Faith versus Rock

Faith

Some days back I wrote a post on my experiences with blogging, especially the one outcome that I was always certain was inevitable. Any human with half a brain knows that when people have access to stuff, which is offered for free, they resort to what we shall euphemistically refer to as ‘lifting’. As in lifting stuff and taking it for their own. As they cram their pockets with free stuff, a corner of their eye is on the look out to ensure nobody catches them while they are at it. That is because deep down in their heart they know that what they are doing is not “right”. Some unnamed and hard to pin down fear nags their conscience but something much more audacious holds that fear by its neck and twists it till it submits. Or dies.

However, I neither care for the fear nor the audacity. For a human being, even though we like to believe it is so, is not perfect– nor the pinnacle of evolution but just another organism that has to constantly evolve and improve itself in order to survive another day. In fact, the one thing I do care for is that millions of years from now when the sun will be a dying star, humans, as we exist today with all our illusions of grandeur and superiority, will not be the most "advanced" form of life on earth. And if some way into those million years even if the entire human species dies out, something not too hard to imagine given the way we are headed– each and every one of us as dead as the dinosaur, the universe will be indifferent.

So, how does it matter if you– yes, I am addressing you– pick up "free stuff" from my blog, embellish it a bit, add your name at the top and even get published in a national weekly. It may make you feel good about yourself– your friends may call you "awesome"– but you know what– it won’t make you immortal, no, it won’t even make you "world famous" in India. And frankly my dear let alone the universe, or the world in general, or the “world of art” that you desperately seek heck! even I don’t give a damn!

However, why is faith hanging in the middle of the first line? Yes, what about faith? If hope– in the perfectibility of humans, one of the reasons for the ‘why’ of art– is a thing with feathers, then what is faith– it has a song– does it too have a wing– and a sting? I know Emily Dickinson said that about fame. So what do we have to say for faith?

If fear is the root of all evil in humans then shall we say faith will deliver us from evil. Amen.

Well, I won’t be found lighting candles to celebrate the good I see in my fellow beings anytime soon. But I am certain I have enough faith in myself to fly off and away even if it is only to alight on the nearest shrub. However, do I too have a sting?

Rock

There’s much ado about the rock. Hard, insurmountable, immovable, undefeatable– in short, it is impossible to get around a rock. The rock lies in the middle of the path and all we can do is look at it in fear and awe. Helplessly. Does one go forward with faith or submit to the rock?

While we are stranded lets play a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’. You laugh in astonishment. Rock, paper, scissors isn’t just a mindless game one plays to control a car full of nieces and nephews or to kill time in between gossip sessions in the hostel. Wikipedia tells me that the game dates back to the Chinese Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) and now is a part of programming competitions for algorithms. And if anyone plays real time strategy games they know how important it is to have a modicum of skill in this seemingly simplistic game. For how does one choose if one has to make a choice between two things that appear to be equally good?

If you have played this game you know the possible outcomes are:

Rock blunts or breaks scissors: that is, rock defeats scissors.

Scissors cut paper: scissors defeats paper.

Paper covers, sands or captures rock: paper defeats rock.

I always choose paper. For I am willingly to risk getting cut but I shall always overcome the rock.

While you were stealing

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter. - Confucius

The Ugly

It starts innocuously. They casually take the links and repost them, without acknowledging let alone thanking you. Then they innocently re-tweet your words without mentioning it. Then they inoffensively post links of your blog to facebook without informing you. Then they blandly start writing posts that are suspiciously similar to something you had posted earlier. But that’s ok. It’s a fluke, you say. It’s even possible that the 100 monkey syndrome is an undeniable reality. What one monkey sees a 100 times, monkey inevitably imitates.

Then they start taking photographs that would be failed photocopies, if only they had not been so busy unsuccessfully trying to replicate the subject, the frame, the composition, the colours: that reflection, those trees, an entire facebook album on autumn. A photo here and an image there would be coincident, maybe even inspired, more likely derivative but entire albums; that’s taking inspiration a little too far, no?

But that’s the ugly side of life, not just the internet. We constantly experience it in some form or the other. We all are also to a large extent defenseless against it. And as with everything else in life, in this too it is the motivation and the intent that is paramount.

So, what motivates people to copy? With links, it’s often simply to be able to say they saw it ‘first’ and pretend that they still are ‘cool’ and ‘in’: in short the same petty emotions that motivates high school kids. That’s especially true for posts on facebook. But in some cases it is something slightly more pathetic. It’s the vampire syndrome: feeding on someone else’s lifeblood so that they may live to see another day.

But one can take heart from the fact that they must not be getting much sleep at night.

The Bad

Some students in New York took excerpts from my rant on an article on Hindi movies in the Guardian and used it as an ‘Indian’ point of view while discussing the overdose of ‘unreality’ that is Indian (Hindi) cinema. They somehow failed to note down my name and referred to me simply as “He”. Even after it was pointed out that they had made an erroneous assumption regarding my gender they failed to make amends. In their defense, it was most likely an inability to ‘see’ and read. While they were overdosing on cinema and Bollywood dreams, I had unfortunately pointed out something quite mundane.

Then there are those who use IP blocking services to troll the blog going back and forth through the posts. Who are they? Well, I’d just say:

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

The Good

In the early days I posted some sets of photographs on Flickr and a few days later got a mail. My Amsterdam and London photographs were to be a part of Schmap iphone travel guide. It signified all that is good about the social media.

Mr. Pritish Nandy on seeing my photographs for the first time via a tweet (he didn’t even know my name) said, “You are a very good photographer. Never doubt it.” It’s been some years since. It still feels good.

A blog post I wrote on protests among urban Indians, in particular ‘Meter Jam’, generated a lot of discussion online, another on walking in Delhi got posted in Down to Earth, a post on the dark side of  ‘pub bharo’ and the pink chaddi campaign got published as a letter in Tehelka. The posts on books, poetry, movies, Joan Eardley, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins are helping some students with their term papers, I suppose from the views they generate: though I must add what Dr. Malvankar remarked in the first year of graduation itself, “She writes very well, but her answers will not get her many marks in the exams.”

Most importantly despite being separated by age, nationality, culture, time zones, I have met people who wept at the arboretum, felt akin to the winter bird and had empathy for the worried cows. They were almost like me! That has been not just the good but also the best part.

In The End

There’s a famous scene in Good Will Hunting where the grad student Clark, regurgitates text he has read in some book while trying to embarrass Chuckie, a construction worker, before some girls in a bar only to meet more than his match in Will, a college janitor and the main character in the film.

Will: See the sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.
Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree, and you'll be serving my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.
Will: [smiles] Yeah, maybe. But at least I won't be unoriginal.

That brings me to the final point. This blog isn’t about me, in as much as any novel isn’t about its writer or any photograph isn’t about the photographer. By that I mean the “I” in the blog posts often isn’t me. The “you” most definitely never is I. And the ‘they’ in this post are all people I know.

So, how does someone justify co-opting someone else’s unreality?

Just like people have different motivations for imitating others, other people have different motivations for not being like anyone else. Sometimes the motivations of the two sets of people overlap. Often they don’t. Somewhere overhead swings the sword of Damocles called mediocrity.

On Blogging

“I write fiction. Every incident that I have ever put down on paper is imagined. Also I am a compulsive liar. So now ask what it is that you wanted to know,” she says with a beguiling smile while moving her bejeweled finger as if conjuring up this entire rendezvous out of thin air.

“If only my life was as interesting as my words. If only the people I knew as enigmatic. If only…Ah! It is these ifs that probably made me a writer,” she continues as a tiny ting echoes when she picks up the cup. She must be at least eighty a faint voice seems to whisper.

A few hours and many such exchanges later she says, “One would think writing is as easy as snapping one’s fingers. Look at all of us. Are we all writers or what? Margaret Atwood, in a NY Times interview says of the flood of new writers ‘It’s like everyone’s blogging about how they brushed their teeth this morning.’ Though Margaret, the realist that she is, does say, ‘The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.’ That probably explains 147 followers for someone who confidently misinterprets simple cinematic plots and if challenged hides behind the, ‘it’s my blog.’ defense line. How lovely.”

“Friends honour each other with awards and collectively feel creative and accomplished just like that. And to think it took Gabriel Garcia Marquez seventeen years to write The Autumn of the Patriarch. Mediocrity applauding mediocrity. Must be very comforting.”

“Oh yes! I would love to blog.”