What drives us to consumerism

This is an era where we travel miles to sit down to conferences facing experts, diplomats and business people to discuss climate change topics, discuss peace on malignant wars that transcends centuries and generations, discuss commerce and trade for a bigger and better share of the revenue pie. It is evident that human race has gradually steeped into gluttony digging up and making use of natural resources more than what is required, acting on ethnic cleansing to get hold of occupied land for improved commercialism and complete clout. Citing circumstantial aspects - religion and race, caste and creed, clan and community is but a disguise under a restrained human mask.

If you are a city dweller and happen to hop onto any shopping complex you'll find people milling all over the premises clinging onto hyaline flashy and huge branded paper or polythene bags and at times heavier than their physical capacity to carry. Earlier I wondered how rich people are growing and so fast. Even while dining out I observed people placed next to your table was more interested in finding out what platter and drinks you ordered before making up their minds for ordering dinner. The bigger the serving on your table the better is the hospitality of the dining room manager. The "more you shop till you drop" phenomenon is so arresting that it sets a benchmark for respect and social graces for the one who's carrying the excess baggage.

I have also observed mood shifts not just restricted to adults but children as well if you're unable to buy something you fiercely desire. The tiny ones cry out at the top of their voices while the adults are smart enough to label the products either as tacky or start comparing one brand with the other silently making their way out of the shop with a hard-nosed face. Sometimes feigning to be smarting under unruly behaviour of the dull sales people hired at the shop.

Today our lifestyle is more showy and snazzy measured by yardsticks like the number of cars we own, the pockets of the city where we live, the brands we wear, the solitaire we possess, the type of membership to a club or lounge we have - priviledged, gold class or premium, the number of real estate properties we own, which schools or foreign universities we are sending our children to study, the number of company shares we own in the stock market and whether we are a prized proprietor of a boutique hotel and spa in an upmarket place and the number of followers we have in social media platform. Family reunions and festivals are weighed much on the gifts we exchange bragging our worth in monetary terms. The whole mankind, it seems, is quantifiable.

The age-old adage "Cut your coat according to your cloth" holds no sway in this era. The owning and the buying habit is epidemic. It is a naked truth that behind all the arty show the credit market takes the full advantage having the last laugh. The labyrinthine of splurge is so intoxicating that certain psychoanalysts prescribe retail therapy for people with dismal outlook towards life!

Feeling miserable I have tried my hands on retail therapy or spa outing but never sensed any magic healing. I wonder how throwing money at tangible goods will help uplift one's mood when actually you're burning a hole in your pocket.

Does tying to emulate other people's behavioural and consumption pattern fog our senses? We get caught in our own web not knowing where to tie the leash. The results are ominous indeed. Feeling low, tensions wrought, outburst of frustations in open forums, child spanking, excess drinking to erase your mind off the carnal failures - we are no longer able to rein in our lives.

Surveys worldwide suggest urban people flocking to yoga classes or taking recourse to spiritual sessions have leaped over the years. And so has the healthy living business show. So has the gun violence, more stories of rape making headlines the world over and more erosive treatment towards Mother Earth for the already bloated city resulting in extreme weather shifts in both the world hemispheres.

Who is at fault putting one's fodder to another's mouth, wasting resources in the name of imperforate development? No prize for guessing that! We, human beings, cannot live in harmony with each other, neither are we thankful for what we already have upsetting the entire ecological system of the world. Even today I do not understand what amount of booty we all should have to satiate our needs. Natural resources are limited but we have devoured them to such an extent over the eons that now the straits are clearly visible. All good things come to an end.

Our philistine nature combined with remorseless behaviour drives us to make iconic progress in science and technology both constructive and destructive. Nonchalant of the fact that life has taken control of our senses. We are mute spectators watching the gladiator in an open ring fight for his life. With the bloodbath over, we go down to the ring to clean the spot before another one comes in. The need to be socially responsible towards environment and life draws upon us once the scene of decimation comes to a close.

Albeit the cleaning up process be it in the name of poverty eradication, human rights issues of relocating refugees, environmental upgradation, making access to safe drinking water and sanitation, clean fuel and energy, cultural transcendence, community counselling and so on all comes for a price. Thus the show of going for more never ends. Self realisation is just but a paradox. 

The cleansing ewer

All social beings are freedom loving. We all steer towards minds' potpourri, contemplating hard no matter whether we are a struggling or a priviledged class. But where do we all go to restore our preserval? Where do we mull over our life's slippages? Where do we queue up for a candid soul - searching talkfest? Get ourselves free from the stereotyped and stale schtick?

Cafes, bar lounges, community clubs, libraries, spas, lakeside parks, or sitting at the attic or at the garden terrace? Or while we enjoy a drink and listen to soothing music over a friend's place or at a pet turf? How about a weekday lunching out on your own? Or it might be on some religious chattel or archealogical sites at your place?  Idling away "your" time on a pal tola nouka if your are fortunate enough to belong to a riverfront habitat? 

 

When my parents were posted outside their hometown I always watched my mom fuss over while choosing a house, especially the one that had a patio, the one with a larger patio and the one without a patio. Her selective inbuilt trait always opted for the second preferrence. My dad just followed her taste, he had a more salt and pepper expression towards the art of living. Over the years I had found my mom, on her off-days, embracing the kitchen and the flower garden outside our patio with a spirit even greater than holding onto the reins of the domiciliary life.

What was so special about a patio that my mom puppy loved it? I never asked her. Growing up I was more like a creeper blending in to my parents' likes and dislikes plucking and preferring one comportment over the other that knitted to my pubescence maturity.

Just like my mom, I too was drawn to the patio overlooking the small patch of our garden. I longed for the twilight hours knowing well that homework would soon be done with. Slipping out quietly with a book in hand and a glass of icy lemonade on sultry summer days, I snugged up on a cushioned rattan chair on the patio. Before starting to devour the book in hand, I breathed in the garden whiff emanating from the buds and flowers. I feasted my eyes on the trampled leaves on the walkway, damp earth neatly piled up hemming in the shrubs or the spade and the trowel concealed by a ripply bush. The lawnmower, the watering can and the insecticide spray bottle would be stowed away behind a hedge adjacent to our patio. The birds flocking to their nest.

Sometimes my mom plodded late into the evening hours working away silently over the rose bushes or the kitchen garden. She scrutinised every detail of the plants or the fruits they bore, ripe or raw, moth-eaten or healthy. Buttoned up in the nature's cortege she did not even press me for leaving my study table so early. At other times she would sit on the patio closely overlooking our weekly gardener's landscaping and planting skills. It was her early morning ritual to take a hike around the garden tending to the plants for a short time or making a mental note of, sipping her morning cuppa on the patio, what was needed to be ministered to later in the day in "her" time.

The patio was her ark of mental retreat. "Her" time which she only cared for and nourished wholly. Free from daily household and professional routines and worries, the patio served her as a palette of life's spectrum. Mother Nature enveloped her train of thoughts or a book satiated her insights. A cup of tea at the patio helped her hit off a conversation with family over a problem. The vast expanse of the sky looming large above embalmed her life's twinges. Those times had not yet ushered in the dotcom era so a letter from a friend or family from distant lands would be opened, read and re-read on the patio. She was high on social circles and so letters, carrying good, bad and general tidings were always addressed to her. Naturally she was predisposed to answer them not at the study table but sitting tight and comfortable at the patio chair. Her letter pads, pen, stamps and gluestick commanding the table before her. No family members were allowed to come out at the patio during that time. Her flawless handwriting, unsmudged paragraphs and fresh thoughts neatly combed the blank letter page. When the daylight was good enough she would pour over the local dailies sitting at the patio.

No doubt the patio acted as a fillip to her concentration and nurtured her mentally. Our entries, avenues and exits in life are well mapped in advance. Only to read it aloud, envisioning our success and slips at a spiritual level, and redefining our own existense needs a small space exclusive to one's own self. More like monitoring and evaluating one's own theories and ideologies and this is a day-in and day-out task. Not something like we do every quarter or once in six months sitting in closed confines of a four-walled room videoconferencing, with counterparts sitting miles away, over a corporate assessment. At the same time I'm not rebutting conferences or workshops, fairs and festivals, community hangouts or events where physical collaboration helps in stemming out ideas and philosophies for betterment. But we all need collaborating with one's own self for amelioration. Not engaging though during a hustle.

"Looking up and out, how can we not respect this ever-vigilant cognizance that distinguishes us: the capability to envision, to dream, and to invent? the ability to ponder ourselves? and be aware of our existence on the outer arm of a spiral galaxy in an immeasurable ocean of stars? Cognizance is our crest" - Vanna Bonta

The quest for ourselves, exploring the inner free voice, is mostly latent amongst us especially today when life starts at the push of a button. Enrolling for a meditation class helps but is this something you've been pushed to going with the flow or a thriving sense flooding your mind? No-one but only you are responsible for the intrinsic sparkle in environs best suited to one's own mind and reflex. An ewer is always handy helping you to penetrate and cleanse within.
 

The plethora of plunder

I opened my eyes today to a sky on the verge of tears. Sheathed in grey armour, heavy and hideous, I felt distraught in the early hours of a weekday knowing pretty well that a load of work was in the offing. The sense of fillip was somehow missing for the day ahead.

Life in Far East is typically tropical - hot and humid. With super typhoon "Haiyan" crushing Philippines's soul and spirit few days back, my mind raced back to the nature's annihilation sending a slight shudder down my spine. I bounced back to reality engaging myself in the daily routine.

Later in the evening, while I was sipping green tea and looking out of my French windows to the city's traffic slowly crawling in and the distant emerald hills and the tropical bloom, I reflected on the early morning's image. Now the sun was playing peek-a-boo with earth hiding its gleam behind the dun clouds. We do not experience winter here barring the periodical and regular heavy showers.

I remember my growing up years on a distant shore that spilled four distinct seasons - spring, summer, autumn followed by winter. The summers and winters were long and intense. I used to fall in with every seasonal variation. Our family physician scripted the same prescription every time my parents dragged me to pay a call to him. Replete in feeding and fully clothed to brave the weather proved ineffectual for me. I was feeble and frail.

Little did I know back then that I would live some years of my life on a shore apathetic to seasonal shifts. But I was living in a fool's paradise. The weather today and all over the globe is exhibiting draconian aberration - a manifestation of nature's marvel.

Mother Earth filled our laps with abundance. Be it plants for food and medicines, raw material for clothing, fossil fuels and natural reserves like coal, oil and gas, mineral and mineral ores and water bodies for running our daily lives, oxygen for breathing or wood for our habitats - she did not give us a chance for repining. The mountains and the oceans, the pebbles and the sand, the dense foliage and the wild animals, the showers and the breeze, the glaciers and the deserts - the laxity of greener choices left to mankind stands today few and far between. How sincere was our obeisance to her?

“What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” voiced Henry David Thoreau. For ages, we, the human race, have been responsible for raping her lap of luxury. We have never been able to live sustainably on our planet ever since its evolution although a robust natural ecosystem was always out there.

Even today when I pass by a garbage dump teeming with plastics in all moulds and colours, I make a sincere effort in averting my gaze towards all that is refulgent. How often do I attempt to carry my eco-friendly reusable shopping bag while I pick up my weekly grocery? When was the last time I touched and felt Mother Earth? How many times in a day do I switch on my air conditioner for cool purified air in my room? Every day I need to put the geyser on in my bathroom as I love to have hot refreshing showers. How often in a month do I use public transport for my errands? The list will dash hopes - my mind can hardly open up to the unerring responses my conscience triggers off.

I take a delight in lighting candles every day in my house when the sun sets in. I have been carrying on this ritual almost a year. Usually to savour in the ebony moment when the electric lights in the entire house are turned off. A playful act metamorphosed into energy saving feat albeit few hours of the day. I had long finished my tea and the sun had already set in. Time for the candle wicks to flicker. In retrospect the easy plunder of the nature, to which I had been a serious part of, is a blotch on our very existence. An arduous and protracted responsibility we all have to bear and do our bit to save Mother Earth from extinction. Long it's past the high time!

Turned on by the cavalcade

Life is a vintage ride. More so when the journey's quest is for the unknown. That spells theistic.

This autumn my soul's indefatigability drew me to the shores of "dhak" to drink in the soft small billows of white clouds hanging like a canopy over swaying "kans grass" lazing in the lap of exuberant mother earth. To the port of Calcutta, India ushering in Sharadotsav.
 

Bagbazar Sarbojanin, 2013

"Sharadotsav" or "Durgaotsav" is a Hindu festival celebrated by people of Bengal across the world over a period of five days - "Shasthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami and Dashami". Religion has never been a charm for me. The quintessence of being a fleck but holding onto the universe allures me to an odyssey. I worship the solitude and serenity that life springs up for us. Having said that the festival of autumn in Bengal is loud and lively, vivid and vociferous braiding the familial thread solid and secure.

With a surge of human wave thrashing the roads of Calcutta and the priests' Sanskrit hymns blaring loud over the microphone from the Durga Puja pandals lulled my senses. The mesmerizing beats of the dhak accompanied by inebriating "dhunuchi naach" spreading the sweet smelling thick smoke of powdered incense braced my inner self de-cluttering all that is not worth living for, all that flanks our spirit, body and mind everyday of our lives.

Chatubabu Latubabu bari Durga Puja, 2013

 

The aura of the autumn in Bengal acted as a cleanser strengthening my mind, heart and soul over the body which is nothing but a veneer of hatred, selfishness, jealousy, pride and arrogance. The festive clamour, the glitzy fashion and fiesta, the ravishing splendour, the gastronomic delights, the home-coming of family and friends, the versatile culture of Bengal filliped its people and tourists like me to come out and celebrate defying Calcutta's stifling weather.

Calcutta is distinctly divided into north and south. The north displays the city's soul wrapped in sheaths of archaic buildings of erstwhile rich landlords of Bengal raped of its glory by passing eons, narrow alleys, the colonial dignity marked by austerity, tradition and unvarnished hospitality.

Raja Nabakrishna Deb bari Durga Puja, 2013 Shobhabazar Rajbari

The contemporary swanky Calcutta defines the south of the city embellished in thoughts and actions fit for the e-age. Though I did some pandal hopping, resplendent in decor but painful for the limbs after hours-long queuing for a glimpse of the goddess Durga yet my inner-self turned me on to "bonedi barir pujo" (pujas celebrated in the house of age-old landlords adhering to the strictest term of tradition).

A Durga Puja 2013 pandal

Keeping with the unyielding times especially after the roll-out of "Zamindari Abolition Act" post Indian independence, the once extended families of these opulent landlords went asunder. Their riches dwindled away. Many of these families could not afford to celebrate Sharadotsav except for a handful who still celebrates the festival with the same age-old fealty and reverence minus the splendour. The candor, the modesty displayed in the "bonedi barir pujo" has a homespun ambience. The aesthetic principle of these celebrations does not get enmeshed in ornamental facets.

Shobhabazar Rajbari entrance

A number of tour guides map out a plan for "bonedi barir pujo" stopovers guiding you through and through. The travel agencies accomodate tourists with a guide, packed food and bottled water and the conveyance selected depends on the tourist's budget. The impeccable hospitality of the people of Bengal acts as an edge to tourists rounding up in its capital regardless of its shoddy state of infrastructure.

Amidst the ululating sounds of the women of Bengal offering "aarti" to goddess Durga and "sindhur khela" before she makes way to the Ganges for immersion on Dashami, the chime of oneness reverberated within myself. What I felt is extreme buoyancy and solace devoid of human fatigue. The litheness of these moments made me to avow to myself of the rugged roads that life has to tread on for all who walk over the earth's arena.

The biggest annual carnival of Bengal may end in kaleidoscopic five days, however the quest for our inner godliness and theology and the constant drive to win over our bodily utilitarianism continues. The land and its people yearns for the true essence the spirit of the festival leaves behind - goddess Durga's footprints that are meant never to be blotted from one's mind, the good fighting over the evil.   

The collateral existence

Growing up in a society where the literary world and the world of realism played a centrifugal role is certainly to spawn a generation of miscegenetic ideas and 21st century is no less. Here is man, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, caste, strata or nationality, ruling since aeons with ace time attesting to his existence. With every passing age, necessity has been the mother of invention, mankind evolved but a man's heart and mind have hemmed and hawed when it came down to the existence of his counterpart, woman.  

 

Not that I am a feminist, however, I do proclaim shooting up on the edifice of Bengal Renaissance.  This afternoon, while viewing Ray's Mahanagar, for the nth time, I was wondering women still are herded to a survival by the herdsman where they deem the place safer and seamless from the perplexities of life. Let alone working on a square platform, she is "raped" by man for her very entity since the day she enters this world, she is "raped" by man for accessing basic health care and education, she is "raped" by man given to a marriage where dowry, in the veneer of a tradition abiding wife zapped up in the partisan societal fabric, is a harbinger of wealth and domestic servitude.

 

So when you hear the news of rape in media now, happening all over the world, the angst is obvious for women of all stratum, educated or ignorant, religious or asthetic, black or white. The very morale of such activity lies in the fact that man seem to completely enjoy crushing a spirit born free whose bodyily essentiality is defined and articulated only under his thumb rule. So when you hear about religious laws sheathing women from contributing to a nation's governance and collective policies, "I have a dream" speech commemorating 50 years of Martin Luther King Jr's March on Washington signify a waning fervour in 2013. So what if a commoner giving birth to a baby boy in 2013, he is baptized as a prince to be. The blood that flows in his body is royal, his lineage truncated to paternal only. So what if a blast ripped through a bus carrying female university students makes the news headlines in 2013, let us count the hits on our social media platform we have by spreading the word to the world lapping it up with the indiscriminate fire attack by the militia on the hospital building where the injured were taken into. So what if the Indian currency plummeting, the showbiz world is feasting on the box office collections of 'Chennai Express' both in India and abroad. The emotional quotient at the cinematic climax, set at a remote village in the southern part of India, toyed with a woman's sensitivity of not being heeded to in the 21st century laves the hearts of millions and mints money pivotal to the field of commerce.  

 

Just so while writing this piece, I receive the news of an expat's wife, our families live in the same building, praying not for a girl child, time is not deathly quiet. Crossing the longtitudes and latitudes of the world does not necessarily imply that you start ignoring your ancestry and their age-old institution of belief who had bequeathed us patronage in furthering the ancestral tree that takes root in a man. I feel the vibes soft-pedalled by the expat's wife - the societal stigma associated with delivering a girl child. Stoking up the fire is her quiet plea for help. She called up to consult me in putting up a plan to set her domestic chaos straight when she leaves for home on a mother-to-be break. Men love to be cosseted so much that they simply tend to forget that with marriage comes responsibility - both financial and moral - and need more than two shoulders to lift the millstone. We women are proud to be hanger-on. And yes this of course exudes peace in domesticated lives.

This is quite apparent when the world is fixated at Syrian crisis; the first lady of Syria, toned in grandiose lifestyle, is far from the media glare. Well her husband is there fighting at the front knowing all too well that she and her children can retreat to a safe haven anywhere in the world courtesy money, power and influence.  

Watching 'Mahanagar' this weekend I mustered all that is to take beyond the film is to preserve the treasure trove left behind by Ray for our children and theirs for the collateral existence of women is likely to perish only with the extinction of human race and not anytime soon.

Harvesting happiness: The parable of concrete jungles

Harvesting happiness: The parable of concrete jungles: Every morning when my eyes reach out for the first rays of the sun, the pair has to go beyond a humongous building, to seek the light of t...

The parable of concrete jungles

Every morning when my eyes reach out for the first rays of the sun, the pair has to go beyond a humongous building, to seek the light of the day - the vast expanse of the sky, peeling itself out of a cantaloupe, spreading its dewiness aura over the universe. I sincerely imagine everyday that the gigantic edifice vanishes by some witchcraft. My heart gladdens at this very thought of drawing in the iciness and the sparkle of the day's break minus the median.

 

A childish thought indeed. Nontheless I am not playing foul here as the façade is on the verge of completion, so uninhabited. There is no cause of panic to set in the mind of the readers thinking that the building blocks might come tumbling down causing a severe damage to lives, property and neighbourhood courtesy an earthquake or a twister. I just pray for a fresh start, the morning ideal, before the city and its strait-laced life joggles in twitching my inner peace.

 

The life beyond imagination slips into reality. The tea making machine robs me of the second opportunity of my senses from settling on the tea-leaves brewing in the kitchen spilling around the aroma of the raw flavour. Setting the stop-watch the rush hour is followed by morning ablutions and breakfast. The school buses honk in rigour for the children who gradually open up from their foggy senses. The transportation league of the city's vista darts on the fitted well-planned roads and highways at the first siren of the day's crack. Moving on to expressways leaving behind the maze of sustainable skyscrapers to find its destination to aviation and port terminals in a bid to unfold its vision to new frontiers. 

 

The uniformed educated dyed-in-the-wool human race, managing to read newspapers and sipping cuppa on the way, barges in through the doors of their productive corridors trying to hit a sixer before an empty audience. The not-so-educated ones, entwined to a city's zing, too prods on to their mercantile hubs, digging into iPhones, tablets and a number of high-end gadgets and applications on their way.  The city folks' tight-lipped demeanor falls off as the day languors to weariness, feigned excitements and incitements to push harder. 

 

Do not be guided for once by the bird of good omen that the nutty city do not cross the doors of domesticity. Those who stay at the houses for a range of reasons smartly connect to the world through social media, the mélange of ideas, knowledge and thoughts, stories, images, art and culture teaching you the act of sharing, liking and disapproving. In a nutshell I do not have to know who my neighbour is, whether thy neighbour is alone and in pain and that is not important. The strategem of a city infested class is to run the extra mile. For example, when the world is hounded by what happens in Syria, albeit you might not be able to spot the country on the globe nor for a single day in your life have left the city haven, yet I should be abreast of the loss, sufferings and the misfortune befallen on the city of Damascus and participate with staunch comments on the social media. I am sure no-one heeds to my voice but my hits on the social networking circle takes me to the pinnacle of pomposity.

 

Pouring at the fashion, wellness and lifestyle magazines, gaming at playstations, music and tennis lessons, swimming sessions, cooking and dancing classes, tutorials (for additional income of the teacher and exclusive knowledge of the student), a beeline to grocery store at the fag end of a hard-laboured day, dinner and homework, after-dinner egghead work, minimal sleep hours - the city labyrinth devours the whole day and night (weekdays) sapping the physical energy and mental strength of humanity. A crafty stoical system working silently. Weekends are reserved for frantic city tours, shopping malls, cinematic multiplexes, attendance at parties punctuated by manicured expressions and discussions or a visit to the doctor or a vet if you are a proud owner of a pet.

 

I grew up in a world blanketed by Thakurmar Jhuli, Abol Tabol, Aesop's Fables, Wuthering Heights and popular classic English literature (books, of course) and not animated flicks or games uploaded on YouTube, and learned or listened to adda, the rachis of collective wisdom and intellect of one's fraternity. A herculean task for a heart whose soul lies in the  choruibhati lunch (the Bengali cookout) playing Rabindrasangeet or adhunik bangla gaan (courtesy Hemanta Mukherjee, Shymal Mitra, Dwijen Mukhopadhyay, Manna Dey) or Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner  to name a few on gramophone or radio sets but mind makes a mental note to turn out for a colleague's kid's birthday party at Papa John's nearby outlet later this month to be feasted on processed and canned food and aerated drinks. Greeting people at swanky places and confabbing over coffee at froufrou cafe hubs, exhibiting trendy outfits and splurging on gifts is deemed to be dapper in a 21st century dolorous city.

 

It is already the end of the first week of September, the autumn is in the air. I need to ring in my jogging partner who takes her dog for a walk not to leave him astray on the pruned grassy tracts of the park. She has been notified by the municipal authorities twice erring the city landscape by virtue of a inoculated pet dog. A civilised city and community has no place for undesirable elements. Two peas in a pod - deleting my account of quondam days for fear of defiling the city's young, dynamic, innovative and tech-savvy minds and the welfare organisations expunging the stray dogs from the city map for fear of rabies. 

 

The cabalistic city is a perfect hideout of human civility. Welcome to the jungle!