To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Thursday, April 25, 2019
 

Chanced upon these rather sweet lyrics of a Spanish song…
 
Come, speak, tell me
everything that is happening to you now,
because when your soul is alone, it cries
You must let it all out, just like the spring
no one wants something to die within
Speaking face to face
Let out what you can
so that new things can be born within you
 
~ Mercedes Sosa (Soy pan, soy paz, soy mas)

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 1:27 am 0 comments
Sunday, April 21, 2019
 

If I were to close my eyes and think back to the best times of my life, the one memory that always forms a part of this patchwork flashback is of summer vacations in Mangalore. And this memory revolves around an ancestral house in Ambalapady where my grandmother used to live... and where I was treated as the fondest grand-daughter of the family.
The days used to have a warm texture around them and I would wind myself around the routines of older people… I enjoyed being with grown-ups when I was little for some reason…not so much being around younger kids or kids my age. I loved listening to their stories…sitting like a happy dog beneath my aunts’ feet or on their laps. Sometimes I would beg them to let me try their activities like cutting vegetables or rolling the grindstone or scraping the coconut leaves for making broom sticks or going to the shops to get small groceries… my grandmother used to say that when I grew older she would ask me to do these things and let’s see how eager I would be then… I looked forward to as well as dreaded the rains because they would occur almost toward the end of the vacation in June… though I didn’t like to keep count of the days, I knew that rains meant that I was going to leave soon… I enjoyed sitting in the courtyard watching the droplets plop on the cemented yard… or running in the backgarden collecting mangoes in a large tub…. In the afternoons, I rarely slept like all the older people… I would quietly slip into the bedrooms and try on my aunts’ clothes or makeup or rummage through old stuff in cupboards and storerooms… I would find all sorts of things that piqued my interest…it was almost like a treasure hunt for me… I would bring back a few gems with me to Mumbai… other times I would use this opportunity to hunt for jaggery or nuts or anything else I could chance upon… the ice-cream man would make his appearance around this time for some unknown reason… so one had to actually wake a sleeping mom or aunt for some coins… but this was the best time to have something cool… the sun being scorching hot at this time of the day… there were no ACs in Mangalore then… but I don’t remember it being unbearable… the electricity was also extremely moody… here now, gone now… people would break into a sweat and wake up to notice that the fan had gone quiet… the quiet after the whirring sound of the fan itself would be enough to wake one up if not the unrelenting heat at the height of summer…
My grandmother would be up 3.30 pm sharp like an alarm had gone off… and her first task would be to milk the cow… I would run behind her to the shed to watch her… the shed was at the back of the house… leading to the large backgarden… where there were two wells… a cemented area to wash vessels… lots of mango trees, jackfruit trees, banana trees, breadfruit trees, lemon trees, and others I don’t know the name of… this backgarden looked on either side to neighbours’ backgardens divided by a short wall that ran throughout… you could chat with neighbours across the wall…
Everyone would lazily climb out of bed once they knew grandmother was up… one of my aunt’s would start making coffee (we had tea in the morning and coffee in the evening)… there was something special about coffee made with fresh milk… I can’t put my finger on it… but then there was something very special about everything that my grandmother made and that was made in that home… I almost remember the taste … no one can make anything quite the same… my mom probably comes closest to it… most of the ingredients would be grown at home… like the simple dish made with ripe mangoes… all that went into it was mustard seeds, curry leaves, coconut oil, coconut, chillies… but it tasted like heaven… with brown boiled rice… after coffee, grandmother and aunts would pull water from the well in what we call a ‘kollso’ … an aluminium vessel narrow at top where it was tied up with a rope and wide at the bottom like one half of an hourglass… I would try my hand at this too and perching the vessel at my side I would walk with them to pour the water around the trees… all the while some talk or gossip would be going on… and then we would all come back to sit in the front yard …watching the gathering dusk, the passers-by, the buses, the fisher-folk… feeling a contentment that was sublime for want of another word…
There was a tradition of saying prayers before dinner… everyone would join in the prayers… dinner was by 9 or 9.30 at the most… they would discuss what to have for breakfast the next day while preparing for bed… I used to chip in with options and they would take my ideas seriously of course…gossip would continue till it seemed like everyone had nodded off… I would call out to them just to check if someone was game to chat with me because then as now I was a late sleeper…I couldn’t wait for it to be morning again… to enjoy the pleasant routines again… to be enveloped in the lovely simplicity of those times again… I would give anything…
When I was a little older, maybe 14 or 15… and my grandmother had passed away and the house locked up (my aunts were all married and uncles lived in their own homes)… I told myself that one day I would buy and own the house… I think about that resolution now with the wisdom of years and I realise how foolish it was….that somehow I thought I would be able to relive those memories if I had the house… I attached the memories to the house… to something tangible… all these years so many things have changed that not only is the house a poor shadow almost unrecognisable from what it was… nothing about even the town remains the same… modernity has wormed its way there as much as everywhere else… but even if that hadn’t been the case… I realise now that I actually already own the house… I own what was most precious about that house to me in my heart and in my soul… it has made me who I am… I carry the house with me… it could never be taken away from me even if the house is torn down… it would only go down when I am gone…
The Notre Dame fire made me feel quite emotional…. I have never been there but just the idea of what it stood for and what was destroyed made me feel sad… people ask why there was so much outcry for a building, why the outpouring of grief or generosity… but it seems to me that it wasn’t ‘just’ a building… like my ancestral house wasn’t just a house for me…it stood for a part of me that I cherished… I feel that the spaces of our making sometimes make us… and there is something honourable in remaking them… if only to be held as symbols of what we are made through them… for the generations after us…
Happy Easter!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:12 pm 4 comments
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
 
Our choices are our destiny

Have you heard the story of the drowning man and God? Here is the gist: A man caught up in a terrible storm climbs to the rooftop of his house. He fervently prays to God to save him. A rowboat comes along and asks the man to hop on. The man responds saying that he won’t because he is expecting God to save him. He keeps praying. A motorboat passes his way and offers to help him. Again the same response that God will help him. After some more time has passed, a helicopter hovers over his head and motions to him frantically. Our man again responds that he’d rather wait for God to take him to safety. The storm builds up at this point and the man drowns. On reaching heaven he asks God why he did not save him in spite of his faith. God tells him that he tried to save him thrice—he sent two boats and a helicopter!

Now, this story, simple as it sounds seems pretty profound to me. It calls into question the idea of destiny (if we think of God’s plan as destiny) and whether that destiny fulfils itself no matter what we do or whether we are supposed to meet it halfway. I think which side of the fence one is on makes a significant difference to how one lives one’s life. The former idea would mean that no matter what one does, one will be led to one’s destiny. Even if you don’t do anything, things will come to you if they are meant to. The latter idea makes one feel responsible for steering one’s life towards what it is destined for…you know that there is something that is meant for you, but you will have to work your way towards it or make the right decisions that take you there. You feel the weight of the responsibility and you have to do the work…in a sense destiny appears to be a reward for your determination and perseverance in search of it. It is not that there is no destiny in this scheme of things but you need to be able to create an opportunity for it to do its bit or be attuned to the various ways in which opportunities might present themselves.

The thing is that in real life all this is a lot more complicated than it seems. Unlike the man in the story, we do not have straightforward goals like being saved in a storm (sometimes we don’t even know what our goals are) and we do not usually have straightforward paths presented to us like the three people who came along to rescue the man (there are innumerable paths). And when you add not having clear goals or not being able to prioritise goals to not having clear cut paths before us, life can seem like a chaotic maze of decisions and responsibilities where the option of simply letting things happen as they will seems like an easier if not a less stressful option. At the most destiny meets us along the way, and at the worst it doesn’t and we console ourselves with the heartening notion that if it is to be, it will be—there’s nothing we can do. There is a beautiful song in Hindi which captures this sentiment, “Waqt se pehle, kismat se jyaada… Kisiko milahai, na kisi ko milega” (Before one’s time, more than destiny…no one has ever received, no one ever will).

Clearly, if nothing is gained by striving, and if one will surely get only what is destined for one, why strive at all? Why not live contentedly or grudgingly as the case may be with whatever one has or whatever one is? Why desire for more, why make goals, why be ambitious, why formulate projects, why work hard at them…? You see where this line of thinking can lead? To me it seems to lead in the opposite direction of destiny… which is mediocrity.

In my view, only those who have the courage to find their destiny…or work through the maze of goals and choices and obstacles and disappointments…ultimately meet it. Destiny might be waiting for everyone… but it fulfils its promise only for those who are tuned into or create opportunities for it to manifest and those who work hard to make best use of those opportunities when they do manifest. Even if destiny doesn’t fulfil itself in the end (as it would be naïve to think that every honest effort will meet with success), this attitude itself I would argue makes a life worth living… because it is lived on its own terms …consciously and responsibly. As they say, if we can’t win, we must at least die fighting. Therein lies our reward, even if a cruel one.




posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:29 pm 2 comments
Saturday, April 13, 2019
 
I was interacting with this girl since a few months in a professional context. Her name struck me as being European though her accent was quite distinctly American. I was curious to know more about how she acquired this accent but it might have seemed too forward of me to enquire in the presence of other people so I simply assumed she may have been brought up in the US or something like that. Her views also struck me as in some way American (or my impression of American) as was her overall demeanour which was confident and non-self-conscious. 

A few days ago we happened to be the only people in the room and I finally asked her if she was American. She laughed and said that she was from Hungary but she got that a lot. I asked her how she might have developed this accent… if she watched a lot of American TV shows or movies (I had found during my trip to Iceland that people there spoke in an American accent because of their high exposure to American media). She said that she rarely watched American shows; in fact, she watched more British stuff…only some American news on YouTube perhaps. She said that she found it quite curious herself that people thought she had an American accent and some even guessed it to be an Australian accent.

After this exchange, I couldn’t help asking myself if all along my perception of her accent had created some unconscious bias towards the content of her speech too. Which also made me wonder if five years ago, say before Trump, the American accent would have had a different kind of impact on me? I remember reading somewhere that Americans tend to automatically assume anything said in a British accent to be more cerebral or intelligent… which probably also shows that we tend to attach some sort of cultural value to an accent? And this cultural evaluation also keeps shifting perhaps in light of major media events such as in the case of the US?
All this led me to wonder, how do people in a global environment perceive the content of what I say by how I say it, that is, my Indian accent? My Indian accent is not at all pronounced (even if I say so myself! :)) but it is distinctly Indian for all that. So what effect does my Indian accent have on the way my message is received? It seems to me that it would be overly simplistic to say that people don’t go beyond the accent at all but I am of the view that it does play a role. If the message is considered as good as the cultural accent in which it is uttered, then for some it means less work because anything that is said would at least have a basic credibility, and for some it means a lot more work because they have to establish credibility of the message in a voice that is not perceived as credible in its own right.
 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 2:23 am 2 comments
Wednesday, April 03, 2019
 

I was on the verge of stepping on a zebra crossing today to get to the other side of the road when I noticed a car taking a fast turn in my direction. This shouldn’t have mattered to me because the car is supposed to stop anyway but I have noticed that I generally tend to freeze and wait for the car to pass. The car usually notices me hovering uncertainly at the edge of the road and stops so that I may go ahead and use the crossing. Once the car has stopped I confidently cross the road. This doesn’t happen always but typically when a car seems to be speeding in my direction or if it takes that direction suddenly. Today, I couldn’t help but wonder why I tend to have this reflex (and maybe other Indians as well?).
It is a commonly understood fact that we are all a product of our respective environments but we never really realise how deeply this environment is ingrained in us, so much so, that even when we have left the environment, it doesn’t leave us. It is embodied in us so to speak. In certain situations we ‘act without thinking’ and this acting seems to be incongruent with our current environment because it is a mode of acting natural to a different environment where it was learnt as a matter of course.
To put it in practical terms, in Mumbai (as I have said before, when I say India, I mean Mumbai where I grew up) the road, traffic and safety situation is horrendous to say the least; only someone who has actually lived in the busiest parts of Mumbai can relate to what I mean perhaps. Crossing the road is an art as well as science: requires careful single-minded attention to both sides of the road, expert judgement in deciding the perfect moment to make a splash across the road, years of practice in manoeuvring around sundry vehicles that may be dashing along while you make a splash, and a lot of good faith in the one above (might explain why people in India are generally believers ;)). There is no concept of a ‘zebra crossing’, a word which first we encounter in children’s books, and which is as far removed from reality as fairies.
It is not surprising if after years and years of almost perfecting the art of ‘crossing the road’ and it becoming almost second nature, your feet seem to stop in their tracks whenever you’re in a situation that broadly invokes the same context (even if it is a different environment or country altogether). The old reflexes jump in automatically and your body seems to act almost without volition. Consciously you do know that this vehicle will stop and won’t ram into you if you’re on the zebra crossing as it could back home but it’s as if your body has a mind of its own, if you know what I mean; it takes time to grow out of its habitual way of responding to the same situation (one can see how this makes sense as a survival mechanism). A lifetime of learned moves cannot be unlearnt in a year or two or maybe even more.
The French sociologist Bourdieu whom I have been reading in the past two years in relation to my research and because of whom I have started thinking deeply about how culture shapes our thinking in conscious and unconscious ways, puts it very interestingly, “arms and legs are full of numb imperatives”. Indeed!
 

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:29 pm 2 comments
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