Yesterday a man named Sachin Tendulkar (an Indian cricketer) created history by becoming the only individual to have scored a hundred scores of a hundred or more in international cricket. For those on whom the magnitude of this achievement is loss, let me just say that I don't see this record being broken in my life-time or the next.
The occasion was met by a barrage of coverage on news media websites, congratulatory tweets, facebook status updates and a general sense of overwhelming euphoria.
Many of the facebook updates I saw told a story of how the the updater has waited with bated breath for over a year for the record, how it has given him genuine happiness, how his belief than Sachin is 'God' is now stronger than ever and even how watching Sachin bat on the cricket field helps him overcome a hard day at work.
Pure selfless happiness, anyone?
It's great to see that truly genuine and pure happiness still exists in perhaps the most material age the world has seen. It's a travesty that the locus of this happiness, like many other emotions that define us as humans, is miles outside our inner selves.
Social media has created a very flat parallel world structure where every spontaneous emotion that we experience and share in the digital world is laid out for potentially everyone else to see. A brief survey of these emotions tells a story of how disconnected with ourselves we have become as a individuals.
Humans are a passionate race. Some of us are overtly passionate, others passively. But no one is without passion. A sweeping glance at the peoples' lives as laid out for all to see by the powerful social media juggernaut shows how misplaced and misdirected our passions have become. One is very likely to find exclamations of happiness and joy like "woohoo!" , "yay!", "booya!" and "overjoyed!" in response to sporting events and records like the one mentioned above, the release of an eagerly awaited piece of technology or even perhaps the announcement of the latest version of a PC game. The opposite end of a spectrum is almost a mirror reflection. Exclamations of lament, anger, sadness and disappointment will very likely be posted in response to events like the defeat of ones favourite sportsperson/team, a piece of technology one owns not getting any future updates, a PC game being discontinued by the studio or even the cancellation of a revered sitcom.
Happiness. Joy. Lament. Anger. Disappointment. Sadness. Emotions that form the locus of human existence invested on objects, things and events that are fleeting by their vary nature. Houston, we have a problem!
A cause-effect analysis throws up many possible explanations for this trend. Like negligent advertising, misplaced patriotism, an increasing material view of one's success, decrease in ones level of social skills, ever-reducing opportunities to pursue ones aspirations to name a few. This however is in itself a deep topic that demands a collective introspection followed by a sincere attempt at individual and collective change.
Human nature however is quite perverse in its own way and any effort at identifying and remedying the causes for our increasing distant locus of existence will invariably take a tangential turn for the worse, possibly branding one asking these difficult questions unpatriotic, a heretic or maybe even plain loony.
A more practical path to tread would be to in a sense 'manufacture' your own motivations in life. A motivation that arouses your individual happiness, joy, lament, anger, disappointment and sadness more deeply than anything else ever can. More often that not, you will realize that such a motivation lies much closer to your self than a sports event a hundred miles away or a PC expo in another continent.
So the next time you see someones facebook status read "booya!" on a non newsworthy day, stop wondering. Perhaps he has found his very own locus of existence. It's about time you do too.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Salsa Flavoured Death
A couple of days ago I walked into the kitchen to carry out my daily midnight-snacking ritual. This time it was a couple of dorito chips that I hungrily munched on to satisfy my eccentric and clockwork-like punctual hunger pang. Now I've always held that fast food giants use some form of addictive chemicals to get us hooked on to their food. It was perhaps a said additive or my own gluttony, but I almost swallowed a whole chip and for a split second choked on it so hard I thought my throat would explode.
Note to reader - Read my lips: I am not dead!
If I were I wouldn't be writing this post! Although I think with Steve Jobs on the other side, Moses will soon have an upgraded tablet and ghosts their very own range of Macs, blogging platforms, broadband options and cloud services to choose from. And with no competition around, Stevie J will probably be as loved up there as he was down here. Ahem.
Now after a near death experience a normal person might have a life altering epiphany, would perhaps have his life flash before his eyes, might want to make a final phone call to a loved one or perhaps want to shred the latest draft of his will in which he left everything to his dog coz his family pissed him off (Woof Woof!). But we're talking normal here. So that's obviously not what happened to me.
Note to reader - Steve Jobs life probably didn't flash before his eyes. He hated flash.
As I recovered from a salsa flavoured almost death neither did I have an epiphany nor any of other stuff I just mentioned above. I coughed out the guilty piece of chip that almost took my life, looked intently at it for a second, decided the flavour was too precious to waste, put it back in my mouth and instinctively walked up to my laptop to update my near death experience as my facebook status while munching on it.
Yes. Update-my-facebook-status.
Now there're one of two paths that I can take from this point on in this post. I can write about how social media and an increasingly 'connected' world has ironically led to a breakdown of meaningful communication and is breeding a society bereft of real social skills. But I'm not going to do that. I'd rather not dwell on the inevitability of the undesired consequences of our short-sighted creations.
On the contrary, let's talk about first instincts. What would your first instinct be if you had a near death experience, if at all?
Disclaimer -
If you expect this post to carry you through an inner journey of self-realization ultimately ending to a discovery of great and absolute truth, forget about it. Not gonna happen. Not because I'm incapable of such journeys but because absolute truths no longer exist. What we're sold as absolute truths in this world are a bunch of lies wrapped over with our own fears, insecurities and prejudices that we're bound to perceive as truths simply because we that's the way we want to perceive them. The mere idea of challenging our perceptions stirs up an almost mortal fear in us. We have a natural aversion to questioning the ideas and beliefs that we have grown up accepting as true. And we'd do anything to keep it that way. Anything. It's a dangerous precedent and one that needs to be reversed yesterday! If ever the world needed a reboot button, it's now. But if it did exist, I'm sure attempts to conceal/destroy it would not only be made, but be very successful.
Note to reader - Now that I've suckered you into thinking about life altering stuff and possibly pushed you into a journey looking for reboot buttons in all odd places, I'm gonna get on with what I intended to write about in the first place.
First instincts.
With the advent of social media our first instinct these days very often is to write about our experiences as our facebook status update, check-in our travels on four square, tweet our latest political stance on twitter, to name a few.
Ever thought what someone's first instinct would have been in say the middle ages? Or during the cold war?
Disclaimer 2 - This time I'm serious. Don't expect life-altering earth-shattering stuff from now on. I'm done suckering you!
Let's roll!
Circa 320 BC -
The actors -
-Emperor Chandragupta Maurya (Maurya dynasty, India)
-His teacher 'Chanakya' - A complete BadAss. Perhaps the most awesome political strategist ever. Think George W Bush; Chanakya was everything Bush is not, a million times over.
If Chandragupta Maurya choked on a Dorito, Chanakya would probably have added Doritos to the arsenal of all designated female assassins. (I told you he was a BadAss! A pioneer of using females as political spies / assassins in India). That would've probably made all forms of chips a taboo food in India, but we still wouldn't be a fit nation. We love eating crap, and would probably find something much worse to munch on!
Note to Reader - Of course one can argue that doritos wouldn't have existed in 320 BC. To that I'd say - Boooo! Where's you're sense of creative freedom player?!
Circa 1575 -
The Actors -
- Emperor Akbar (Mughal Dynasty, India)
- His Grand Vizier 'Birbal' - Really Smart. Like Albert Einstein plus Sigmund Freud minus Albert's crazy hairdo minus Sigmund's crazy mojo
If Akbar choked on a Dorito, Birbal would probably have turned the incident to a source for some wise pearl of wisdom for which he would have been rewarded with land equivalent to what is now New Delhi. Hundreds of years later, it would have totally ruined all my Dorito eating experiences. Turning then from excessively salty and flavourful gastronomical death morsels into soul searching morsels of divine contemplation. Tragic, just tragic.
Note to reader - "Wise pearl of wisdom" is just bad English, ain't it!
Circa 1800 - Napolean Bonaparte chokes on a Dorito.
The sun-uv-a-gun would have died on the spot! His tiny frame wouldn't have had the energy to cough it out!
Circa 1935 - Mahatma Gandhi Chokes on a Dorito.
Wait, he fasted half the time he was alive. The odds of him choking on a Dorito are just too minuscule to consider.
Circa 2000 - Bill Clinton chokes on a Dorito.
- A couple of years after the incident he would hold a press conference completely unrelated to the choking and declare - "I did not have sexual relations with Dorito".
-Hillary would then hand him a note asking- 'You laid our puerto rican maid?'
I could go on and on, but I'm just sleepy and have to wake up early for class tomorrow. To sum it all up, I'm just glad that I live in an age where choking on a chip will seldom have implications beyond my passing to the other side!
Note to reader - Read my lips: I am not dead!
If I were I wouldn't be writing this post! Although I think with Steve Jobs on the other side, Moses will soon have an upgraded tablet and ghosts their very own range of Macs, blogging platforms, broadband options and cloud services to choose from. And with no competition around, Stevie J will probably be as loved up there as he was down here. Ahem.
Now after a near death experience a normal person might have a life altering epiphany, would perhaps have his life flash before his eyes, might want to make a final phone call to a loved one or perhaps want to shred the latest draft of his will in which he left everything to his dog coz his family pissed him off (Woof Woof!). But we're talking normal here. So that's obviously not what happened to me.
Note to reader - Steve Jobs life probably didn't flash before his eyes. He hated flash.
As I recovered from a salsa flavoured almost death neither did I have an epiphany nor any of other stuff I just mentioned above. I coughed out the guilty piece of chip that almost took my life, looked intently at it for a second, decided the flavour was too precious to waste, put it back in my mouth and instinctively walked up to my laptop to update my near death experience as my facebook status while munching on it.
Yes. Update-my-facebook-status.
Now there're one of two paths that I can take from this point on in this post. I can write about how social media and an increasingly 'connected' world has ironically led to a breakdown of meaningful communication and is breeding a society bereft of real social skills. But I'm not going to do that. I'd rather not dwell on the inevitability of the undesired consequences of our short-sighted creations.
On the contrary, let's talk about first instincts. What would your first instinct be if you had a near death experience, if at all?
Disclaimer -
If you expect this post to carry you through an inner journey of self-realization ultimately ending to a discovery of great and absolute truth, forget about it. Not gonna happen. Not because I'm incapable of such journeys but because absolute truths no longer exist. What we're sold as absolute truths in this world are a bunch of lies wrapped over with our own fears, insecurities and prejudices that we're bound to perceive as truths simply because we that's the way we want to perceive them. The mere idea of challenging our perceptions stirs up an almost mortal fear in us. We have a natural aversion to questioning the ideas and beliefs that we have grown up accepting as true. And we'd do anything to keep it that way. Anything. It's a dangerous precedent and one that needs to be reversed yesterday! If ever the world needed a reboot button, it's now. But if it did exist, I'm sure attempts to conceal/destroy it would not only be made, but be very successful.
Note to reader - Now that I've suckered you into thinking about life altering stuff and possibly pushed you into a journey looking for reboot buttons in all odd places, I'm gonna get on with what I intended to write about in the first place.
First instincts.
With the advent of social media our first instinct these days very often is to write about our experiences as our facebook status update, check-in our travels on four square, tweet our latest political stance on twitter, to name a few.
Ever thought what someone's first instinct would have been in say the middle ages? Or during the cold war?
Disclaimer 2 - This time I'm serious. Don't expect life-altering earth-shattering stuff from now on. I'm done suckering you!
Let's roll!
Circa 320 BC -
The actors -
-Emperor Chandragupta Maurya (Maurya dynasty, India)
-His teacher 'Chanakya' - A complete BadAss. Perhaps the most awesome political strategist ever. Think George W Bush; Chanakya was everything Bush is not, a million times over.
If Chandragupta Maurya choked on a Dorito, Chanakya would probably have added Doritos to the arsenal of all designated female assassins. (I told you he was a BadAss! A pioneer of using females as political spies / assassins in India). That would've probably made all forms of chips a taboo food in India, but we still wouldn't be a fit nation. We love eating crap, and would probably find something much worse to munch on!
Note to Reader - Of course one can argue that doritos wouldn't have existed in 320 BC. To that I'd say - Boooo! Where's you're sense of creative freedom player?!
Circa 1575 -
The Actors -
- Emperor Akbar (Mughal Dynasty, India)
- His Grand Vizier 'Birbal' - Really Smart. Like Albert Einstein plus Sigmund Freud minus Albert's crazy hairdo minus Sigmund's crazy mojo
If Akbar choked on a Dorito, Birbal would probably have turned the incident to a source for some wise pearl of wisdom for which he would have been rewarded with land equivalent to what is now New Delhi. Hundreds of years later, it would have totally ruined all my Dorito eating experiences. Turning then from excessively salty and flavourful gastronomical death morsels into soul searching morsels of divine contemplation. Tragic, just tragic.
Note to reader - "Wise pearl of wisdom" is just bad English, ain't it!
Circa 1800 - Napolean Bonaparte chokes on a Dorito.
The sun-uv-a-gun would have died on the spot! His tiny frame wouldn't have had the energy to cough it out!
Circa 1935 - Mahatma Gandhi Chokes on a Dorito.
Wait, he fasted half the time he was alive. The odds of him choking on a Dorito are just too minuscule to consider.
Circa 2000 - Bill Clinton chokes on a Dorito.
- A couple of years after the incident he would hold a press conference completely unrelated to the choking and declare - "I did not have sexual relations with Dorito".
-Hillary would then hand him a note asking- 'You laid our puerto rican maid?'
I could go on and on, but I'm just sleepy and have to wake up early for class tomorrow. To sum it all up, I'm just glad that I live in an age where choking on a chip will seldom have implications beyond my passing to the other side!
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