Eerie Silence

When faced with reticent response to my posers, I further prod, ‘Itna sannata kyun hai bhai?’(Why this eerie silence?) In the Hindi film ‘Sholay’, the visually challenged Imam queries so of his villagers who turn silent on seeing the body of his teenage son, brutally killed by the dacoit, Gabbar Singh. The legendary line came to the fore, on the passing away of A K Hangal, the actor who played the Imam…

Indeed it is necessary for us to ask the question every time an eerie silence becomes our reaction to a challenging stimulus. In the realm of the disquieting quiet lies the spectrum of fear born of imagined implications. We fear that we could meet an undesirable fate and hence we slink into a silence that submerges our ability to respond.

Silence cannot be golden, when speech is necessary. In the film, the Imam is visually challenged and hence he connects through his hearing ability. The absence of babble buries his receptivity to what is happening around. Conversely for us, often when we shut our mouths, we are actually numbing our senses to the scene that surrounds us.

The poet saint Kabir sung about ‘yeh murdon ka gaon’ (this is the village of the dead). Do we play dead to the brutalization of lives around? Do we stay silent to the crimes against humanity? Do we turn to stone when the need is one of dynamic response? When the questions are of life and verve, is our reaction one of deathly silence? Surely, to be better at living, we need to be responsive. Speaking up is the way to break the eerie silence.

Why the eerie silence? Choose to speak up…

BE BETTER at resisting the urge to give up!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

e-literate

In Mumbai, protestors turned violent, their indignation triggered by information posted on the internet… morphed photos and doctored videos that disproportionately portrayed the clashes between communities in Assam. Rogues had a justification to attack and abuse peace, yet again!

So often, we accept things posted on the internet as the ultimate truth without putting it to the test of basic common sense. A close look at the fake visuals should be enough to discern the reality but it is a fact that we perceive things based on the prejudice located in our mind. Hence we believe the worst things about those who are tainted by our doubts.

Those who created the false visuals are enemies of humanity, but fear and odium was fuelled by others who carelessly forwarded the manipulated fiction leading to a reciprocal irresponsible posting of hate triggers by many more reckless persons. Those who claim ownership of the ability to discern, so easily, succumb to the guile of malicious propaganda. The situation is worsened by their careless forwarding of spiteful rubbish.

My father (who would have celebrated 95 years today) motivated me to read everything that I could lay my hands on. However, he cautioned me that literacy is not only about being able to read and write. He insisted that literacy was when one could read between and beyond the words and lines, lest one be mired in gullible tales of the imaginative or the wicked.

Obviously, we who straddle the internet may not be truly e-literate. We need to read online content critically. Fact manipulation is here to stay, but it is possible to cross check or ‘track-back’ any content on the web. We can be better at e-literacy by stopping the blind acceptance (and forwarding) of everything that is posted on the web. We must investigate every e-word or e-visual to find where it came from. After all, humanity is at stake!

In the web of deceit, do not presume to be e-literate…

BE BETTER at restraint and enquiry of propagated hate!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Dead Habit

Once, a wanderer found a rare manuscript about a touchstone that could turn any common metal into pure gold. It revealed that the touchstone lay on the banks of a remote river, among thousands of pebbles that looked exactly like it. But, while the ordinary pebbles would be cold to touch, the touchstone would feel warm.

The man camped on the riverbank and began testing pebbles. Every time he picked a cold one, he threw it deep into the river. The ritual turned routine: pick a pebble… find it cold… throw it into the water… pick another… Many days later, he picked a warm pebble, but he threw it away before realizing his mistake. He had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble away that when the one he wanted came along, he threw it away!

So often, a similar story unfolds when we encounter opportunity. Unless we are vigilant, it is easy to fail to notice an opportunity even when it is in hand and it is just as easy to throw it away. Most of us await opportunity to knock on our doors, even if it is standing right before us. We falter in recognizing opportunity as we are numbed by dead habit.

Dead habit happens when we do things mechanically. We give up on maintaining focus on the task at hand. We must break the knotty vice-like grip of every dead habit. We are responsible for the choice that we make… we can be ritually reactive or we can be better off by being continuously and consistently responsive to the prospect of possible opportunity.

To BE BETTER at recognizing the possibility in hand,

We must break every dead habit’s numbed stand!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

COMRADE BUDDHA

In Zen, a Buddha (Sanskrit: awakened) is one who has become fully enlightened. 20 years ago, I met a Marxist who was a student of philosophy and who shared my interest in Zen. He was my Comrade Buddha! Narayan Desai was forty-seven years older to me, but the gap never mattered. His exuberance towards experiential wisdom would put a teenager to shame.

Born in Pernem, Goa on 16 December 1920, Desai completed Curso de Letras (Portuguese Literature & Philosophy) and started teaching at Margao. He got involved with the 'Kisan Sabha' and the freedom struggle for Goa. Post liberation, he travelled to Russia, Germany, Cairo, Iran, Berlin and other countries as an orator of the Communist Party of India.

As a writer that he received greater acclaim. He wrote over 20 books in Marathi, Konkani, English, Gujarati and Hindi; Biography of Lenin, Swami Vivekanand in 21st century, Me - a socialist, Buddha – my companion, etc. He also compiled a Spanish-to-Marathi Dictionary. As Director of Thinkers' Academy, Mumbai, he devoted his entire life to research and writing.

Desai never gave up being a student and kept himself abreast with global happenings. He saw the bird’s eye view as well as the ground reality. He de-emphasized theoretical knowledge in favor of direct individual experience of one's own true nature. He would say that ‘thinking and experiencing’ was the only to live. That’s the way he lived, till he died on 5 August 2007.

Our thinking can BE BETTER with experiential application…

Let’s align our deeds to Comrade Buddha’s inspiration!

- Pravin K. Sabnis