We Are Not Interested !

When we were much younger there were quite a few evenings when we used to assemble in a friend's house to play card games - mainly rummy. The stakes were not too high but everyone wanted to end up winning some. It used to happen quite often that one of the players would have chosen a gambit that would have only an outside chance of succeeding but, as luck would have it, it would work and he would end up winning the round. The winner would be quite pleased with himself and would set about describing to others in eloquent detail the precise moves he had made and the clever strategy he had adopted to see that he would win. It would all be due to his 'skill' and never due to his luck. All of us would be guilty of this weakness at least once as the game proceeded to the late hours of the night.

So it happened one day that as we were playing a guy by name Satyanarayan won. Then he started elaborating to others how he ensured victory:

"You know when Mathew dropped a nine of spades, even though I did not have any connected cards I picked that up because I knew that he would in the next round imagine that..."

Another guy named Nair intervened curtly,  "We are not interested !  Not only do we have to shell out the money... we also have to listen to the History !!"

We all found it amusing. But then after a round or two another guy won and began "I wouldn't have won if I.." and all of us in unison intoned "We are not interested!!!"  The poor guy laughed sheepishly.

Actually, all of are seeking validation in life. As Jaggi Vasudev has said all of want to touch other's lives and would love to get a response that we indeed have touched them. But each of them is busy seeking validation for touching others' lives that it turns out that no one really cares.

Just yesterday I read in the newspapers that a new disorder that can broadly be described as 'Social Networking Disorder' seems to be spreading. People are posting what they find exciting an interesting on social networking sites and expect their contacts to 'Like' their posts, and when these do not come in, they get anxious and depressed.

I should know! I've been writing so many things and posting in my blog hoping to get 'validation' and a proof that I am indeed touching people's lives, but there's scarcely any response. There are hardly a few people who have commented on my posts and posted them. Over a period of time I have lapsed into asking brazenly and loudly and in their face, to read my blog and to give their opinion. But it never comes. As the eagerness for validation increased I even posted in Facebook an interesting short film on validation called 'Validation' and it turned out that there was no response to that either.

So it is increasingly true of these social networking sites that people are desperately seeking validation and everyone is responding "We are not interested !"

      xxx

On appreciation

It has been my experience over many years, in fact ever since my early childhood, that praise and appreciation rarely comes to me. I was getting it to a fairly large extent in my very early childhood as a somewhat popular kid in kindergarten mainly because of my sister who was seven years older than me and consequently in a much higher class. She used to present me to her friends and teachers as she had helped me learn a few Rock n Roll songs of the 1950s.  But when I was made to change schools and jump classes to fifth grade, all praise and appreciation suddenly came to a dead halt. I've  been looking for praise ever since and it seems to be quite evasive.

This brings me to examine my own tendency to really appreciate others. I sometimes become aware that I seem to lack the ability to realize the full value of the favors done to me by others. My mother was a severe asthmatic and it was quite an effort on her part to cook and provide for the nine of us who were in the household. Those were the days without pressure cookers and food processors/mixers. Cooking was done at times on electric stoves that did not supply much heat. At other times food was prepared using kerosene stoves that supplied an erratic flame without much heat and it would take quite a while to prepare lunch. Indian cooking used the processes of grinding and this was done using huge rounded boulders and took a lot of manual effort. With her asthma and terrible shortness of breath it would have been quite a debilitating task. If I were to really appreciate this aspect, I would be gracious enough to pardon many areas in which she was quite unfair to me. With the advent of psychoanalysis and the upbringing of children being viewed from a critical angle, we seem to have become increasingly fixated on only those aspects in which parents have erred. In the process we seem to have lost value for the great nourishing things that parents do, and even the books we read teach us to ruminate on the deficiencies that existed in our upbringing. I say this quite openly that I have fallen tremendously short in acknowledging the efforts of my parents in front of them while they were alive. While it is true that I and my wife did render service and did not fall short in our efforts, I confess that perhaps my appreciation of my parents didn't quite reach them. At the same time this is also true that my parents, particularly my mother, fell quite short in making me feel secure and loved. Yet it is time now that I fix my gaze on the favours she bestowed rather than on her deficiencies. Ever since modern psychoanalysis has evolved, there seems to be quite a shortfall in the appreciation of parents so that quite a few witticisms run thus:-

"A psychiatrist is a person to whom you pay Rs.300 an hour to squeal on your mother !"  or again

"A Freudian Slip is where a person says one thing but means a mother!"

I acknowledge that when I feel unappreciated and my thoughts meditate on how short I have been in doling out my appreciation and even in realising the genuine value of things, I seem to get a better perspective and a greater degree of acceptance of the fact that I may never get the thing that I desire.

I've written hundreds of letters that were all unacknowledged; I keep posting messages in search of friendship and nothing ever comes back; I have genuinely liked and appreciated the efforts of many mates but my efforts are largely ignored. In such instances I reflect on how much appreciation I managed to develop for the efforts of my grandfather who was quite a hardworking and meticulous geologist who trudged large parts of Karnataka on foot when there were no jeeps around for field work. I regret that I have not put in the requisite effort to read in detail all the output that he had produced even though I was a geologist working in Karnataka. Of course it was  also true that my health had severely failed while I was in service, but then, when in my own life there has been a severe shortfall from my side  in praise and appreciation, or even in normal acknowledgement as a person, there could be equally ample reasons for my not getting it.

In conclusion, I would like to say that a greater sense of gratitude for things that have gone right and a better sense of acceptance when things don't go the way I desire, by a better analysis and rationale can provide greater value to life's experiences and protect me and others like me from falling into despair.

                           xxx

Shattering the glass ceiling !

It is very common to see, especially in articles written by women on successful  women achievers, the expression 'Shattering the glass ceiling'. Whenever I encounter this expression I cannot seem to help myself from the image that my mind conjures up that dates back to Bombay of the 1970s. It makes me question why would they want to shatter it when one can ascend to the top floor in skirts ?

It was a popular rumor in Bangalore among college boys, that a famous smuggler of Bombay who had amassed great wealth, had constructed a palatial building in Bombay where one of the intermediate stories of the building had a clear transparent glass ceiling. This ceiling would form the floor of the storey immediately above (with a one-way view?). He would get to have shapely damsels with skirts and bereft of underclothing moving around on that floor even as he would lay sprawled on his bed below smoking a hookah and enjoying the scene. At that time in the 1970s, as a college student, I had not yet come across the expression 'shattering the glass ceiling' as an expression of thwarted hopes of ambitious women who desired to ascend in the hierarchy. Later on, as strong expressions of feminism picked up and I became adult enough to understand the concern of feminists, I came across this expression. I confess that I can never ever relate to the expression as my mind immediately races to the image of the glass ceiling I had formed when in college. I think of the superfluity in shattering the ceiling as I contrive to imagine how women could easily ascend to the top floor in attractive skirts without their undergarments!  Despite all my efforts to banish the 1970s image of the fortunate smuggler's home in Bombay and substitute it with the concern of feminists, it never seems to work.

It is a telling instance of how a powerful metaphor for one person in a particular context becomes an equally powerful metaphor for another in precisely the opposite way, and all this due to a quirky circumstance over which he seems to have no control. If that Bombay smuggler was not caught and exposed and the rumor about him had not floated around, the expression 'shattering the glass ceiling' would perhaps have had the same effect on me as it has on feminists.

                        xxx

Crippled - award winning high school short film (2009)

Please watch the FILM on the following link

https://youtu.be/TeuKXjHarm8