Twenty One Posts, Twenty One Months - But Going Strong?

When I wrote the First Post I never imagined I would go on for this long.  Tenacity, persistence and such attributes that suggest sustained effort are not among my strong suits.  Nor is consistency, which is an essential feature for any workable process of communication.  Your audience likes to know what to expect from you and under what circusmtances, when you communicate with them.  I often surprise myself with the say things that I say.

There were a few things that I knew from the time that I wrote the first post.  These blogs were not meant to satisfy the literary, intellectual, information or entertainment needs of my followers, as seems to be the case with many if not all bloggers.  Nor were they written with an expectation that many would read them, much less comment on.  In fact I never bothered to learn the rules of building a following for my blog.

The blog was a replacement to the "bull sessions" of my younger days when the TV was a less ubiquitous part of our lives and the internet had not gone beyond the realms of the Arpanet.  The blogs were meant to revive a part of me that I had been missing over the years.

Never a highly social or gregarious man, I had this small handful - four, may be five friends, that I would meet up with once in a while.  We would most often meet in a beer bar in Bombay.  Those were the only places that would allow, and were designed to allow, people to hang around for long hours till late in the night as long as you were prepared to continue to imbibe their drink and face the consequence of frequent visits to a noisome and gradually overcrowding loos.  Over many brown bottles of that brown liquid and several plates of "seeng dana", we would relive moments of life that each of us considered worth remembering and worth talking about.

As young professionals we were not worried about the political correctness of what we said.  Beyond the few of us gathered around those dilapidated tables and under the dim and low hanging light that were part of standard design features at these beer bars, what we said did not matter to anyone in those vast multitudes of that city.  We were too inconsequential.  So inconsequential that we used to joke that if we were to fall off the footboard of a speeding suburban train, it would not matter to anyone - unless we landed on the adjacent track and our mortal remains posed a safety hazard to the next train that was scheduled to ply on that track.

Such anonymity and inconsequentiality had their advantages.  So we indulged in a lot of harmless banter, talking of cabbages and kings, to use a cliche from Lewis Carroll.  We bitched about our bosses, envied our more fortunate contemporaries, rued our own not so brilliant destinies and of course as young men talked about women we would have loved to be with and did not have a hope in hell of even getting within earshot.  We would also talk about other more attainable women around us and look for reasons for going for the kill, or not.

I miss those conversations now.  I cannot say why.  The common view is that we are supposed to get over the various objects and activities that hold our fancy at various ages as we grow up.  Society seems to have well defined notions of what each of us is generally expected to do at various ages.  And those things that we are expected to do are meant to be the sources of joy, satisfaction, contentment or whatever else is that state of mind that you wish to pursue.

For some strange reason I have been unable to conform to those expectations.  Over the years I even coined a couple of expressions that give a scientific air to this propensity of mine:  Incomplete Childhood Syndrome and Incomplete Adolescent Syndrome.  As acronyms they sit nicely with the aspirational ideals of middle class South Indians - ICS and IAS, the two services that represented - and to some extent do so even today - the epitome of achievement in one's professional life.

I came up with these notions because of the constant feeling that I had some how advanced in age to the next stage in my life, from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to youth, much before I could say to myself that I had had my fill of experiences that went with those phases of life that I was growing out of.  That made me long for a range of objects and experiences that did not quite go with my advancing age. A desire for a positive paternal stroke for simple acts, a desire to be noticed by people, notably the opposite sex, a desire to do the macho thing long after it is supposed to start looking silly to do it.  I could go on and on, recalling several such examples.

These tendencies continue to this day.  That is perhaps why I indulge in little acts of mischief such as greeting people in languages that they do not follow, masking my identity on the phone, cheating my seven year old sons when we play hide and seek or a game of ball and so on.

While the active observer ego that I believe I am blessed with allows me to notice and critique all these acts of mine with clinical and third party objectivity I do not know enough about myself or the science to know myself to explain why I indulge in these.  Again, while I am sure that there are many others in the world who have a little bit of the child and the youth still in them I wonder if there are many in whom these tendencies are as pronounced I seem to find them in myself.  Or, is it that my exalted observer ego allows me to notice more about myself than others do or, perhaps, care?  A bit like the story about the rise in crime rates more being a phenomenon of better detection and reporting than a real increase in the incidence of crime itself?

The point though is about these blogs having been more of a means of getting the release that those bull sessions at the beer bar gave to the child and the adolescent in me.  How else do I explain my recalling my journey on Route # 23A?  How many fifty year olds would speak in such graphic detail about their fascination for various people that they come across?

So these blogs have been like many such one to one conversations with the people that I mark the blog to.  I do not forward them to too many.  The number varies between five and fifteen.  People who I presume may have liked to hear my piece if they had sat across me from the table at a beer bar.  Of course, I do miss the lubricant that freed my brain from its numerous inhibitions, thanks to a resolve to abstain from drinking in the light of the fact that it does not go with the exalted Brahmanical traditions I am expected to uphold.

Admittedly therefore my articulation has not been as free flowing or as colourful it would have been in those seedy looking chambers of VT, Sion or Andheri where we used to hole up on weekend evenings, slobbering late into the night till the waiter started visiting our table frequently enough to suggest that our time for that evening was up.  But I have been as candid as I needed to be to get that release that I longed for in writing these posts.

There are many more things that I would love to say, to share.  Of people, events, thoughts, worries, cravings, fears.  Of joys and disappointments.  Of the pain over never having triumphed in life and of the travails (in my opinion) of which there has been no shortage.  Of the many acts of responsibility, kindness or courage that I would have loved to be proud of, but never did.  Of the inadequacy in failing to do things which I ought to have on many an occasion.

There are many more questions that I constantly love to seek answers to but never manage to ask, questions that I would like to pose to the readers of my blogs the same way that I would have asked the intoxicated ring of friends around me at those rickety tables that threatened to collapse as we leaned our weights on our drunken and wobbly elbows:  Why do people aspire for the various things they do?  Why do some people aspire and some dont?  Why do people love some and dont love others, or worse, even hate?  And then how do a few manage to be so full of love for nearly one and all and some others full of malice?  My list of questions is almost as endless, as that of a child that has learned to speak his first words in life.

Questions, the answers to which do not mean much for a worldly life.  At least not in the world I see around me.  A pragmatist friend of mine once counselled me that man has been asking these questions from time immemorial and that human civilisation moved on even though mankind did not find all the answers.  I am almost tempted to buy into that advise.  But something tells me that the argument is specious in that it assumes that the answers to these questions do not inhere in the progress of civilisation that my pragmatic friend refers to.

The point is that is that I realise that there is a lot more that I have to say, even though they may not be of much interest to the world at large, let alone anything that is profound.  They are important for me to say nonetheless.  Important for the child and the adolescent in me that refuse to grow up or go away.

At the same time there is a strong sense that I am running out of steam.

It is not that I am running out of words.  I never had in me the gift of good writing.  I have felt embarassed about my feeble and unsuccessful attempt at emulating the styles of the late GK Reddy of the The Hindu and the late CR.  I have neither their control over the language nor the erudition that made their writing what it was.  But facetious as it may have been, those were the styles I had learned to emulate.  In any case those styles do not have a market any more.  As India's John Grisham, Mr Ravi Subramaniam, pointed out recently Shakespeare was a great writer; but that if he were to write today, he would not produce a best seller, which Mr Subramaniam has been doing with unfailing regularity.  Yet I have been writing these posts as you all know.  So that is evidence of my indefatigable will to write.
 
So what is this business of running out of steam then? 

It is a feeling that resembles having had had one beer too many.  As if I have bantered on for one evening too many.  As if the bleary eyes of my audience around the table are saying to me, it is time to go home now.  It is as if somewhere within me a voice is saying to me that I need to be alone with my own thoughts and myself for a while, shuffling about my life softly, quietly.

But then who knows, come another Saturday evening, just like the feet involuntarily finding their way to the nearest watering hole, without my concurrence as it were , I might still start typing again, much earlier than I intend to.

Until then.....

Nanni.  Namaskaaram.

Multiple Roles, Matrimony and Monogamy

This is perhaps the most controversial piece as yet that I would write.  I am prompted to write this by some remarks that I heard in response to a recent blogpost of mine about my fascination for a certain musician.  The remarks in essence said that my admiration for that artiste could easily be construed as not asexual and so it was not becoming of the happily married man that I claim to be.

My initial reaction was to deny that presumption about the sexuality of my liking for the artiste.  I wanted to assert that I was drawn to the way she presents her art than to any other persona of her.  Thus, for example, were I to get to know her as a person, it was quite possible that there were many attributes of her that may not have made me feel drawn towards her.

That however did not resolve the matter for me.  I was, and continue to be, troubled by the fact that we continue to believe that in the world in which we live, an individual's affinities - be that of a man or a woman - sexual, emotional or intellectual should be circumscribed by the norms of morality that were laid down for a very different world.  If the more progressive among us are willing to accept that the tenets of many revealed religions that were prescribed for a different world should not be imposed in a world that has moved on in many ways, equally the social mores of a bygone era should not limit an individual's freedom to engage his or her passion.

And so here is something that has been a major problem that I have had ever since I read Russell's Marriage and Morals when I was a student of business management many decades ago.

Of all the social institutions, marriage is perhaps one that is entirely a human / social creation.    That there is a great diversity in the norms governing this institution arcoss societies is one telling instance of how it is largely a social construct.  Bertrand Russell examines the institution in his book Marriage and Morals. Russell goes on to wonder if there is even an anthropological necessity to have the institution of marriage and family
the way we have been given to understand it by contemporary social mores.

In Chapter 13 of the book Russell goes on to explain that the family was more of an economic necessity of the pastoral phase in human civilisation where people had to breed their own labour to work their farmlands.  He further goes on to explain that in order to ensure that the children worked for the father "it was necessary that the institution of the family should be sanctified by the whole weight of religion and morals."  As if to suggest a counterfactual sort of argument Russell then goes on to say that the family as an institution was weakened by the industrial revolution which was an economic phenomenon first, with some serious social consequences.

Russell's thesis about marriage and morals is closely connected with the question of sexual relations and its role in the sustenance of the family as an institution.  And that is what persuades me to write this piece. 

Interestingly in Chapter 13 Russell argues that the institution of family "affords the only rational basis for limitations of sexual freedom."  At the same time physical relations are accepted to be more enjoyable, the greater the psychic or emotional involvement.  That raises the question:  If sexual satisfaction is indeed one of the three essential reasons for union between man and woman and that joy is heightened through a sense of emotional companionship, should the pursuit of such joy be circumscribed by the institution of family and marriage at a time when the institution of marriage is itself weakened?  Russell answers that question partly in in Chapter 12 when he says that it makes no sense to seek all the three bases of the union between men and women, namely sexual gratification, companionship and rearing of children all in the same single institution of a family.

The relevance of Russell is even greater in today's day and age of multiple roles that each of us plays in our daily lives - as a family man, as a worker and as members of various other communities, virtual as well as real.  These roles cast us into different lives that are quite distinct from each other. 

At the same time the engagement with the social context in each of these roles is quite intense, partly as a means to succeed in each of these roles.  Thus for example, collaboration and collegiate rivalry at work is considered an essential means to success in many organisations.  Similarly, many hobbies such as a game of bridge or playing music or theatre or quizzing or even social dancing call for close engagement with other members of the group.  Given the increasing individuality among members of a family the chances that one partners with a member of the family in all these instances is low.

It is inevitable that the psychic or emotional engagement with one or more members of each of these groups would lead to a desire to explore relationships beyond mere task related collaboration.  It is almost as if there is a certain avatar of ours that is distinct from all our other avatars, which is defined by the role that we play in that context.  An integral part of that "avatar" is the affinities that go with it.  Thus, as a passionate lover of music who spends an enormous amount of his energy, it is not unreasonable, certainly not inconceivable, that  I develop an attraction that goes with the passion towards the art.

These possibilities are likely to be more exacerbated in an urban setting where Russell argues that the institution of family is likely to be weakened further.

Russell's thesis that seeking all the three basis of communion in one single institution of marriage is impractical anticipates such possibilities.  I am reminded of a news that I read in a blog, that I cannot recall details of now, where a Bavarian politician is said to have proposed that all marriages must be reviewed every seven years with an option to both parties to annul or renew the arrangement.  I am not sure if the politician in question proposed the number seven based on the proverbial seven year itch.

Through this piece I am not building the case for a licentious social system.  This is not a call to greater promiscuity. Much less am I making a case for me to freely indulge with all the women for whom I routinely develop a crush.  That I have this powerful insurance against any such dissipative behaviour in the form of my singular lack of attractiveness to any woman, other than my wife, is another matter altogether.

My contention is that to the extent that economics seems to drive many of our institutions the kind of changes that Russell foresaw is inevitable.  It has been borne out by what a colleague of mine refers to as the "socialisation" of family responsibilities in America. The family as a social institution is in decline.  A recent survey showed the extent to which fewer people in the UK go through the institution of marriage in its traditional form.  Interestingly, Russell seemed to think that the USA was more likely to adopt these lifestyles more widely than the UK.

These changes could be upon us faster than we might imagine.  The joint family was common in my generation.  The rate at which the joint family has been replaced by the nuclear family in one generation in our society is remarkable.  A survey done about a year ago reported that divorce rates were the highest in Chennai, a city that is generally considered to be among the more conservative.  While divorces may not be indicative of the failure of the family, they do suggest that the traditional stability of marital relationships is under attack.

My submission is that it is time for us to reexamine some of these traditional beliefs about relationships at a time when society is undergoing a significant metamorphosis, driven largely by economic developments.  The rational view of social relationships dictates that these changes are inevitable.

The only hope for a reversal of these trends is the unlikely return of spiritualism to the centre stage in our social values.  Very simply, spiritualism requires us to raise our aspirations to more sublime levels, beyond the realms of the body-mind axis. But that and the likelihood of spiritualism being elevated to that position of centrality is another debate. From where I stand today I am not terribly sanguine about the future of spiritualism, although one side of me suggests that the sheer turmoil that we will be thrown into at least for a while as we come to terms with these social changes might force us to turn to spiritualism.

But until then happens I guess we will have to learn to accept what might traditionally be dismissed as "footloose" behaviour.

Nanni.  Namaskaaram.