Life and Death

Until recently, I used to be a guy who was extremely afraid of death. Most of us choose to ignore it and get on with our lives. Death always seems to happen to someone else and we pretend that that is the way things are. We refuse to accept that one day it will be our eyes that will close for ever and it will be around our limp bodies that loving relatives (if we were loved enough) will gather and grieve. That, to me, was a frightening prospect. The thought of dying one day terrified me.

What was most frightening about death was the uncertainty that surrounded it. No one knows when and where they are going to die. No one knows how they will die. Until it’s too late, that is. Death is the last threshold, the final frontier to cross in one’s life. The greatest uncertainty of all is whether there is something after death. If there isn’t anything, what then? What use are all my accomplishments and achievements if in the end what I get in return is a permanent blackness that will never go away? That used to be my attitude. Until recently.

What happened to me a couple of days ago was nothing short of miraculous. The thing that was so incredible about it was that it all happened in my head. There were no external factors to influence this thought process (unless I counted all those nerdy, scientific books I’ve been reading – and these couldn’t have been more than a distant, subtle influence). It was as if the answer to all my fears was within my head and it just came out by itself.

The key to the answer was to think rationally. Rather than asking why we die, why don’t I ask why we live? Life is a sort of contradiction. Why should life exist at all in this universe? Billions of years ago, for some reason, in the middle of a frothing, seething soup that covered the planet, a few molecules got together and began interacting in a funny way. Billions of years later, those molecules have multiplied and reside within each and every one of us. Why? What are the chances of such a phenomenon occurring? The fact that life came into existence is so thunderously phenomenal that it ought not to have happened.

So you see, the fact that we live is weirder than the fact that we die. The old cliché that “death is natural” takes on a whole new meaning. Death is natural. In fact, it is far more natural than life. The whole universe is in a process of stabilization. Heavy elements like Uranium break down to become lighter, more stable elements. Volatile elements like potassium combine almost immediately with other elements to form more stable compounds. Unstable lava solidifies to become stable rock. Life on the other hand is not about stabilization. It’s about the reactions that take place during the stabilization process. Life thrives upon reactions. Our bodies, no matter how stable they are, are hosts to hundreds of reactions that keep us moving. Therefore, in a stabilizing universe, a bunch of reactions that fuel our bodies cannot be expected to last for ever. The fact that they took place at all is incredible. That is why death, which is the final stabilization in our lives, has to occur. It is natural.

That is when I realized that life is a greater mystery than death. Why did life occur? And why do we exist? Do you know that when two genetic units combine to form a new strand of DNA, the number of permutations and combinations that can occur to shape the characteristics of the new gene runs into millions? And yet, for some reason, not yet known to us, when an egg is fertilized by a sperm, only one set of characteristics emerge and it is this set that makes up the baby which will later be born. Why that particular set? How and why did nature decide what the colour of my eyes and how deep my voice will be? You, who is reading this blog, could have easily been of the opposite sex or have your mother’s smile instead of your father’s but you don’t. Why?

Some people will say “It’s all a part of god’s great plan” Fine. But, assuming that god exists, why should he or she plan it this way? Why did god choose you to be born before your little sister and not the other way around? But I’m digressing from the topic. The point I’m trying to make here is that the phenomenon of life is far more mysterious than the phenomenon of death. And I used to brood too much on what was far less mysterious.

Like I’ve said before, my biggest fear about death used to be the uncertainty that surrounded it and (im) possibility of life after death. But thinking rationally again, our belief in life after death depends upon our definition of life. How can we define life? Is life a situation where a piece of matter can sense what goes around it, reacts to these happenings and (in the case of intelligent life) contemplates about them? In that case, life is nothing more than collection of information, processing it to obtain results and acting upon that information.

If life is such, then our views about life after death become very easy to frame. If life is collection of, processing of and reacting to information, then there can be no life after death because once your sense organs stop functioning, there can be no collection of information. If there’s no collection, there can be no processing and if there is no processing, there can be no reaction. Life ends with death and nothing goes on.

But a lot of us (I say ‘us’ because I include myself in this group) have a ‘gut feeling’ that there is more to life than just a flow of information. There is something greater, higher and more supreme than just simple information when we think of the concept of life. But if this is true, then as of now, we have no clue about what this greater, higher part of life is. We have to try and find out what this is but as of now, we have no idea. But if our gut feeling is true, then this higher, greater thing should be able to survive the death of flow of information. In that case, there is nothing to worry about because something will survive after death.

And should we worry if the answer is otherwise and nothing survives after death? No, simply because there is nothing we can do about it. As I have already pointed out, life is a far more interesting and incredible concept than death. It will do everyone good if we stop worrying about death and start wondering about life and living it properly.

On the Subject of God

A friend of mine recently passed me this book called The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, a scientist whose name I am familiar with thanks to his previous work The Selfish Gene. When showing me the book, my friend commented “It’s a highly controversial book…but extremely thought-provoking.” Now that I have started reading it, I feel that no other description is more apt.

The God Delusion, in one sentence, is an argument against the existence of god. Now you can see why my friend considered it controversial. In these days, when fanatics from every religion are ready to jump down your throat and claw their way out, even thinking about the non-existence of god is blasphemy. Indeed, ‘blasphemy’ is the term that is used by most English-speaking evangelists (of any religion) while referring to such atheistic beliefs. I have to admire Dawkins’ guts. Not only does he have to contend with hot-headed religious crusaders who will be ready to throw him down the nearest available volcano but also with aghast academic theologians, mortified television evangelists, affronted ritualistic priests, hurt spiritual gurus and last but definitely not the least, a largely god-believing public who think he’s either joking or eccentric (or both). I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s physically attacked by some zealot in the near future.

Why does God make us so emotional? Let’s face it, most of us do not involve god in our daily lives apart from a morning prayer. Whether or not, God grants us success in our lives, most of us do not have any objection to labelling these successes as our own. A lot of us tend to remember god only during dark and difficult times. I do it myself. There’s this popular e-mail that keeps coming back to my account about god and man walking on a beach, leaving two sets of footprints except at more rough places where there is only one set. Man accuses god of abandoning him during hard times but god replies that the one set of footprints belongs to god and he was carrying man in his arms during those times. A rather warm fuzzy story but one which is also truthful. Far from god abandoning man during difficult times, it is man who abandons god during good times. Neale Donald Walsh in his book Conversations with God describes a scene where god tells him “When disease doesn’t exist, people don’t need doctors; when legalities don’t exist, people don’t need lawyers; when conflict doesn’t exist, people don’t need armies; therefore when problems don’t exist, people don’t need God!” Though I’ve taken this sentence slightly out of context, I don’t think people will disagree with the views I’ve put forth over here.

There are millions, especially in India; however who will disagree with me. They’ll claim that god is an integral part of their daily lives. I can just imagine those indignant replies that will be directed at me right now
“How dare you say that, I say? I pray to god at least twice a day. I go to temple once every week. I perform seven pujas a year! If this is not devotion, then what is?”
“I am a devout follower. I perform namaaz every day. I go to the mosque every Friday. I have already gone on Haj once and will go at least two more times. Allah is forever guiding my life.”
“I call myself religious. I go to church every Sunday. I say prayers every night. I’m the one who says grace before every meal, thanking god for what he has provided us. And I am not the only one. There are hundreds like me who involve themselves with god everyday.”

But is this really devotion? Is one’s extent of devotion really measured by how many pujas you perform, how many times you go on Haj or whether you say grace before meals or not? This is the biggest mistake that most religious people make. How many self-declared religious people actually contemplate their nature of existence, on the structure of this universe, on the beauty of this world that we live in or even dwell on the existence and nature of god? Do they ever seek to question why certain things happen in their lives? No. Most people will simply say “It’s god’s will.” But why? Why should god do what he (or she) is doing to you? Why should god grant some people extreme success while punishing others with failure even if the respective parties worked equally hard at achieving their objectives?

To some, that might be blasphemy. But to me, there is no greater objective in any spiritual or religious quest. When a mother tells her daughter that the latter should not consume drugs, the daughter doesn’t blindly obey. She’ll want to know why. If the mother exerts her authority and says “I’m your mother and I’m saying so. That’s why!”, the daughter will go on and try drugs anyway because she wasn’t satisfied with the given answer.. Yet when the gods apparently told us “People of lower castes are polluting.”, nobody wanted to know why. They just blindly obeyed what was written in the Manusmriti and as a result our country is fiercely divided today. Why don’t more people question what is written in our ancient texts? By this I don’t mean just Hindu texts or Muslim works or Christian writings but every religious document in the world that orders society to follow some path in life or the other. I’m not saying that one should blindly rebel against these teachings. By questioning, one should ascertain what principles and laws that are listed in these writings are beneficial to one’s life as well one’s society and what are not. Then, one should incorporate the beneficial parts into one’s life and expel the irrelevant or dangerous parts. That’s the way a society progresses.

What are my personal beliefs? I don’t agree with Dawkins’ view that god doesn’t exist. I guess according to him, I would be labelled a deist. I find it hard to believe that this perfectly structured universe with a number of amazing natural laws was not created by some superior intelligence. I like to think of this universe as a computer programme, ordered to evolve by itself from a few basic laws and constraints which have been fed into the programme by some super-intelligent programmer. The programmer then sits back and watches his world develop gradually. He or she does not intervene, he or she does not interfere. He or she just watches. He or she is neither cruel nor benevolent. He or she just is.

Richard Dawkins classified believers and non-believers into seven different categories ranging from blind devotion to blind atheism and including everything in between (to know more about this classification, read the book – page 73). I personally feel I am a mixture of category 2 and category 6 – I strongly believe in the existence of god but I live my life as if god doesn’t exist. Of course, there are dire circumstances where I abandon all my theories and just pray, hoping to attract the attention of that great programmer and force him or her to intervene. But this is only when I have exhausted all my other options and is more for my own personal comfort and hope than for anything else. And if the dreaded event does pass, I attribute it to god if no other reason can be found.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to finish The God Delusion before I’m declared a heretic.

Musing on Movies

Indian cinema is often classified into two categories. Firstly, there is the so-called commercial type. Films belonging to this category are the most recognizable films made in India and the characteristics of these films, I heard, are now considered to be the hallmarks of a typical bollywood film everywhere. These movies often showcase an escape from the reality - exotic locations, expensive cars that never seem to lose their pearl-glow finish (unless they are doomed to be utterly destroyed in a chase sequence), dance numbers that are a riot of colour and noise, gravity-defying action and a happy ending that leaves everyone feeling good about themselves.

P.G. Wodehouse once remarked that there are two types of comedy - one is the romantic type of the sort he writes ignoring reality in general and just having fun and the other type goes deep into life and doesn't give a damn about anything else (a good example of this is J.K. Jerome's Three Men in A Boat). The same can be said for Indian cinema. If the commercial cinema in India is analogous to the romantic type of comedy, the 'parellel' cinema of India can be considered to be the other type that examines life in detail. Often, this genre goes ignored by the public in general but these are the films that usually win awards at international film festivals. Refusing to be driven by glitz or glamour, they focus on the 'reality' of Indian society and the problems that bog it down.

But what depresses me the most is that there are very few films that can actually take the best of both genres and produce a good film that can actually be watched. A pretty good example of this type is Being Cyrus starring Saif Ali Khan, Boman Irani, Naseeruddin Shah and Dimple Kapadia. I don't really feel that Being Cyrus can be classified as either parellel cinema or commercial cinema. But it has borrowed a lot of elements from both genres. The cinematography and the setting of the film reminded me of movies that are normally classified as parellel cinema but the storyline and the casting were clearly developed with a hopeful eye on the mainstream audience.

There are also a lot of commercially-oriented movies that have a certain aura about them that other films of the same category don't. The year 2001 had four major blockbusters - Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai, Gadar and Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham. Six years later, most people have forgotten Gadar and remember K3G only when Karan Johar appears in their lives or when they're required to give an example of a movie with a superstar cast. Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai however are still recalled with fervour. Of course, Lagaan's nomination for the Oscars and the recent DVD release might have helped, but there's no denying that Lagaan had class in spite of a rather incredulous storyline. I still consider DCH to be a turning point in Indian cinema, a film that abandoned tried and tested formulae and yet managed to pull it off.

But what's with the scene nowadays? Every friday, I'm bombarded with atleast a dozen films of various shapes and sizes all vying for my eyeballs. Yet how many of these films have even a remote chance of being remembered a few years from now? How many people would eagerly turn on their televisions in another five years to watch these films again? Yeah sure, a lot of these films are basically money-spinners, not classic hopefuls but still, there has to be a limit on how many of these movies we are confronted with. And so many of these films are so similar that I often find it difficult to distinguish one movie from another.

Well, I just hope the trend changes.