How many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you...

What’s the Meaning of My Life? | Ruminations

[& the Blessedness of Staying Far Away from the Attention Economy!]

My first post for the New Year had to wait this long!

And for a purpose at that!

In their immensely popular book titled, Ikigai, the Francesc – Hector duo delve into that good old question of yore –

‘What’s the meaning of my life?’

In fact, a question for which Viktor Frankl, decades ago, gave us an insightful book titled, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he waxes profoundly on the topic –

‘What’s the meaning of my life?’

To Viktor Frankl, the 20th century Viennese psychiatrist,

There’s no doubt that I survive today!

But survival for what...? asks Frankl!

People today have the means to live but no meaning to live for!

When you have no meaning to life for, you live in an existential vacuum, he says!

And in order to help people live a life of meaning and purpose, Frankl founded a school of psychiatry called logotherapy.

“To put the question of the meaning of life in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: Tell me, master, what is the best move in the world?”

There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game…

How true!

The same holds true for human existence, says Frankl, Viktor Frankl.

In the same breath, let’s now take a quick peek into Jenny Odell’s book titled –

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy!

A book that has the power to repurpose, reshape, retune and reorient our lives for the better!

While pondering over the question –

‘What gives meaning to one’s life?’

Jenny Odell reflects on Robert Louis Stevenson, who called busyness a “symptom of deficient vitality.”

Even the great Seneca, in “On the Shortness of Life,” describes the horror of looking back to see that life has slipped between our fingers.

It sounds all too much like someone waking from the stupor of an hour on Facebook, says Jenny!

Look back in memory and consider… how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

This book then, is a field guide to doing nothing as an act of political resistance to the attention economy, says Jenny!

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act like dams that capitalize on our natural interest in others and an ageless need for community, hijacking and frustrating our most innate desires, and profiting from them.

Solitude, observation, and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of themselves, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive.

The first half of “doing nothing” is about disengaging from the attention economy; the other half is about reengaging with something else – and this is where bioregionalism steps in!

Against the placelessness of an optimized life spent online, I want to argue for a new “placefulness” that yields sensitivity and responsibility to the historical (what happened here) and the ecological (who and what lives, or lived, here), opines Jenny!

As an artist and art educator long interested in how art can teach us new scales and tones of attention, Jenny says - 

I look both to art history and to vision studies to think about the relationship between attention and volition—how we might not only disentangle ourselves from the attention economy but learn to wield attention in a more intentional way. 

Digital distraction, then, according to Jenny Odell, is eating into our precious minutes, our hours, our days and weeks and months and years in this world.

That’s hence, ‘doing nothing’ is tantamount to intentional resistance, and a ‘deprogramming from capitalism’, quips Jenny!

Tiny little acts like birdwatching, caring for the environment, learning to deeply listen by paying attention, or planting trees on a sidewalk or watching pelicans could be a beautiful intentional way of resisting the urge to falling prey to the attention economy!

That’s because, after an hour on social media, the brain gets into a dull and stupefying dread, whereas, an hour outside of the attention economy, helps us tune into finer and finer frequencies that the beautiful world has in store for all of us, - far far away from the madding crowd of the attention economy, says Jenny.

PS: Well yes! personally, I attempted a digital detox myself [from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning for almost three months], and I found the dividends were so rewarding by all means!

Added, thanks to the likes of Jennyji and Jidduji, I’m not on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of those lovely social networking sites, thanks to Jidduji’s philosophies for life that have pervaded me to the core!

Just surviving on the bare essentials – WhatsApp, YouTube and Blogger for now – to communicate with the immediate world around me!

But here’s hoping to quit them also as soon as possible!

And yes! Dear reader! If you’re seriously considering giving a thought to it, do ping me!

You have company!

To be continued…

'That’s when I started empathising with them...'

Transgenders in India | by Dr Gariyali, IAS.,

Well, this is an inspirational feature, from the women’s supplement along with today’s ‘Dinamani’, a renowned Tamil Newspaper.

This article by Mr. Chandramouli, I’m sure, would be immensely useful for those of us involved in Transgender Studies!

I’ve attempted a translation of just a few salient points from this article, for the benefit of a wider reading audience.

So here goes the article, in English -

Transgender in India: Achievers and Survivors: An Ode to Transwomen by Dr Gariyali CK and Priyadarshini Rajkumar.

Gariyali, a native of Kashmir, was born and raised in Delhi. Having done her Masters in Social Work from the Delhi School of Social Work, and her PhD from the Mother Teresa Women’s University, she retired recently, after having shouldered various important responsibilities as an IAS Officer.

She has also held the responsibility of Additional Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu.

Dr Gariyali has been giving special importance to the advancement of near our transgenders.

Q: What made you develop a compassion towards transgenders?

In Old Delhi, in the area where we resided, there lived a transgender by name Abu Hassan. She used to relate with all of us with such warmth and friendship.

She would also help us all in various possible ways. In the year 1957 she left for Pakistan. And in the year 2000, when I heard of her passing away, my heart became very heavy with sorrow.

Moreover, a relative of mine in Kashmir by name Lakshmi, once she sensed masculine changes in her body, went all the way to Mumbai and changed her name to Lakshmikanth, after undergoing a surgery.

Having been touched beyond measure by the love and affection of Abu during my childhood, and after witnessing the story of how Lakshmi became Lakshmikanth, I could easily empathise and relate to the trials and tribulations that the transgenders undergo in their lives.

That’s when I started empathising with them, and began helping them in all possible ways.

Q: When you were MD of the Tamil Nadu Corporation For Development of Women, there was a widespread commotion when you had appointed two transgenders?

Yes! When I was MD of the Tamil Nadu Corporation For Development of Women between 2001 and 2004, one fine day, two transgenders met me, and said with tears in their eyes,

‘We both have spent thousands of rupees to change ourselves into women, but many do not recognise and accept us as women’.

I was so deeply saddened to see their plight. Right then, there were two posts lying vacant for Group IV workers in our Corporation.

So I appointed both of them to the two temporary positions there. Both of them were so happy. They proceeded to do their work with enthusiasm and cheerfulness.

At one point of time, I was transferred to another posting. Then, after the Tsunami happened, I was deputed to oversee the relief measures.

After a few years when I enquired of the transgenders, I heard that, right after I was transferred, they too were removed from their temporary postings. This news filled me with great sorrow. I tried contacting them many times after that, but failed in all my attempts.

Q: Could you tell us about your book on Transgenders?

The injustice meted out to those two transgenders continued to haunt and hurt me very much.

Well, I am of the firm opinion that, both the government and the society should empathise with, and also exercise great compassion on the transgenders.

Hence it was, that I wanted to bring out the problems of the transgenders, and emphasise on the importance of treating them with compassion.

Added, I also wanted to record for posterity the achievements of the transgenders in various walks of life. This, I believed, would bring about a positive change in the minds of the people.

With this in mind, I began to meet up with many transgenders. I went about gathering a lot of authentic information on them. This book is based on those experiences.

My daughter Priyadarshini, a graduate in Fine Arts, who later went on to do her Management Programme in Australia, has co-authored this book along with me. She has great interest in Social service.

This book has been published through the trust that we run. The proceeds from the sales of this book would also go towards social causes.

To be continued… 

Sunil Runs Off with ‘Champak’ 😍

05 December 1994 | HSC Days 

This day | 27 years ago...

#memoriesfromdiaries 💛

Alarm Clock

Today, I woke up sharp at 4 am to the chiming of the good old analogue alarm clock – and then, started studying in right earnest for my Chemistry Practical Exam that was scheduled for us for the day!

Table Lamp

The first thing we usually did, on waking up, was to turn off the alarm clock and then to turn on the table lamp – those gooseneck lamps of yore - and start reading by the focused rays of the table lamp’s yellowy lights of yore!

These table lamps were a real blessing to us back then, since they didn’t disturb the deep darkness of the dormitory and the sleep of fellow hostellers as well!

Competition for the Day’s Newspaper

Since our cubicle was given just one copy of the day’s Newspaper – ‘The Hindu’, there was a gentle competition of sorts - between Sai Kumar and me - on who would get to read the newspaper first! Today he got it!

Today’s News Headlines

‘DSP, 2 Others Abducted by Veerappan Gang?’ – When Sai read out this news headline, there were some innocuous guffaws all around! (how naïve of us, back then!)

‘T. N. Seshan cancels ‘Madras’ visit on Sunday’. – Yes, back then, it was called Madras!

Skip School Assembly

School Assembly was a weekly ritual that happened every Monday. 

However, hostellers usually gave a dignified slip to the General Assembly, since we already have our routine morning roll calls and Assemblies early in the morn, each and every morn!

Today, when General Assembly was happening, Raymond and myself, we were busy completing our Physics Records, and yes! finally we had managed to submit them as well!

Caught Studying for Chemistry Practicals during Math Period

Today we had our Chemistry Practical exam, and so we were quietly studying for the same, during our Math period, when Math master caught us ‘red-handed!’

He then asked us to leave the class and asked us to stand outside for the remaining duration of the class!

Two Boys Awarded Zero for Copying!

Two of our classmates were awarded a ‘zero’ for copying during Chemistry practical exam. (by Manikavachagam Master)

Words Disrespecting Elders

During our English class, a Tamil pundit came and gave us renditions of songs with morals and values.

One such song was ‘Ye, perisu’ (a disrespectful way of addressing elders), through which he called out the younger generation’s lack of regard and respect for their elders.

Zoology Class – I Feel Sleepy and Master’s Response!

Mr. Soundarrajan, our Zoology master was also a renowned body builder.

Since I had a good lunch at the hostel mess, felt a bit drowsy during Zoology class, and so keeping my head on the table, face down, I was gently trying to enter la la land, when there was a huge knock on the desk – a knock that startled me out of my stupor to such great lengths!

But Mr. Soundarrajan wasn’t harsh on us anytime!

He said – quite gently – patting me on the back, not to sleep during class hours.

Physics – Darshan interrupts Master

Physics master never allows interruptions of any sort. Our class monitor Darshan was a very mischievous guy.

Knowing full well that Master doesn’t like noises of any sort, especially when he is on lecture mode, he deliberately moved the bench with his legs, thus distracting and disturbing our Physics Master (Nedunchezhian Master).

Physics ‘Imposition’ for Two Boys!

Two boys were asked to write down the entire lesson as imposition for failing to bring the Physics Class work and Text book.

Had Math Class – ‘Boring!’

Math classes were boring for many of us, especially when they were in the last hour or on the penultimate hours.

Per chance it was our Math master’s lullaby-like voice that put us on ‘bore mode’? Well, we ain’t and can’t say that now! Sat near my bestie Sunil during Math class.

Besties - the Best Bet for a Boring Hour!

Well, whenever we sat near friends during a class, it meant we were bored stiff and so we were longing for means and ways to have some little fun and sweet distractions with friends. Hence it was, that I hopped a little, jumped a little, inching my way towards Sunil my bestie during this particular hour for our own little quota of entertainment!

‘Frutang’ Time

Evening’s refreshment time was something that everyone of us – hostellers - longed for.

So the moment Math class was over, Sunil and I, we rushed to the evening canteen to quench our thirst with the good ol’ Frutang - using up our canteen coupons!

Well, the Frutang was a refreshingly yummy mango drink that was served chilled, and hence students always made a beeline for this particular mango drink!

Did Math Problems

After Frutang time, we both finished working on our Math problems ahead of time, since the evenings and the nights were reserved for ‘all play and no work’ in the hostel!

Sunil Beats Me for tearing his Letter

Sunil usually hands over his letters to me to read them aloud to him. And today was no exception. But since I couldn’t open it properly, he beat me at the back! So I didn’t read the letter for him, and went to my cubicle and started doing my homework! He later came and apologized.  

For more diary reads on Sunil, you may want to read them HERE

Sunil Runs Off with ‘Champak’

Bed times were for Champak or Tinkle or Tintin! 

Today I decided on Champak, and sharp at ten, on bed, here I was, lost in my own world, reading Champak, enjoying every cartoon, every illustration, every word and every line of every page, quite happily, when all of a sudden, from nowhere, Sunil popped up - and... plucking off the Champak from my hands, he ran off merrily to his cubicle, shouting, ‘Good Night, see you!’.

Annoyed to the core, I got out of my regal recline, and tail-gating him straight to his cubicle, got my Champak back from him!

Well, you see, nights back then, [on student-mode], were incomplete to the core without our quota of Champaks and Tinkles! 

'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us...' 💙

Pale Blue Dot | Carl Sagan 💛

[Remembering a legend on his birthday today!]

Yes! He’s taught us some real, life-lessons - that are above and beyond the ‘earthy!’

14 February 1990!

A memorable day for humankind for any many reasons!

At Carl Sagan’s suggestion, one of earth’s most memorable images was taken by Voyager 1.

Well, as we all know, NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft (Voyager 1 & 2) way back in the year 1977, to probe the outer reaches of our solar system!

And interestingly, even today, the Voyager sincerely and meticulously continues to probe on and on and on!

Coming back,

As the invincible Voyager spacecraft was departing our planet veering towards the other pockets of our solar system, it stopped and turned around!

Yes!

For that one last look!

For that one last look of its home!

Its home sweet home!

Its home-planet, our earth!

And that ‘one last look’ had its fair share of lubtub moments as well!

That’s because Voyager was cruising at a distance of almost four billion miles away, whizzing past our solar system at such breakneck speed, and its cameras were slowly shutting down!

So there was just one last chance!

To Candy Handsen (who helped in meticulously planning out on this historic photo shot), this was a kinda ‘now or never’ moment!

And just thirty-four minutes after capturing its home planet Earth, Voyager’s cameras turned off – forever!

The Pale Blue Dot 🔵

And this image proved that great inspiration for Carl Sagan to write his book titled, Pale Blue Dot!

A book that sure needs to be on the ‘must-read’ list of all of us human beings on this lovely planet, I guess! 

Without divulging much from the cream and the content of this must-read book, let me give some real memorable lines as takeaways –

Here goes Carl Sagan –

But tell me, who are they, these wanderers . . .?

- RAINER MARIA RILKE, “THE FIFTH ELEGY” (1923)

Begins Carl Sagan’s favourite quote to his awe-inspiring book titled, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, that’s got us all fascinated for close to three decades now!

One is spontaneously reminded of Bill Bryson and Desmond Morris while scouring through those plain, simple and lucid words and sentences, coming from such a great planetary scientist cum cosmologist cum astronomer cum astrophysicist - words devoid of any ‘scientific’ jargon – that make this book such a highly engaging read!

Sample the opening lines –

We were wanderers from the beginning. We knew every stand of tree for a hundred miles. When the fruits or nuts were ripe, we were there. We followed the herds in their annual migrations...

Working together, we protected our children from the lions and the hyenas. We taught them the skills they would need...

And then he proceeds, in like fashion, in such lucid prose,  

In the last few decades, the United States and the former Soviet Union have accomplished something stunning and historic - the close-up examination of all those points of light, from Mercury to Saturn, that moved our ancestors to wonder and to science.

Since the advent of successful interplanetary flight in 1962, our machines have flown by, orbited, or landed on more than seventy new worlds.

We have wandered among the wanderers.

During the Viking robotic mission, beginning in July 1976, in a certain sense I spent a year on Mars.

I examined the boulders and sand dunes, the sky red even at high noon, the ancient river valleys, the soaring volcanic mountains, the fierce wind erosion, the laminated polar terrain, the two dark potato-shaped moons.

But there was no life - not a cricket or a blade of grass, or even, so far as we can tell for sure, a microbe.

These worlds have not been graced, as ours has, by life.

Life is a comparative rarity.

You can survey dozens of worlds and find that on only one of them does life arise and evolve and persist.

In our time we’ve crossed the Solar System and sent four ships to the stars.

Neptune lies a million times farther from Earth than New York City is from the banks of the Bug.

But there are no distant relatives, no humans, and apparently no life waiting for us on those other worlds.

No letters conveyed by recent émigrés help us to understand the new land - only digital data transmitted at the speed of light by unfeeling, precise robot emissaries.

They tell us that these new worlds are not much like home.

But we continue to search for inhabitants.

We can’t help it.

Life looks for life.

Then he clearly outlines the purpose of the book in such simple terms.

Says Sagan, Carl Sagan -

That’s what this book is about: other worlds, what awaits us on them, what they tell us about ourselves, and - given the urgent problems our species now faces - whether it makes sense to go. Should we solve those problems first? Or are they a reason for going?

Pale Blue Dot is about a new recognition…

says Sagan!

Some lovely excerpts from Chapter 1, titled, ‘You are HERE’

The spacecraft was a long way from home, beyond the orbit of the outermost planet and high above the ecliptic plane.

The ship was speeding away from the Sun at 40,000 miles per hour. But in early February of 1990, it was overtaken by an urgent message from Earth.

Obediently, it turned its cameras back toward the now-distant planets.

Slewing its scan platform from one spot in the sky to another, it snapped 60 pictures and stored them in digital form on its tape recorder.

Then, slowly, in March, April, and May, it radioed the data back to Earth.

Each image was composed of 640,000 individual picture elements (“pixels”), like the dots in a newspaper wire-photo or a pointillist painting.

And yet there is no sign of humans in this picture, not our reworking of the Earth’s surface, not our machines, not ourselves:

We are too small and our statecraft is too feeble to be seen by a spacecraft between the Earth and the Moon.

From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence.

On the scale of worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

It seemed to me that another picture of the Earth, this one taken from a hundred thousand times farther away, might help in the continuing process of revealing to ourselves our true circumstance and condition.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast encompassing Cosmos, but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance!

Look again at that dot.

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, ever king and peasant, every young couple in love, every moth and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every “saint and sinner” in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Think of the endless visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life.

There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.

Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.

There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known!

says Sagan, Carl Sagan!

How true!

And well, in this context, me thought it would be so apt and meet to quote a line from Ms. Vinisha Umashankar, who hogged the limelight and made us all proud, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, this past Wednesday.

In the context of Climate Change - that needs immediate corrective measures and urgent attention from all nations across the world - she said, 

I’m not just a girl from India. I’m a girl from Earth and I’m proud to be so.

From the Sagan saga above, this lovely little line makes much-o-much sense! ain’t it?

Earthlings!

Or in other words,

Planetariats!

image courtesy: bbcdotcom & linkedindotcom (Ms.Vinisha)