What does it mean to be human? Without
asking questions regarding the soul (unanswerable for me really,
philosophically and scientifically speaking - and not something that deserves
quick dissembling and late night digressions, it’s kind of more vital than
that). We are our wants and needs, emotions and actions, clothed in terribly
fragile skin and ego and held together by sinews and family. I don't quite know
how I function. I mean I know what my triggers are, what makes me want
something and as often, what makes me not want something. But what scares me,
in a way, is that there is no internal trigger as such for me. There is no
overarching narrative that I want, in the sense of seeking something. No
creative urge except to try and understand myself and my role in the world.
Most of my triggers are external (does that actually makes me sane?) and they
tend to affect me quite a bit (not in the way of taking action really but in the
form of making me think - which is a form of action that is not only default to
me, it is more like I am irretrievably stuck in that mode). The basic question
of motivation is something that interests me quite a bit – which factor is
primary in determining our actions, is it family, society, religion, nation? Or
are we ultimately simpler in that we tend to do the thing that just makes us
feel good? And are we all the same (I don’t quite believe that - variations will
exist in a species, even in this basic level). Anyway – I re-read Night (and again
became numb for a bit, and I guess that book kind of answers my question, that we
do all react to external stimuli after all and there are thresholds to each
kind of stimuli beyond which our responses and actions change) and I have been meaning
to read this.
I guess I am looking for sense in books of a certain kind.
Anyway, I digress. I started this post with
a different sort-of plan. I was thinking about the senses, the senses that we
all share (genetic errors and misfortunes aside) and that we share in some form
or the other with animals as well. Sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. I
had one of my occasional eye issues (sometimes one or both of them go blurry –
something I guess I have adjusted to in a way) and I was weirdly woozy for a
while – my balance was shot (and yes, while I could never audition anyway for
Cirque du Soleil but this was major trippy toes slapstick territory). And then
as the eye (it was one this time) cleared up, the balance came back. It’s weird
isn’t it, how the sprockets and the gears fit inside, making the machine run –
we inhabit a physical world and interpret it through our physical interactions.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. If we were allowed to imagine, and
who’s to say we aren’t, we could very well think of our primary interfaces with
the outside world being through other forces and senses. Slight tugs indicating
the lines of the magnetic fields, sound waves eliciting brilliant images in our
brains which in turn would be wired quite differently, with rhizoidal magnetite
veins to carry the signals for instance. One limit on our imagination is
obviously the one placed by our knowledge and our understanding of the world. Our
scientific minds will attempt to predict the possibilities through our current interpretation
of the natural laws. But might there be universes which obey completely altogether
different laws? That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? That’s sci-fi territory
obviously. The interesting thing is that while I didn’t really follow the genre
while young (thinking it to be too fantastic and juvenile, without any real
knowledge), now I am more interested in it. The past couple of years I read
quite a few ‘sci-fi’ books which were thought provoking, none more so than Ted
Chiang (and the movie is good but the book is great) and various sub-genres
(such as this
(space opera), this (dystopian
with a loud nerd-alert) and this
(military interstellar missions with aspects of consciousness transfer)). And I
am not even talking about the established classics here. What I am trying to
say is apart from individual literary merits (and they can be quite uneven),
they do obviously encourage you to think and question the various possibilities
and permutations of human existence which is always interesting.
And we are so immutably bound to our senses,
aren’t we? They are the triggers for our memories and the switches for our
emotions. Sunrises and bird-songs, petrichor and tang. All our memories have these
sensations as their cornerstones, the indescribable touch of warm blankets, the
taste of fingers dipped in honey jars, the goosebumps from the slightest touch.
We live our lives, accumulating these inputs and tagging some of them with red post-its,
marking them as special. I like the smell of old books, past letters from my
grandma will make me melancholic even now and I still think that the best college
lunches were the ones at Putiram (the ones we finished with rabdi, obviously, followed by a sherbet at
Paramount). And they are all linked too, the feeling of the sleeper berths,
with the rolling lullaby of a train and the faint whisper of the night-time air
mixed with the rusted smell of the brown coloured grills looking vaguely sinister
in a 5w tungsten bulb. That’s a train journey for me. Every memory can be similarly
distilled into the combination of the unique sensations they evoked. And it
weird how, even as I get older, the same 5 senses with their incredible acuity,
can combine to give me new memories each day.
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Songs I have been listening to (not really)
1. Deep Purple - When a Blind Man Cries - Well this is a song I really liked when I was an angsty teen. I am not really a Purple-head (snigger) though they have an extensive catalog of classics, but I liked this song for what I perceived as meaning that when some people complain its more notable (cause they usually don't). And cause I have issues with being blind too (but that's neither here nor there).
2. Groove Armada - Think Twice - I think its a classic. And I usually end up having multiple songs from them in whichever playlist I am making. I love a dance band, who knew (and I also simultaneously agree completely with David Mitchell here).
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Ceteris paribus (but then nothing is really)
