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.