Kartikey Sehgal

Foreigners are silly. They are not very smart. I don’t deny this assertion by certain Indians used to traveling the world villages. Instead, I accept that foreigners are silly.

And therein lies their charm and power. It takes a certain silliness to live life merrily. And to know life.

This ‘foreign silliness’, which comes across to Indians as ‘lack of intelligence’, is simply a case of delayed mental boredom.

They don’t know as much maths and science at a certain age as we do -  I hear. This is true to an extent and I consider this a positive civilizational trait.

An average Indian student may know more mathematics than the average foreigner of the same age, but the average foreigner need not know more than the Indian. It doesn’t matter.

What we overlook is that at any given time, there are certain foreigners who know as much – if not more – than the finest Indian students. While the other average foreigners don’t care about math and science. Why should they? They will spend their time elsewhere.

Indians seemed obsessed with the term ‘average’. How does it matter that the average foreigner, whose field of interest is not mathematics, knows lesser than the average Indian who may invariably force himself to a job out of a social compulsion of status?

The average foreigner, with lesser mathematic skills, will employ himself in other fields of his liking, for which his society will praise him and his government will provide him with opportunities. If at all his job is not to the society’s liking, then the law will protect him.

This perceived silliness is a mixture of courage and wisdom – interdependent qualities.

Symbolically, imagine the European countryside with its young children frolicking among green forests and lakes and ponds. That’s the image that is often presented to me; ‘they are just not smart like Indian kids’.

If silliness were a failure, then Europe wouldn’t have green fields and ponds and rivers and electricity. They seem to have done well despite their history of conquest and plunder.

If they were a failure, then immigrants wouldn’t have settled there in vast numbers and used their measures of social welfare to their advantage.

This silliness is an attribute you would want to see in children and your self, if you were not blinded by fear and aversion to creation. Fear of failure and an imagined life of penury. Fear of social shame.

Silliness demands multiple perceptions of life. Whereas fear makes you stick to the books and journals and other socially approved artefacts.

Consider the silly foreigners – babbling about and talking inanities – as freer and braver (and not stupid). They have more opportunities than Indians in discovering and pursuing the streams of their choice. They can take failure better as they can perceive it in myriad ways. Hence, their art and cinema has myriad expressions whereas Indian architecture has diminished.

Kartikey Sehgal

“Do you have Jay-Z on your computer?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to put it in?”

“No, I don’t.”

She turned to look straight at her table, not far from where we were seated. Her malfunctioned laptop lay there, along with an empty cup of coffee.

“You don’t really listen to Jay-Z, do you? And you don’t like wearing such skirts either.”

“No, I do. I mean I listen sometimes… “, she halted and looked at her skirt, probably worried if it showed too much. She ran her hands along the length of her skirt and till her bare knees. Then she spoke without much confidence. “Actually I am not used to wearing such clothes. My husband wants me to wear them though. Am actually from a small town you know.”

You wouldn’t know if you saw her walk into the cafe making long strides with her slender legs, eyes blinded by dark sunglasses and a figure-hugging top that indicated gym-fad. You wouldn’t know if she walked to you and asked in somewhat accented English if she could use your laptop to send an urgent email.

I was listening to Franz Schubert when she interrupted me with her request. “Only if you have short nails”

It was while typing the mail that we talked about Jay-Z and her small-town roots.

She looked at the music playlist on the screen. “What is this Schubert?”

I told her that he was a classical composer.

“Oh, I had a brother once. He listened to all such people. Loud violins and all. I would then leave his room and get-out you know.”

A definitive pause. Her smile withered at my non-response.

“What’s your mother tongue?”

“Why, I speak in mostly English. And also Hindi”, she hastily dismissed my question. She would excuse herself from my table now, I thought.

—

She told me stories about her home-town; noisy streets, small lanes and secret crushes on teachers; how she stealthily went to her brother’s room and replaced his classical music disc with her ‘Barbie Girl’ disc. When one day, she replaced his music collection with her collection of love songs, he scolded her. She fake-cried until their parents made him apologise. “I lived for such moments”, she said in chaste Hindi. “Just remembering them makes me laugh so much!”

She was slouching, her left elbow on the table supporting her head. Hair strands were not perfect like before. Her skirt had ridden up a little, showing a little of her thighs.

I don’t know whether she saw me looking. Perhaps she did because she spoke about her husband.

“He is the son of my father’s long-time friend. They shifted to Mumbai and then one-day they sent us the rishta. My parents were thrilled about Mumbai. He works in ____ company and puts any kind of music in his computer unlike you! I remember I was in my dotted pink pyjamas and very very untidy hair and not taken a bath for two days when I heard the news.

You know my brother gave me Ravi Shankar classical cd as a wedding gift. As if I will listen. Do you have Beyonce or Hanna Montana on your system?”

“I don’t keep such music on my laptop. We don’t like it.”

“Arre! So rude. We don’t like it matlab? Is he as picky as you or what? I think you too deserve to have your music collection replaced by my songs. Swish-swish swash”, she said making a sword like motion with her hand. And then she laughed heartily at her actions.

I made her read some of my songs. She claimed to like the words. “But how can I trust a girl with a taste in music such as yours?”

“I also listen to ‘super-intelligent’ music sometimes, okay? Never meet my brother. Both of you will gang-up and take my case…
Do you go to places to write songs?”

“Sometimes I walk, sometimes on my bed in messy clothes and unkempt hair and sometimes at the beach.”

That struck a nerve. She didn’t respond to me but just looked away, though she was still attempting to keep her smile. Was it my mention of the beach or was it the messy bed? Perhaps she longed for her carefree messy days…

The smile returned and she attacked me with an accusation.

“I saw you looking at my legs. I saw you so don’t deny.”

I couldn’t deny and she couldn’t wait for my acceptance or denial, or wait to read my eyes. Her husband had walked in. She hastily and formally introduced us and thanked me for letting her send the mail. Her husband looked displeased and walked with her to the table where the girl packed her laptop; a shiny new Mac that appeared to me an artificial though glossy entity; an indicator of something about her.

She packed her bag and checked the hem-line of her skirt. She probably wondered if I was looking at her legs. As she walked to the café counter to pay the bill she dabbed her palm on her hair and adjusted her top. I didn’t see her eyes again; those sunglasses were back to business.

Her husband walked out first. She opened the door and turned to face me while walking out. She smiled from behind those dark glasses. “Everything is fine”, that’s how I interpreted it. Like wanting to bridge two worlds, two different realities. Those glasses were very dark.

I put on the headphones and went back to Franz Schubert. Symphony No. 2: Andante in E flat major.

Submitted as an entry to Dell’s and IndiBlogger’s ‘Change is Easy’ Contest

Kartikey Sehgal

Sitting in a library inside a coffee house. Outside, there are fragrant flowers. I remember a conversation with my friend at this very place a long time ago – between 1948- 1950. The setting was different then. Two friends talking about a girl.

Flowers are in an alliance with the vanity of women. At once, the romantic would breathe the air of jasmine flowers and harbour notions of never-ending love. It is when we can smell the unseen fragrances that we can imagine the unseen future. But the life of both is always at peril. The fragrances will surely fade, and become a memory. And the unseen future, that too may live only in memory.

She never liked coming in unannounced; what if the jasmine fragrance distracted us from her presence?

There she would stand, by the door and smile. She wanted us to turn to look at her.

She would stand there for minutes, waiting for us to turn towards her.

And see her smile.

And see her smile. Then she would walk towards us, with her smile reminiscent of her South-Indian upbringing of manners and courteousness.

Once when her parents caught her with us at this place, she made us her teachers.

I had to explain algorithms to her over reams of napkins while they looked on suspiciously.

And then the fragrances on her; would you still say that flowers are in connivance with women. What if the musk from her body be drowned in the smell of jasmine? Would the ever-lasting romantic fume in agony? Of what value would those jasmines be when he goes out of this place?

If she knew she didn’t show it.

Once I moved in very close and my breathing was unmistakably loud. I think she knew we smelled her perfume. She never showed it.

Who says life’s mysteries are in the distant future? We have bundles of mystery walking beside us all wrapped in innocence.

She wore that musk for us. She put it deliberately. For us.

And neither of us spoke a word about it. It was our life-long secret game.

Life-long…

(pause. They drink coffee and deliberate. Then the scene changes to the present where he deliberates alone. Then back to the past – to the conversation)

Better to have seen and lost than to not have seen at all. The big red flower walked in through the door to where we were having coffee. It offered us its petals. Each petal a different memory. We felt them in anticipation. When the plucking is done, nothing will remain of the flower. And the silkiness of the petals will evaporate. But would you rather not see the big red flower walk in through the door and offer you memories.

Imagine we are seated, with the big red flower when she walks in and we don’t turn. The flower is offering us its memories. She waits but we don’t look. She walks to us a bit angrily and then, the aroma of coffee, the red flower and musk mix around us.

Kartikey Sehgal

On the impermanence of life. And the constant passing of time.

The wind blew into the home by saying hello to the bell of God. A small silver bell hung by a nail and it twisted and danced when wind came to it. ‘Wind is saying hello to us, mother’, the girl would say or keep it in her mind to tell her mother when she returned from outdoors.

Perhaps the wind brings some message, some signal from God. In vacant moments, the girl would reflect –all of her tiny frame – on what God wants to tell her. Her thoughts would be fodder for her future conversations with mother. Sometimes she would grow impatient – when would mother return. Once, in this impatience, her mind wandered to spoons and steel and silver, and how they reflect light. Would she dare to reflect light to the outside sky at night. She could use the torch on the spoon and reflect the light out of the window. Perhaps it would light the sky and she would see something scary. Did she want to see a scary thing?

The minds of children wander a lot. All those wanderings dwell in safety. Like this girl’s dream of walking on a cobbled street somewhere on a very steep mountain. She didn’t see her mother in the dream but she could tell her about the dream and hope that someday they would walk the cobbled street on the mountain. Even scary dreams have their destination in the comfort of mother’s arms. And like this, time passes. Happiness and sadness are based in a certain comfort.

The young girl’s hut was empty. Her mother had passed away. Where once hung photographs was now vacant wall. The girl could, however, remember which photos came where. These were now kept in boxes. They would soon move to another home. The small silver bell of God should stay here, the girl decided. In this lonely hill, where farmers’ and workers’ homes were at some distances, the bell would keep company to this lonely house. It would make sounds at night when the wind would come into the house with force. How lonely would the home be without them now, the girl thought.

She grew scared of dreaming at night. Aunt was nice but she was not mother. The girl was told that she would slowly mature and dreams would get more comfortable.

On the day of departure, the little girl stepped out to the meadow when the sun had cast a golden-yellow colour in the sky. The sun is never green, like the grass.

She played with the grass blades and the wind passed through her hair. Behind her lay the home made of wood, mostly. It was essentially a very large and spacious room with thin wooden partitions to segregate the kitchen and the rooms. This home was on top of a small hill. There were other homes on the slopes and on top of the surrounding hills. At night, you could see the lights at long distances; every home had an attached tube-light to its side and it was a rule to switch it on in the evenings.

The and hill sloped steeply in front of the girl. She was not to go there as mother would be angry. She was not to be out at this hour on a windy day but she took the liberty. She will explain and pacify her mother later. Except that when she dreamed of her, others said it was not good. Perhaps maturity means forgetting, the girl thought.

When you look through the green-paper from the craft bag, the sun does look green, and everything around you looks very green. She thought of getting the paper but remembered that everything was neatly put into the boxes. Aunt had done a wonderful job of packing. Nothing should be disorderly, she said.

The sun left its golden-yellow hue. The wind was feeble, it will pick speed in the evening. The grass blades were the same as the girl had always remembered them. She touched them, feeling their contours and picking out the sharper ones. The wooden home was behind her. With the silver bell of God, she remembered.

Kartikey Sehgal

Passion is, that ends. Passion operates on the horseback of time. Humans operate on the illusion that passion will never end.

Where should lie the passion.

Should the passion be about work, idea, or the realisation that passion and non-passion have little bearing on the time in life. Say, composing music on a bright sunny morning on a hill station, in a home stating as its pride a manicured lawn with colourful flowers on the edges, so that they stand out against the clear blue sky when seen from an angle below the flowers. The artist, the composer, may spend time in nature’s company seeking delight in colours and shapes. And then, briskly, walk towards the lone chair in the garden and contemplate on music. And know, that the passions are of his choosing. That what the world currently calls passion is the mind of the lesser artist, the closed mind.

This mind seeks not the multitudes of life, like most children do before they are spoiled to be adults. This mind’s passion, then, is directed by the society and it seeks thrill thinking of it as his own. When what is his – is what’s in him. The passions are applied.

If all eternity be void of passion’s storms, whose fault?
God! that eternity should be so barren — Yours or mine?

–Allama Iqbal

Passion is a substitute for time. How wisely will the time be spent. When I look back-what would my life have meant.

Passion stops thought. When you singularly declare all your energies towards a pursuit, you have no time, or little time, to reflect on how life is – in actuality – devoid of passion. That which will end- is not the sign of passion.

If life will end, then is it a passionate affair. Do you take upon a job and declare your passion thus—this too will end. Passion operates on the horseback of time. Humans operate on the illusion that passion will never end.

Therefore, the dearest of human emotions are falsities. Mere illusions. The knowledge of the death of passions is accompanied by fear and more false emotions generated to defeat this death. The smiles are alluring, the grip firmer and the body warmer. Fear takes the form of accommodation. And patience is seen as a natural part of human nature, and not external and supplemental to fear. 

If passion is that ends, then what is the highest form of human endeavour, of work, of creation. That which ends with death?

Kartikey Sehgal

If you believe in emotions, then life is essentially a tragedy. Which is why women cry a lot; they pass through a jigsaw of emotions. And men, supposedly, don’t cry as much as women. They are the logical side to the woman’s emotional being.

Furthermore, happiness is relative to sadness. Happiness is, despite the tragic nature of life; of deaths and innumerable stresses. Happiness is not absolute. If it is absolute, then only as a state of mind; but that state is not natural–it is brought about through practise and meditations.

It is the logical that understands truths about life, in varying degrees, according to the intellectual capacities. However, it may be said that almost every man recognises, even if subconsciously, the tragic nature of life.

The emotional, too, sees the tragic nature of life, but she is compelled to forgo the truth in favour of romance and illusions of romance and happiness; the various books and movies promoting this fallacy. The logical, too, is affected by the media that sells falsities to make money.

Therefore it becomes essential that man stays man despite the changing society. Fashion and feminism must not come in the way of man and his logical nature. If man loses his potential, then the society would be in disarray, and many of you would point out that it already is in this post-feminist or super-feminist culture.

When man loses or lessens his logical nature, then women may take it upon themselves to be logical. A world made up of emotional men and logical women would succeed only after either gender has absolutely subdued and suppressed their instincts. It would still be a volatile world, with the pressure of instinct leading to misery for either genders.

The person–man or woman–who sees and recognises the tragedy of life can claim happiness. For is happiness not the recognition of truth? A person who is closer to truth is closer to happiness, and there may come a state when neither joy nor sorrow would leave too lasting an impression on this man of truth.

Kartikey Sehgal

A series of mails I am writing to a friend I haven’t met for many years. Our conversations are on email only. They are lovely though rare.

there is no absolute. The quest for the absolute, however, is absolute.
The wisdom that this quest is meaningless maybe absolute.
For instance, the wisdom that while I am searching for absolute happiness, I know that there is no absolute and so I must just enjoy the journey.

Those who don’t have this wisdom feel thrilled on a discovery. And dejected again when the thrill vanishes, for, there is no absolute. They may blame people, events, philosophies for their dejection and look for new ones. But the blame is of no use. For there is no absolute.

The only absolute is the lack of absolute. But since there is no absolute, any assurance of the lack of the absolute is nulled.
We live and die, and procreate a bit.

Alas, there is no absolute. The immortality of the green fields, of sunflowers, of regeneration, is a subject of the mind. The mind lives all that the body won’t live long enough to see. And it rejoices in its created phenomena. The mind is the battlefield. And the kingdom. But even the mind is not the absolute. It perishes with the body.

And so the mind creates. Music, literature, art, physics. And then it attempts to make the lifetime into a moment. A pleasant moment that encapsulates immortality. Let the lifetime be spent in the feeling of immortality. The mind is then free from the actualities, the realities. Fantasy enters the mind-sphere. The unpleasantries are dealt with through charities. Until the mind takes the gun and shoots itself. Death is achieved instantly, without the botheration of reflecting upon it. The mind and the body are united at last. Fantasy leaves the mind-sphere.

Is death the absolute. It is, at least, the natural. And until life after death can be deciphered, it is not the absolute. We live and die, and work a bit.

Kartikey Sehgal

If the entire nation joins hands against corruption, then who is really corrupt?

Many (most) people become part of ‘movements’ to feel that they are ‘doing something with their life’. It gives them something to celebrate, something to ‘feel’; the word ‘emotion’ is a keyword.

Revolutions and ‘movements’ are important when people are bored. They want to be part of something important to give worth to their life. Money does not play that role. People realise that they don’t deserve their money and success and that they would come across as ‘normal’ if they removed their personality masks.

Movements maybe good for the society as they help suppress immediate large-scale dissent. By the act of accepting demands, governments come across as reasonable and improvable. People won’t have the time and energy after a movement to keep track of every development and it is possible for governments to get reprieves for certain actions. After all, people need to celebrate their victory, the ‘change’ or the ‘revolution’. However.

Emotions are transient, human life is limited.

Eventually, the truth about the hollowness of their actions strikes them. But, they don’t accept the truth. Accepting it would mean that what they considered as an important part of their life was wasteful. This would make them feel like idiots who are unable to comprehend their life. It would keep them in a doubt over their capability to make decisions. Hence they think that ‘things have not changed’ or ‘things are changing very slowly’. They make more demands and become aggressive in their proclamations for change and revolution. Their aggressiveness tries to hide every doubt they have over their life’s decisions. The shouting and posturing makes them feel that they are not themselves responsible for their unhappiness but that the enemy, in this case the government, is doing something to prevent happiness.

They win again. And celebrate again. This time with greater force. Then, once again, they are scared about their life. Will I be happy now?

Hyped revolutions and movements make the nation fearful and eventually cause greater unhappiness. If people accept their unhappiness, then the nation is fine; then the people know that there are other ways to look for a better life, like choosing instinct over greed in selection of education and jobs (unless greed is the positive motivating factor of life).

If people refuse to accept their unhappiness then the nation is headed for anarchy. There is no limit to peoples’ dissatisfaction, and these so called ‘movements’ give them a precedence to engage in further unrest.

Therefore, hyped revolutions and movements may cause anarchy. So what is the solution.

You need wise people and men of steel to lead the nation. Then there is no need for such movements. If people were smart enough to solve their own problems then they would solve them without needing leaders and representatives. They would be happy. The fact that they are not happy shows that they need strong leadership.

How different is the current movement from the violent ‘movement’ in Gujarat in 2002. Don’t look at the rights and the wrongs and remember that either community thought that they were fighting against ‘corruption’. What led to this major ‘movement’ was a thousand movements held every year, albeit on a smaller scale. This changed after 2002; there have been no riots (perhaps one) in the state. People themselves tick off any movements against the government, demonstrated best through the election results and not through the street-movements of the past.

That’s what’s required at the centre. People should celebrate the election of a strong leader. That’s where their win lies. Men should be proud to choose men. Right now, men don’t choose men and then cry and blame. Furthermore, they celebrate when the corrupt politicians—the lesser men—listen to some demand. This behaviour is not characteristic of the higher-males but of the second-raters.

Make men of honour and choose men of honour – should be the policy of this nation. That makes for a nation of honour.

Kartikey Sehgal

Many people pursue higher (master’s) education without thought

We often study to stay away from our passions*. Studying is comfortable and acceptable for parents as it lives up to their ideal of coping-with-the-west. Pursuing activities other than the hobby of studying makes them terrified and often violent. They are not proper parents in the sense that they will not encourage the child to do what his heart desires. Any extra-curricular activity must be an appendage to the ultimate goal of a money-making and a respectable profession, the latter being ordained by the sect of similar-minded people in a society.

Indian parents’ obsession with studying is determinant of a slave-mentality. It tells the kids that the only way you can measure up to the rich western nations is through studying. The foreigners, of course, can successfully take up professions that use their skills and wisdom and are not reliant on rote-learning.

Indian parents are not comfortable in sending their children to art schools, music schools and sports schools. The prevailing top-notch universities cater to a small minority of students many of whom rely on rote-learning to clear the tough entrance examinations. Our generation of parents and grandparents didn’t make many outstanding universities; another determinant of the slave mentality.

I shall now move to the scenario of a student enrolled in a master’s degree at some university. He has just bought himself two years of security; the parents would feel he is doing something worthwhile, never mind that their child is wasting his time in a course he doesn’t swallow with distinction; as long as there is some food on the table.

The boy, of course, would be confused during his studying time at the university, popularly referred to as education. Would he have time to first search and then pursue his passions considering he would be spending time learning things he doesn’t like? He could experience a feeling of guilt for being untrue to the textbooks and hence untrue to the expectations of his parents. Should he find a career in what he is learning—a seemingly safer option—or should he leave aside the pressures and pursue what he wants.

I think again of the first sentence.
We often study to stay away from our passions.

* in reference to master’s courses at universities

Kartikey Sehgal

A conversation on the decision to die.
C and J.

“Want to inform you that I’ll commit suicide”, said C.
“Commit suicide…hmmm…” J muttered to himself, bit his upper lip and then relaxed.

A moment later, C put himself in the chair. Their black coats were the only colour in vicinity.

“Ok, let’s get over it. Reasons”
“Reason. My will has been amputated. I am not my person”, said C.

“So you know the reason. Extend your will now”
“It’s too late. I have realized it.”

“And so you must live. Had you not realized yourself… that…”
C smiled. “Had I”, he stated, “not realized it I would have lived on, unaware, but now I have the sense of being and I exercise a decision”.

J bit his upper lip.
“Yes. Since you know that you were subdued, you can kill yourself. Otherwise you would have lived.”

“Any more?”
“Yes. You have awakened. So live now, live your way”.

“I don’t know how to”.
“I could teach you”.

“Ok. In that case I may reconsider. Of course, I know that you can’t teach me. That’s not the actual word”.

“We know that”.

“And I trust that you don’t want me to not die but you want me to live”.
“Don’t ask”, said J.

“Alright. Come over for lunch. Spend a day with me”.
“Sure, I’ll phone you my schedule. I am pro life.”

“So am I, J”.