The Ghazi Attack: What sells more than sex?

Nationalism. And this movie has dollops of it.

But before I come to that, I must mention something else – I am stunned (a la Rannvijay of Roadies) that not one Bollywood reviewer has pointed out that Ghazi Attack depicts events far closer to those of WWII, than those of Indo-Pak war.

The movie, which claims to be inspired by the purported sinking of Pak submarine Ghazi by an Indian destroyer INS Rajput, instead shows two subs in a death dance, where the Indian sub ends up sinking the Pak sub. In real combat, the only confirmed incidence where a sub sank its enemy counterpart happened on Feb 9, 1945 when British sub HMS Venturer sank German sub U-864, off the coast of Bergen, Norway.

Now, it’s a remote possibility that the director/script writer wasn’t aware of this event, but nevertheless, it shows poor research on the part of Bollywood reviewers.

Coming back to where I started. Man, if this movie was a human being, its catchphrase would be “मेरी रगों में खून नहीं देशप्रेम दौड़ता हैI” Neglecting the remote possibility expressed above, the very basis for this film is a lie inflicted on an uninformed public to draw them to the theatres. It doesn’t end there. The movie plays the national anthem and “saare jahan se acha…”, and copiously brandishes the Tricolour at regular intervals. Poor audience had to stand up more than once. Not me, though.

Besides the (ab)use of nationalism, there are two other aspects of the movie worth pondering over – its disclaimer at the very beginning, and the liberal use of creative licence by the director.

The disclaimer in this movie is the longest, the most slowly read (take a lesson, guy who speaks “mutual funds are subject to…”), and the most elaborate I have seen on screen. It reassures the audience that “all people associated with this film are law-abiding citizens”, and that “its intention is not to outrage or offend anybody, that it doesn’t in any manner support the expressions used by its characters, and that it makes no claim to historical accuracy.” Man, these are not encouraging signs for a country going into 21^st century.

The use of creative licence is hard to dispute, and by no means do I advocate banning/regulating anything. The replacement of a destroyer in the real battle by a submarine in the movie could also be attributed to creative licence. The problem is that most people would walk away from the movie believing this is close to what actually happened, when that’s not even remotely true. Worse, people might assume destroyers and submarines are the same thing. The depiction of how a submarine works, while quite realistic in parts, is wildly off the mark when it’s shown to lift off from the ocean bed after being struck by a landmine laid down by the enemy sub. In another bizarre scene, the reciting of the national anthem by Indian sailors is picked up by the enemy on its sonar-detecting device. A lot of what’s shown in the movie is simply impossible, and this isn’t the first movie to go down that path. There is no issue when the movie is fantasy fiction (Matrix, Iron Man) but a movie which claims to be inspired by real events ought to be more careful in its depiction. It’s commendable that the movie didn’t name the submarine INS Rajput (maybe it didn’t get the permission?), though the enemy sub is deceptively named after the real boat. 

In the same vein, would it be just to make a movie in 2080, purportedly inspired by Narendra Modi’s life, where the protagonist is shown to fall from grace after a Watergate-like scandal? Note that this is different from works such as 'The man in the high castle', which are based on an alternative version of history. Here the audience has no chance of assuming what's shown/written to be the truth. In the former case, where the truth is buried under the weight of history, no amount of disclaimers will stop a handful of people, especially foreigners, from believing that the movie depicts the truth. But as I said, by no stretch of imagination should this call for a ban. Self-regulation is the best form of regulation.

Talking of self-regulation, I made a mistake by watching a Hindi movie that wasn’t directed by Anurag Kashyap. Gotta be more disciplined now.

Fat Is The New Fit

NYT, beacon of ultra-liberal international media, has started a new column named “Disability”, where it invites the disabled to share their life stories. This is literally the only thing I have liked about NYT ever since its obnoxious campaign of lies and deceit to promote Hillary Clinton, and I mean not the column but its name – Disability. Since “disability” can’t be typo for “differently abled”, kudos to NYT for this completely unexpected act of eschewing stupid euphemisms.

The column boasts of some genuinely good pieces that inform the larger audience about the life of disabled people, but here I want to focus on the odd-one-out, a piece titled “Love, Eventually”, penned by one Ona Gritz. The piece is informative alright, if not about disability then about the free pass one gets in the name of victimhood.

The gist of the piece is that the author is semi-disabled because of mild cerebral palsy in the right side of her body. After much heartburn and empty sex, she meets a perfectly able-bodied man whom she falls in love with and gets married to. They have a kid, Ethan, but they divorce when he’s just four, and she eventually marries another man named Dan, who’s disabled himself by way of being born blind. Her life seems fulfilled after that.

Run-of-the-mill sappy romantic saga, which I bet wouldn’t make it to my blog, let alone the hallowed pages of NYT, had it not been written by a disabled person woman who leaves no stone unturned in playing up her disability every word she writes. Some of the things she gets sympathy for are so trite, stupid, and sometimes reckless, that she’d be castigated for those had she not been disabled. Let’s take a look.

“Apparently I was appealing enough to sleep with but not to be picked as a girlfriend.”

Said every girl, disabled or otherwise. Reason – men are dogs. In this case, the author confesses in the preceding sentence that her disability was barely noticeable, so men not picking her as girlfriend had nothing to do with her disability.

“Before Ethan’s birth I hadn’t understood that parenting is physically demanding work…. I couldn’t bathe Ethan safely, carry him on stairs or even sip from a water glass while he nursed if his head rested on my good arm.”

Oh, am I supposed to sympathize with that? Maybe I could if the author was disabled and retarded, but she doesn’t reveal the latter. So here’s a woman who keeps a child in her womb for nine months, not knowing she might have to sometimes lift a finger once it’s born, and in the process blithely imperils her son’s life. Imagine an able-bodied woman making the same preposterous claim – the readers will tear her up rather than tearing up.

“Hope was my first friend with cerebral palsy… I had other friends who “got me” in a visceral, finish-each-other’s-sentences kind of way. But only Hope could finish the sentences I’d never before said aloud, the ones about how it felt to live in a nonnormative body.”

Good grief. Way to manipulate one's disability to take sappy, cliched crap about “finishing each other’s sentences” a notch higher. What’s next - "we were two non-normative bodies one normative soul"?

“By the time Ethan turned 3, the physical demands of mothering had lessened… A year later, my husband and I divorced.”

The deadpan delivery of the last sentence would put Jimmy Carr to shame. The author makes not even an attempt to justify divorcing a “handsome, athletic, and crazy about me” man who takes her as his girlfriend when no one else would, loves her, cares for her, marries her, and has a child with her, except that:

“Out of hopefulness, impatience, insecurity or for a thousand other reasons, we too often rush into relationships that are poor fits for us, robbing our partners and ourselves of more promising connections. It struck me as likely that those of us with disabilities are especially susceptible to this.”

Ever heard of the art of compromise, dear Ona? Ever thought what your partner, besides your child, might have gone through owing to your recklessness? Ever wondered that a relationship between a disabled and an able-bodied person must be equally difficult for both partners, where the latter might be reminded every second that he/she ended up being a “settler”? Or is that last sentence emphasizing your disability supposed to wash off all your sins and make us bawl?

““It’s like you guys are the same person, only one’s male and one’s female,” said Ethan — not entirely as a compliment — who was 8 at the time.”

Ethan refers to Dan, Ona’s love interest post-divorce and her eventual husband, thus making clear to his mom that he was uncomfortable with their relationship. But hey, readers ought to be happy that a disabled person found love even at the cost of possibly ruining her ex's and son's life. After all, they aren’t disabled, so they should suck it up for the one who is.

“Dan (born blind) confided to me that back in high school and college, he knew how to use a cane but chose to walk without one in an attempt to blend in. Back then, he also sought able, sighted women rumored to be beautiful. When I shared my stories in kind, I was struck, just as I’d once been with Hope, by how little had to be explained.”

It’s hard to fault Ona for finding better friends (Hope) and lovers (Dan) in the fellow disabled. They would empathize with her underlying issues and all that. The same goes for blacks, homosexuals, transgenders etc. They are understood better by their kind. But at its core it’s just a case of birds of the same feather flocking together. Would the readers be as forgiving of an able-bodied person who chose to abandon a disabled partner because he/she....didn’t get it? Would a white person be hailed as a hero for forsaking a black partner because he/she couldn’t identify with, say, white guilt? I hardly think so. Seems like Ona is just as reckless, greedy and impulsive as any of us, except that most of us don't get to proudly proclaim it because, well, we have all our body parts intact.

The point of all the above rejoinders is the same – disability, or victimhood in general, gets a free pass, and the likes of Ona cash in on it. In the world of ultra-liberal media, the strong and the able are subjects of constant ridicule and shame, while the weak are glorified beyond all reasonable logic. At this rate, it would soon be about the survival of the weakest. Mothers would pray for retards to be born to them over prodigies, fitness centres would give way to fatness centres, and beauty pageants would turn into ugly pageants. There would be a race to prove oneself to be the weakest, the most wretched, and the most discriminated against. Just look at caste-based reservation demands in India for a clue.

हिंदी का हनन

लंबे अरसे से एक दर्द दिल में ले कर बैठा हूँI यूँ तो हिन्दी भाषा में नहीं लिखता, पर क्योंकि ये दर्द हिन्दी के अपमान से जागा है, तो सोचा अँग्रेज़ी में अपना दर्द ज़ाहिर कर के इस पाप का भोगी ना बनूँI

दो दिन पहले एक hostel में घुसा, दिल्ली मेंI वहाँ reception पर टूटी फूटी अँग्रेज़ी में hello, how’re you से स्वागत हुआI वैसे तो आदत पड़ गयी है, पर थोड़ा अटपटा लगाI जब दोनो हिन्दी भाषी हैं, तो राम राम की जगह जबरन hello क्यूँ? यदि आप अत्यधिक धार्मिक हैं, तो सलाम अलैईकूं भी चलेगा, पर hello? इससे पहले की आप सोचें की मैं हर हिन्दुस्तानी को हिन्दी भाषी मानने वालों में से हूँ, मैं आपको बता दूं की साहब की nameplate पर Sanjeev Yadav लिखा हुआ थाI अब तो दोष ना दीजिएI

खैर, अक्सर ही मुझे मेरे रंग के कारण विदेशी समझा गया हैI इस भ्रम की संभावना उन जगहों पर बढ़ जाती है जहाँ असली विदेशी भारी मात्रा में रहते हैं, जैसा की इस hostel में थाI मुझे लगा साहब की ग़लती नही है, मुझे विदेशी समझ बैठे हैं, तो ज़ाहिर है अँग्रेज़ी में स्वागत करेंगेI भ्रम दूर करने के लिए मैने बोला, “बढ़िया, आप बताइए?”I जवाब आया, very goodI तभी किसी ने पीछे से आवाज़ लगाई तो यादव जी पलटे और बोले, “अबे आ रहा हूँ ना”I फिर तुरंत मेरी ओर घूमे और अपनी टूटी फूटी अँग्रेज़ी में कहा, “room 1, here your keys”I

Room 1 में अंदर घुसा तो फटाफट नीचे वाला बिस्तर पकड़ा और तशरीफ़ रखीI सामने देखा तो एक महाशय बैठे थेI अब उनकी कोई nameplate तो नही थी पर तजुर्बा कह रहा था की साहब हिन्दी भाषी ही हैंI जैसे ही आँखें मिलीं तो उन्होनें hey hi बोलाI मैंने उनको hey बोला और सामान खोलने लगाI कुछ मिनट बीते और उन्होनें मुझसे पूछा, I am going for lunch. Want to join? Accent सुन कर पक्का हो गया की हिन्दी भाषी ही हैंI मैंने उन्हें  हिन्दी में विनम्रता से मना किया और कहा की dinner साथ करेंगेI तब तक साहब के फोन ने चीत्कार करना शुरू कर दियाI जाते जाते बस “हाँ प्रतीक, बताओ” सुनाई पड़ाI

ऐसी असंख्य घटनाएँ हैं, कुछ तो आपके जीवन में भी घटी होंगीI मानना पड़ेगा, अँग्रेज़ महान थेI ना सिर्फ़ हमारे शरीर को, बल्कि हमारी मानसिकता को भी आधीन बना गयेI हिन्दुस्तान को पाकिस्तान के साथ साथ अँग्रेज़िस्तान में तोड़ गयेI जो अँग्रेज़िस्तान में पलायन कर गये वो हिंदुस्तानियों को तिरस्कार की दृष्टि से देखने लगेI आज परिस्थिति कुछ ऐसी है की हिन्दी में बात करना हमारे देश में क्षीण आर्थिक और शैक्षिक स्तर का द्योतक बन चुका हैI भारत में यदि दो अजनबी मिलते हैं, तो शक्ल-अक्ल तो बाद में देखते हैं, पहले सामने वाला अँग्रेज़ी अच्छी बोलता है की नही इसकी चिंता सबसे अधिक सताती हैI और यदि वो सच में अँग्रेज़ी हमसे बेहतर बोलता है तो हम घबरा जाते हैं और अपने सारे गुणों की बलि दे कर स्वयं को ओछा समझने लग जाते हैंI यदि हमसे कोई अधिक सफल पर बदतर अंग्रेजी बोलने वाला मिलता है तो एक बार को उसकी अंग्रेजी सुन कर चौड़े तो हो ही लेते हैंI Shakespeare के गुणगान गाते हैं, पर वाजपेयी जी के भाषण हमारी समझ से ही परे हैंI Tinder पर हिंदी में विवरण लिखना मतलब match से no match. वाह रे cinema में राष्ट्र गान पर सतर्क होने वाले गौरवान भारतीयI

अब अभी की घटना देखिएI विमान में बैठा हूँ, air hostess ने मुझे sir may I request you to shut your laptop कहा, और बगल वाले भाईसाहब, जिनकी तोंद कमीज़ के नीचे से फूट कर बाहर आ रही है, उन्हें sir please phone बंद कर दीजिए कहाI अरे मेमसाहब, मैं भी तो इस देश का वासी हूँ, मुझसे भी ऐसा अपनापन दिखा लिया होताI साथ ही साथ उस बेचारे को भी शर्मसार ना होना पड़ताI ठीक उसी प्रकार, जब अँग्रेज़िस्तान के वासी restaurant जाते हैं तो वहाँ के हिन्दुस्तानी waiter को सिर्फ़ और सिर्फ़ अँग्रेज़ी में ऑर्डर देते हैं, कि कहीं waiter उन्हें अपनी औकात का ना समझ बैठेI बेचारा waiter भी डर के मारे केवल अँग्रेज़ी में बात करता है, चाहे कितनी टूटी फूटी ही सहीI

स्वाभाविक है की waiter जैसे जो हिन्दुस्तान में छूट जाते हैं वे अँग्रेज़िस्तान जाने की ज़ोर शोर से तैयारी करते हैंI अधर में टँगे रह गये तो क्या हुआ, अँग्रेज़ी के 2-4 वाक्य सीख कर अपने को फन्ने ख़ान तो समझ ही लियाI

मेरा असमंजस सिर्फ़ हिन्दी को ले कर नहीं हैI अँग्रेज़ी ने भारत के कोने-कोने और बच्चे-बच्चे को अपनी गिरफ़्त में ले लिया हैI पर जहाँ बाकी भाषाओं के लिए मेरे पास सहानुभूति है, वहाँ हिन्दी के लिए मेरे पास समानुभूति हैI

हमने अपनी मातृभाषा की मिठास और आत्मीयता का त्याग करके एक विदेशी भाषा को अपना लिया हैI माफ़ करें, अपनाया नहीं है, स्वयं को इसकी गिरफ्त में रखा हुआ है, क्योंकि अपनों से बात करते वक़्त, चाहे वो दोस्तों को गाली देना हो या माँ-बाप को प्यार, हम हिन्दी का ही प्रयोग करते हैंI मैं उन लोगों की बात नहीं कर रहा जो ऐसे मौकों पर भी अँग्रेज़ी में ही बात करते हैं, उनके लिए तो अँग्रेज़ी ही मातृभाषा हैI हिन्दी तो बस वो कलंक है जिसे नौकरों से बात करते वक़्त ज़बान पर लगाना पड़ता हैI मन ही मन, इनमें से कई लोग शायद oh my god, hindi again कह कर कोसते होंगेI कुछ ऐसे भी अवश्य हैं जिनकी अँग्रेज़ी पर ऐसी अटूट पकड़ है की उनके लिए इसी भाषा में अपने विचार व्यक्त करना सबसे सरल हैI पर ऐसे लोग चुनिंदा हैंI बाकी सबके लिए अँग्रेज़ी बोलना सिर्फ़ एक दिखावा है, एक छलावा हैI

ऐसा नहीं है की हिन्दी के हनन के स्वाभाविक कारण नहीं हैंI हैं, बिल्कुल हैंI Labour market में अँग्रेज़ी करीब करीब अनिवार्य है, अपने बहुभाषी देश और दुनिया के कोने कोने में अपनी बात पहुँचाने का अकेला माध्यम अँग्रेज़ी ही है, विज्ञान एक हद के बाद हिन्दी में पढ़ना शायद नामुमकिन है, और हिन्दी साहित्य का तो ना पूछोI पर भाई, माँ बूढ़ी हो जाती है तो उसे वृद्ध आश्रम में डाल देते हैं क्या? फिर किसी ने पूछा माँ कहाँ गयी तो बोल दिया की मर गयी, और जब कभी दिल रोया तो चुपके से जा कर गले लगा लियाI अरे हिन्दी तुम्हारी बूढ़ी माँ हैI इसने तुम्हे ज़िंदगी भर अपने स्नेह और करुणा से सींच कर बड़ा कियाI अब तुम्हे अँग्रेज़ी के रूप में नयी गर्लफ्रेंड मिल गयी तो बूढ़ी माँ का तिरस्कार करोगे? माँ अपनी संतान का गौरव नहीं चाहती, सिर्फ़ उसका प्रेम चाहती हैI दोनों को प्रेम दो, माँ को भी और गर्लफ्रेंड को भीI दोनों का अपना अपना महत्व है, अपना अपना स्थान हैI पर याद रखो माँ का स्थान सबसे बड़ा होता हैI

Review: A Man Called Ove

I just finished reading a fiction novel ‘A Man Called Ove’. The author is a Swede named Frederik Backman. I wrote a review for the book on Goodreads. The same is reproduced below.

Never one to shed a tear, this book left me bawling.

A man called Ove is a journey. It’s a journey that, through outstanding character development and evocative writing that segues between flashbacks and the present time, unveils Ove’s traits - flaws and strengths - one by one. It’s a journey that begins with the reader getting cheap thrills at the expense of an old, anachronistic, unromantic, inflexible curmudgeon, and ends with the reader falling in love with his simplicity, honesty, loyalty, disarming candour, a twisted sense of affection, and most importantly, courage to fight for justice against all odds. Thus, the relationship between the reader and Ove is not one of a whirlwind romance, but that of a carefully crafted, inseparable bond where one comes to, as Ove’s wife Sonja puts it, “love…not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not”.

Not just for Ove’s, the book stands out for its development of each and every character, including that of the cat! It is also a poignant exploration of human relationships – father and son, husband and wife, neighbours, and friends. In each of these relationships, and to a certain extent even in the one with Sonja, he is foremost a dutiful comrade who is always willing to go the extra mile. Whenever he does, which is quite often, he goes into a heartwarming idiosyncratic self-denial about his actions having been motivated by even a hint of love. But indeed, love it is.

While the relationship between Ove and Sonja is a motif of the book, I also loved how things transpired between Ove and the two other important male characters in the book – Ove’s father and his Alzheimer-stricken friend Rune. Ove’s relationships with Sonja and his father complement each other well. If his father is the reason he starts living – “he decided to be as little unlike his father as possible” - Sonja is the reason he continues living - “people said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had”. On the other hand, Ove and Rune reminded me of teammates in a competitive sport who hate each other off the court but once there is a common foe on it, they turn into an unstoppable force. Post retirement, when there is no common enemy to fight, what little remains of the partnership is more bitter than sweet. But there is at least one moment late in their lives when, after a long overdue rendezvous, there is recognition that one was unfulfilled without the other – “And just as Anita turns around to go back into the house, Rune grins again, and lifts his hand in a brief wave. As if right there, just for a second, he knew exactly who he was and what he was doing there.”

There’s a tiny bit of Ove in all of us - in the tasks we undertake, the relationships we value, the things we possess – but alas, it remains just a tiny bit. In Ove, who is perfectly captured in the book as “a man caught in the wrong time”, we see those qualities embodied in flesh and blood, and I say this knowing full well that Ove is a fictional character. Such is the power of this book. Ultimately, the book makes the reader cry, if for nothing else, simply to compensate for Ove, who, despite all the monumental sufferings life throws at him, never does.  Through Ove’s life, the book personifies the age-old wisdom that life is not fair. But in that personification it also leaves us with someone who knows how to not let unfairness be an excuse for remissness.

Avoiding New Year Resolutions, and succumbing to them

“What can’t be measured can’t be improved”, with this dictum in mind I set out, at the very beginning of the year, to maintain an electronic compendium of my daily activities. It wasn’t just another New Year resolution, of course. I have never fallen for that fad, and I never will. Stupid people fall for it, only to break it within the first month. Mine was a conviction, not a resolution. A promise to self, if you will. And if that sounds a lot like a resolution, you’re mistaken. You really are. I didn’t fall for that stupid fad for over 25 years, and I wasn't falling for it now. Unlike everyone else, I was going to keep this promise unbroken for the whole year.

It was a simple task - just an excel sheet to be updated every night with entries for the day’s sleeping and waking times, the sleep duration (difference of the sleeping and waking times), and daily fuck ups and achievements. I named it “Daily Dossier”. Below is a picture of it.

My aim behind keeping Daily Dossier was twofold – one, to monitor average sleeping hours daily; two, to move the entries in the daily fuck-ups column to the daily achievements column asap.

The first aim involved measuring average sleeping hours at night as well as during the afternoon. I am concerned with both of those because I sleep really late at night, and often yawn shamelessly during the afternoon, sometimes at work, with a violent shake of the head and a loud trailing sound from my uncovered mouth accompanying the yawn. When no one’s looking, I lift both my hands up and twist and turn them in more ways than a yogi could. Once my boss walked in on me while I was doing that. By measuring my sleeping hours, I would regulate them till I stop embarrassing myself and everyone else around me.

The second aim is self-explanatory. Like everyone else does, I procrastinate too. With the new regimen, I would keep track of my procrastinations and nip them in the bud. The point was to keep recording fuck-ups till they turned into achievements. This measure-to-improve thing was perfect. Woohoo!

So it began, on the very first day of 2017. I duly updated the sheet at the night of January 1, and felt ecstatic about my conscientiousness. I was keeping my promise. I wasn’t like them.

Then I forgot to update it the next two nights. But hey, I was genuinely busy. More importantly, I had not shared the excel sheet online to update it from anywhere. On the night of January 4, I made entries for the previous two nights from memory, and shared the sheet online. All set. No mishaps now.

A strange thing happened while I was making entries on the night of January 5. The fuck-ups column had just one entry till then, for January 2, and it was yet to be moved to the achievements column. So, I removed it. Yup, the right thing to do would have been to bring it to the achievements column, but I didn’t do that. Instead, I just made it disappear. But, it wasn’t the wrong thing to do either. One, it made my New Year look and feel better - no fuck-ups, only achievements. Two, it was a tiny fuck-up anyway. Correcting it wouldn’t have changed my life. Having said that, I was cautious of what I’d done, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again. As penance, I did make an entry in the fuck-ups column for something that happened on January 5, and resolved to shift it to the achievements column the very next day. So now there were two things to be wary of – missing making entries even a single night; messing with the fuck-ups column. 

The next time I was reminded of Daily Dossier was on January 10. It was impossible to make entries for 4 days from memory alone, so for the sleep duration, the average function in excel helped. How off the mark could it be, I thought to myself. I remembered there were 2 hours I’d spent in bed on the afternoon of January 8, but that was just a tiny lapse that didn’t need recording, so I skipped it. I also fleetingly thought that maybe I should enter all those days of missing making entries in the fuck-ups column, but then I didn’t. It wasn’t a fuck-up, just a slip-up. Moreover, I wasn’t going to repeat it. As for the fuck-up on January 5, I hadn’t yet remedied it, but I didn’t make any more entries for it after that date.

I am writing this post now because, through some divine intervention, Daily Dossier popped up on my screen today. The last entry is from January 10. My first thought was – Oh Shit, I must do something! But then it was just a lot of lulz-ing and rofl-ing. 

So yeah, this whole thing was actually just a stupid New Year resolution and went the way almost all such resolutions do. Damn, seems like I am indeed like them. Or maybe I am worse - what can be measured can be improved, but hey, why bother improving when it can simply be un-measured.

One Who is Sad in Imagination is Truly Happy

Last night was a good night. Last night there was the comfort of old faces, the aphorisms born out of weed, and the quips born out of alcohol. Last night there was recounting of tales – lived and imagined, shared and unshared, melancholic and merry. Last night I coined the title of this piece, and uncovered the great wisdom in it.

I suppose I speak on behalf of billions of others when I say that a greater part of life is spent on imagination. I can say with even greater confidence that imagination is always, and I mean always, of a rosy future. There is power, success, money, and happiness. No one imagines a sad future. Rosy imagination is a manifestation of life force - a consequence of Maya. One can also term it evolution. Unless one craves a better future, one will simply not be fit enough to survive.

It was while dawdling through this discussion that my former flatmate and I broached the topic of what it takes to be truly happy. There’s way too much commentary on this topic, most of it in the form of self-help books which now spawn an obnoxious industry. But there’s a reason why the happiness industry exists – people really want to know how to be truly happy, and the answer is hard to come by.

The sober me, if asked to hazard a guess at who is truly happy, would probably say one who achieves what he wants. In other words, bridging the gap between imagination and reality is the only way to achieving happiness. Bingo! This would seem acceptable to a sober mind. But thanks, weed, for illuminating what lies beyond human intellect in its sober form.

Nearly all humans have a tendency to bridge the gap between imagination and reality, or gain happiness, by dragging the latter as close to the former as possible. Again, that’s Maya controlling us. But we know by experience that that gap is never bridged. No one is truly happy. That’s just how Maya operates. On the other hand, what if someone took the reverse approach? What if, instead of trying to elevate one’s reality, one was capable of debasing imagination to the level of current reality? That just seems bizarre, doesn’t it? After all, it’s the very antithesis of evolution. It’s the conquest of Maya.

In an online course on Buddhism, I learnt that meditation was often defined as a “rebellion against evolution”.  And it was in a perennially meditative state that one found bliss, or true happiness. Meditation is nothing but waging a war against the senses – which are nothing but agents of Maya – to keep them under control, to not allow them to constantly egg one on to greener pastures. Anything that’s so greatly rewarding can’t come easy, and no wonder deep meditation seems impossible to achieve. Elevating reality to match imagination is hard enough, but the true reward lies in the reverse, much harder approach. To keep one's imagination only as good as the reality seems impossible. That’s what the title captures.

Note that this is just another way of looking at the age-old wisdom ‘be content with what you have.’ Often, it’s derided it as a consolation for the losers, by the losers. It’s not. It goes much deeper than that.

I have never really meditated or experienced what it feels like. Last night I got a conceptual whiff of what it is designed to achieve. Last night was a good night.

The two pictures below should help capture the gist of the discussion.

Worldly route to Bliss

Meditative route to Bliss

The only creepy bit was that Google knew, by the kind of videos being played, what we were up to.