Eternal recurrence of reticence

You think of coming out of the reticent shell that has been there for quite sometime . A very slow process. It takes a lot of time to gain confidence and smile with confidence.  Then the cycle repeats. You go thorough some useless suffering or other. Something so stupid as an unnecessary flue. Pushed back to reticence. You don't smile. You think of the unbearable heaviness of being. 

Conversation - diary like.

Why one space is more stressful than other? As usual , I am cautious of not being too much self revelatory. Is it the lack of real , meaningful conversations? And people, as  it is conventionally being put, are not radiating with positive vibes? . No, that is not the case now. There is hardly anything to blame on the innocent, too nice people around.

I have felt it is the presence of right people which brings a stress free better life. But now I am changing my opinion , it is place, space and people together. Once I remarked to a friend that University can be our Utopia. But like every other Utopia, it disappoints after a point. I miss nice and free time with those nice friends. But times are never permanent.

It has been few months since I had converted to old school of Existentialism. All thanks to Sarah Bakewell and her wonderful book. I tweeted how beautiful it feels to read the book. She thanked me. If I was the old teenager that would have been enough for months of super excitement. But reasons of excitements have transformed. But the only thing is that I haven't actually found new forms that could bring back the thrilled teenager. I should admit that existentialism and the concept of freedom gave me an unprecedented joy and excitement towards life. How nice it is to think that we are not prisoners of destiny, fate and all the other stupid things  I have complained previously of.  Yet, the irony is that,  the idea of Existentialism, as far as I understand, doesn't assure any predictable outcome of our efforts . But who does stop you from enjoying the freedom, except your self:).

Reading politics doesn't console you in stressful times , even Sartre doesn't help you to overcome unnecessarily accumulated stress . So , this post remains incomplete.

Breathing

I had no real or meaningful time to write for sometime. I came back to Delhi, and a lot of time here is spent on thinking what to do in a day. I wait days and weeks for some other more serious and obligatory writing to happen, and it does happen sometime, and that could be the only meaningful act in some sense. Rest are concerns over health, routine and generally lifestyle thoughts and plans. Getting patiently used to solitary thoughts and realizations of some social non- permanence( in terms of what we have socially, in terms of people in our life, and again a realization that all individual paths are different).

I had been drawn to very materialist fights( I am a materialist philosophically but this is a different sort of real world material rivalries, which could only be explained with the capitalist nature of academic competitions). It is a serene pleasure to involve in all this with a spiritual ( in a rational sense) detachment.

I am not trying to communicate in this blog, this has to be seen only just as expression. Writing is redeeming as everyone know. Here is my very selfish expression , and it feels like breathing.

Limitations

Between an impoverished, isolated life and an energy consuming , domineering patriarchal care, I look for options of independence. I write as cryptically as I can. Only an idiotic or a very brave person can be too transparent in an evil world. It would be dishonest to say that this world is entirely an unhappy place. I acknowledge all the good things and happiness that life brings. But like I wrote about fate in an earlier post, one does really think about one's own agency( not for those who remember theory first), I just mean to say one's own self realization of our own ability to do something.

In Malayalam we do have an example : after learning all the 'marmam'(or knowing the secrets of body) the marmani master is unable to make love. He fears that in every part of the body there are key marmams( or where powers are concentrated) and can't be touched. I mean to talk about being too much conscious of life which in fact takes away your ability to live life with joy. One becomes too conscious and careful. In marmani's case it can be love making and in the case of ordinary human it can be the ability to love. Should one suspend thoughts and move on with( what could be the right word? Umm? the word passion doesn't sound to convey what I want to say properly) which may end the impoverished isolated life and you don't have to be a full prisoner of traditional institutions?

It is hard to decide, especially when life looks so predictable in front of you. I think one doesn't need to be an expert in Historical knowledge to know that only big tragedies are not predictable in life. We can always predict the rest , our own inability to succeed and so on easily ,  there you are aware of the structure and your own powerlessness. Ironically, it is the same realization which makes you further powerless.

Fate and sadness

A friend recently told me that being emotional or being ultra sensitive isn't a bad thing. His opinion was that I should feel happy  that I can feel so deeply. He added that it can be seen as a gift of God. I felt very happy to hear that. His observations like that has helped me before when there were crises related to my self esteem, when I had felt very lonely in a totally strange town. Now, almost a week after hearing his above mentioned wonderful words, I am battling with the same issue of being unbearably emotional. And this time it has all the epic elements of sadness. Love, hurt, emotions, family drama and what not.

I had coffee with  someone for few minutes. And I felt I was respected, heard and received well  and above all a genuine feeling that here my enthusiasm about life is shared equally. I tried not to dream, and I succeeded as far as I could. Yet after few days , now when this most expected road block appears, which neither me nor that person is in any way responsible , I feel unbearably sad. There are emotional strings from different corners which pulls me and tears apart, and these emotions I think are like interests. In other words feeling towards one person or one institution like family is an interest and are not plain value neutral emotions. And this is the world of many interests and conflicts which troubles and cause my hurt. I had an emotional outburst in my own way and I feel sad that I might have caused hurt to another set of people who were also helpless in this genuinely sad occasion.  I have never doubted the beauty of life and it's strange surprises and beautiful gifts as my friend said. But I am so confused about what to feel, after a deep hurt for that you can't blame any human being what exactly one should feel? And to whom should we agitate?

Growing up (growing down) with stupidity

Does a good smart phone make blogging easier? I feel it does. I have never felt writing a blog before I owned this moderately priced Honor Huwai phone. I thank my dear friend, quantum physicist J Chathanathil for suggesting this phone. Will I end up writing a promotional review? I wouldn't mind if the Chinese smart phone company pay me cash in Indian rupee:) till then I will turn to what I had written previously.

I want to write on stupidity.  It is clearly linked with what I wrote earlier. Till teenage, one can only be stupid and in my case so self assuringly stupid. But stupidity doesn't stand alone. It has it's intellectual context. Can one read voraciously, all classics, all highly rated non fictions while being young and remain insipidly stupid? My experience says yes. Life can only be learned with experience. But what surprised me is stupidity sometime is incomprehensible.
So after many years of contemplating on stupidity I  look forward to read the book ' Stupidity' by philosopher Avital Ronell. Libgen doesn't have the book. Amazon.in is too expensive.  May Professor Ronell helps me to make sense of my young age once I could read the book.

Muslim Zionism

At  a very young age, I was aware of the project of Zionism in it's original sense. I was taught to read political posters and I hardly missed any. Some of them were against Israel . Soon I happened to read polemical literature in Malayalam on Zionism; I remember some of the titles, but those are not worth repeating for reasons I would like to explain in some other posts. After stints with what I now identify as propagandist/ polemical/ rhetorical politics, I reached somewhere I can reflect on my childhood intellectual formation. I feel those anti- Zionists were in fact Muslim Zionists, not that they strived for a homeland ( which they already and so horribly did during 1940s- so much thanks to Professor Faisal Devji and his path breaking and original formulations for this understanding-) but their response to the majoritarian politics and many slogans and mistakes were similar. Now , when I am away from such politics - in an intellectual state where I think Freud and Marx are most relevant contemporary thinkers and are never out dated-  I want to write on the falsity of contemporary community poltics and it's closeness to Zionist ideals. I shall keep you posted.