly famous brandenburg concertos. the first one, which made me fall in love with him is the "Violin Concertos Nos. 1-2, BWV 1041-1042; Concerto for Two Violins, BWV 1043". Unfortunately, with the impending arrival of the new system that was delivered yesterday, I had parted with my Sony cassettes player.

before joining XLRI, when i was being given farewell from my job in Siemens, i had my friend jayanta banerjee as a company, as he was also leaving for IIM-B. we were asked what would we want as our farewell gift. jayanta, very practically, asked for a mid-sized VIP hard top suitcase and some stationery. i just asked for a six casette western music collection of EMI/ HMV :-) Predictably, Jayanta has done well for himself in later life :)

the first day after my release from Siemens, a job I had started to hate, i woke up very early in the morning, exhillerated by the release from bondage, and went to the terrace of our suburban home. it was early summer, and there was a storm in the air. and in my ear was a Sony Walkman, playing Haydn's cello concerto. I can still smell that air in my nostrils. I should have understood that day that the journey I was to start was not mine to take. But I did not. Haydn stayed with me. A couple of years back, one of my juniors gave me another EMI collection, this time in CD, which had one of Haydn. and it is this CD I was taking to try out all the systems.

I havent yet mentione the 2 stalwarts yet!! Well Mozart is impossible to ignore and I love his concertos. I had his Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra, probably conducted by the superb Karajan, and it was awesome. His talent and ouvre is unmatchable. Mozart's, that is. So is Karazan's.

I have listened to all of Beethoven's 9 symphonies. But then I am not a symphnoy person. I like lots of movements within. But neither am i trained nor do i have the patience to pay such prolonged attention and understand the 'motivic development' or such other things. i need to discover him.

i love chopin as well, and some stuff i have heard by dvorak, berliotz, mendelsson.

i like strings, but not so much paganini, whose 'caprices' i have in cassette. i love the bass of cello.

and i like piano. need to get some good reco on jazz piano as well.



my god!! seems like i have just had a "cathertic outpouring in D minor" early on a friday morning.

Poetry or Verse - for better or worse

(this was written in an email on September 9, 2008, in response to a long mail trail between friends, which was taking place in verse)

Bong am I without a doubt, (and thus)
Poet I am; but not a metric one.
At metres I am quite undone
So on verses, count me out.

My "phorte" were metaphors
And it is too late to change the course.
Thus like a ship rather rudderless
I float from one figure to another face.

There were years when Bacchus ruled
And evenings spent in "herbal" haze;
Love and pain had us all fooled
And Poetry had its zenith days.

Now, numbers have me as its slave;
And living in a cushy enclave,
Poetry is just a distant shore
To which I would return no more.

But this was verse, a small mercy,
Which my friends enjoy, I see.
And who knows, some word play,
May keep the shrink away.

I wish I could say that

Between chance and will
I stand still,
Choosing none.
I am all done.
It's time to say goodbye.
Giving up hope, of
Desiring this woman's art
Or that man's scope,
It's time to say goodbye.