As I go about building up this post I want to state at the outset that the purpose of the past five blogs is to strongly suggest the possible existence of the Divine and Intelligence behind many phenomena that scientists are wont to dismiss as happening without purpose. This world view has arisen largely out of the tremendous advancements in biology, geology, physics, and other sciences. We should also not ignore as contributory factors various tragedies of the 20th Century and the immense sufferings that humans underwent throughout the world in the form of wars and internecine strifes. The scale of human suffering seemed incompatible with the existence of the Divine, since He was supposed to infuse meaning into human lifes, whereas Man seemed to have lost all understanding and all meaning of his existence.
At a personal level I felt, however erroneous it now seems, that I was singled out for a great deal of suffering. I now see that I was, to put it mildly, rather too sensitive and to put it in plain terms, I was a rather spoilt child who could not reconcile why there had to be pain. There were many ways in which I was quite comfortable, but my mind always seemed to fixate on the pain. To briefly expand on these matters, it had turned out that due to some financial constraints I was made to jump classes from upper kindergarten to the fifth standard without having been given adequate preparatory coaching before admission to the higher class. My class teacher of the fifth standard had been particularly uncharitable and would mock at me calling me 'small baby' (which no child would like to hear among his peers) and other taunting nicknames. The foundation of my education having been destroyed, I found it extremely difficult to cope with studies and was in constant dread of being thrashed at home and at school. My family being, what is called in India, a joint family, I found things not too satisfactory at home also. While my cousins were all being showered with praises for excelling academically I was considered a sort of unworthy outlier in a statistical population of gifted children.
But then there were many good times too. However contradictory it seemed - that we had financial problems - yet we lived in a spacious bungalow with a large garden (it is rather difficult to explain this matter and needs a lot of elaboration that seems unnecessary). Amongst all my friends I was the only one who had a complete set of cricket equipment, and as boys the whole neighbourhood used to play in our garden. It is even true that as a child of four to seven years I had more toys than my peers. It is also true that I was the only kid among all my peers who would be taken out to fairly good restaurants once in two or three months and treated to the dishes of my choice which I now fondly recollect - Cold chocolate milk shake and assorted cakes and patties. Yet as a child I could not see these happy occasions as of definitive importance and would only obssess on the pain that I had to face. In my defence I clarify that entire weeks would be spent suffering at school and the treats would come only on some rare sundays but then, my friends didn't even have those!
I grew up quite disenchanted with my circumstances and when the opportunity afforded me to get acquainted with literature and smatterings of philosophical works, my mind immediately embraced those works that denied the existence of God. Given to self-pity, I even imagined that my life was as hopeless and meaningless as those of Kafka's heroes. I grew quite cynical and self-centred obsessively pondering on my problems and growing more and more bitter. Matters came to a head when I was ditched by my girlfriend (1983) and there was a complete nervous breakdown associated with thought disorders, psychosis, depression and anxiety.
{Question - which is a preferable expression above and why? - 1. "I was ditched by my girlfriend" 2. "My girlfriend ditched me" (and I'm not talking about active or passive voice, but rather the approach to life) } (Don't say both are preferable to "My girlfriend married me!" or rather "I married my girlfriend")
Despite all my friends' and well-wishers' exhortations I just could not get to react positively to the events of my life. I had got into the mould of seeing only the dark aspects of life and had lost all hopes of a happy future ahead of me.
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