It had been a perpetual struggle for him.
His overriding sense of redundancy would present the advocacy for the futility of any exercise
first up. Mayank was advised by many not to smother initiatives by his penchant for „over
thinking?. „Do it and then regret is always better than regret not doing anything...most wonders
of the world are accidental and almost all geniuses are first exercise towards stupidity?, a wellwisher
had told him once.
Mayank never believed in such pep talk. He knew it well that humanity had to face the dire
consequences of hundreds of accidents before one of them could click as a wonder. The world
bore the brunt of loads of stupidity before a miniscule portion of it could stand the test of a
genius. One needs to be sure which was the larger evil; thoughtful inaction or un-thoughtful
action. He would admit that his preference for former was born out of the fact that he was living
in a world where over activity was destroying more than it was creating.
Creativity should ideally be fueled by reason and not necessarily by necessity. The contemporary
age of necessity-driven creativity and activity had designed many geniuses which actually
deserved the rightful nomenclature of stupidity. He believed in thoughtful inaction because of
two simple reasons. First was his adherence to the conservation of energy theory which he had
learnt to put to smart use from his favorite cricketer. It said, „when the ball is new in the morning
session of the game, the bowler is fresh and full of energy and the morning humidity helps the
ball to swing both ways; the opening batsman should keep a low profile and conserve his
energies in saving his wicket, leaving the ball watching his off stump and avoiding flashy
strokes. The batsman would surely have his time when the ball would turn old, the bright Sun
would soak away the moisture and the bowler would tire?. Genius was not always in confronting
the risks one up but in understanding and managing them well. Patience is a smart wife of a
genius. Secondly, he knew it quite well that if one is not sure of the ends, however bright and
noble the means be; it cannot be a justification for initiative. Good intentions ending up as bad
inevitable and consequent regrets made poor history. Individual regrets get washed away by an
innocuous sorry but the overall toll on the body of society is long lasting.
The meeting of the owner with the chief minister had gone well and as it was planned to be. A
happy Boss had asked Mayank to mail him all issues which he believed were important for the
betterment of the newspaper and the company?s performance; or what he had in his heart. He had
his flight the same day but he promised he would come next week and will discuss in detail all
those issues which Mayank would mention in his mail.
The sense of futility of the exercise had consumed the whole evening and he could not write a
single line as part of his mail to the owner. He slept the whole night allowing his sense of being
to drift away. This was his usual practice to arrive at an objective and unattached mindset before
launching on a new initiative. He woke up at 4 in the morning; swallowed a waft of morning
breeze filling his lungs and assuring him of a sense of well-being. For him, being positive and
being bereft of negativity had different meaning. The whole previous evening he felt the unease
and could not write a word but the morning brought him the positivity which eluded him earlier.
He could find touch with his objectivity. He had begun to see things in its largest possible
perspective. One after one, thoughts came drifting in as he sat near the window, looking at the
eastern horizon, where the Sun had heralded its ascent, beaming a radiant orange color in the sky
just above where earth kissed the sky --
„We have drifted too far... so far that the vision of rational objectivity is blurred… truth?s
reasonable veracity looks like well beyond average human?s sensory perceptions. Trust of human
mind and soul too has its limits... mind and soul just cannot build trust around an idea or object
which has lost its chastity and elemental originality way back in human evolution till date.
Acquired knowledge, intuitive awareness and transcendental realism, all are bound to be
expressed through a very restrictive pool of human-created words, in order to be relocated from
one being to another. Words however are the failed media of intention-transference of humanity.
Words are at best the most mediocre mode of human communication and at worst the first
qualifier benchmark for humans to rise above animalism. Human languages anyway are not the
first preference of individual self but a secondary compulsion of collective being and social
living. The intellectual contradiction of the universe is that the capacity of human mind is
currently amenable only for “known” realm whereas the most important intellectual acquisitions
fall in the realms of “Unknown and Unknowable” – the former is still to be understood but can
be known on a future date and later is to be realized but cannot be known.
„If human intellectual acquisitions and perceptional properties are attempted to be shared or
bequeathed to others and especially the generation-next, one has to work his or her way around
and circumvent this quintessential paradox of contemporary human wisdom.
This can happen to
a good extent… words can be a reasonably sound media and can carry a lot of true sense if one
simple assumption is fulfilled. In contemporary state of affairs of humanity, one thing is for sure
– you cannot teach anyone but anyone can learn! You can speak a lot but cannot be sure how
little or what the other has actually listened. Human communication has a precarious absurdity.
Transmission is no guarantee of equal reception and what finally lands at the end of reception
may not always be what was transmitted. If someone is willing and has the necessary mental
level, he or she can understand even with the help of the restrictive words from the human
inventory. Even silence speaks better than thousand words. A good soul had said, “If a husband
and wife are in best of communication, they will mostly be silent. More they talk, less they
communicate”. All languages, other than what human mouth speaks, communicate better and
breed less strife and negativity.?
Mayank smiled at his own tragedy. He was presented with an opportunity to communicate with a
person who needed to understand him and his words in their true sense but Mayank knew he did
not have anything favorable. What one has to say to other is like an aircraft and it has to land in
the mind of the person for whom it is meant to be understood. The safe landing depends not only
on pilot but also on the runway on the ground. If the plane is not provided with good runway
facilities, the plane may never land or it would crashland.
He could not resist the sense of history creeping in his mind. He chuckled at the thought that
when he would grow old and would have no strength and engagement left but to savor the
reminiscence of his past life, he would only laugh at what would then certainly look like a huge
stupidity. But he did not let his sense of history get control of him. He allowed the thoughts to
come in --
„We must first understand what our capacity is as human beings to perceive and receive things.
How can we say how this world is, what is the cosmic truth if we do not ascertain what our
capacities are for understanding things. You can only understand what your sensory faculties
allow you to and what your mind can process. Geniuses of the world admit that human brain is
still not good enough to understand the larger questions of life and the cosmos. Though, the vast
areas of human brain and its overall functioning are still to be understood, still, it can be safely
accepted; human mind basically operates through images that it gathers through the most potent
of human sensory faculty called eyes. That is why; it is an old human wisdom to believe as true
only that which the eyes see. Mind is still evolving… it facilitates many functions for humans
but what it seems to do is unleash a self-operative image-mixing as well as image interpolation
and extrapolation…! There does not seem any rule and order for such image-mixing; rather it
may depend on which particular image becomes lead input and which others become secondary
and tertiary ones. This almost free-hand image-mixing of mind keeps most humans in a state of
confused realism.
„It can also be believed that human brain is essentially status quoist.
This status quoism emanates
out of the instinctive urge of human brain to preserve the body. Status quoism is a preservatory
instinct. But the five senses incessantly feed the brain with new images and are truly the carriers
of change. Naturally, the brain responds to them but it has the tendency to settle for a template
with fixed spaces for different images, depending upon weight and importance assigned by the
five senses, past antecedents and ambient culture. However, this process is not very simple and a
human brain needs lots of leisure and time space in a stable environment to create a template
after screening the inputs subjectively. Unfortunately, life has been so fast, leisure has become so
rare and social milieu is so instable and wildly competitive that brain is in a continuous flux.
Therefore, contemporary humans see lots of transitional templates which mind has not fully
processed and stabilized as an objective template suitable for status quoism. What people call
“wisdom” is essentially a well-processed template which brain marks as final for preserving
(status quoist mode). What five senses feed to the brain constantly is just information. The
partially-processed templates of human brain consisting mostly of information only and that too
the contradictory ones, is the trouble of the contemporary generations.
Human brain needs lots of
leisure and by denying it to the brain; we have complicated things for us and the world we live
in. The lack of leisure and stability has hit hard the very instinctive urge of preservation as the
human brain gradually starts producing templates full of images of annihilation rather than
preservation. The contemporary brain is probably creating such immature templates which send
confused or wrong signals to the body, undermining its own judgment of well-being and
preservation. Modern era has witnessed a major surge in accident related deaths, suicides and
long-term annihilative lifestyle diseases and anomalies that lead to unnatural deaths. Mental
problems and psychosomatic troubles are on the rise. For preservation and good growth human
brain needs to create good and stable templates and store them. These templates human brain
starts storing from an early age of 4-5. These first set of templates create a “benchmark” within
human brain which are usually created within 12-14 years of human existence. These first set of
templates in entirety form human conscience. Many people like to call it the “heart” or the
“soul”. To most humans, the heart and mind are two different perceptory faculties. They seem to
exist separately. Most people believe there is a soul within that is separate from human mind and
it is detachable from human body. This soul or what most people perceive as a human
consciousness above the body limits is this first set of “fully-processed templates” which works
as a benchmark for all future template making and that?s why looks like existing separate from
brain.?
Mayank essentially was a man of his first conscience. He understood the social problems of
being in a perpetual state of a 12-yeal old mind but he firmly believed his social personality as a
12-year old served him best. At least, it saved him of series of hypocrisy which he believed was
the primary sin of humanity. He understood the risk of being labeled an emotional fool, an
impractical person and worst as a self-styled martyr but he had the brave heart to rise above the
criticism and adhere to his first conscience which so far had fetched him not much success in
traditional sense of the term but immense satisfaction. He had decided quite early in his life that
he would love to go to the grave with his hard-earned satisfaction and with a 12-year old
conscience, whatever be his actual age. He had seen many people die before his eyes and had
drawn confidence from the fact that all of them, who died at a ripe age, left for heaven as a 12-year old. He had naturally concluded that something, humans start and end with must be the
superior intelligence. Innocence was what humans started and ended their lives with. Innocence
naturally was the superior intelligence and he opted to remain with it, knowing very well that this
superior intelligence was not profitable by societal definition; often painful but very satisfying.
The communication between Mayank and the owner was a difficult one. His preference always
was innocence of his first conscience but for the owner, innocence meant a great shortcoming
and a definite burden for business. The templates of brains of the two were diametrically
opposed. Naturally, a resultant gap created a huge breach of trust. Making a bridge of true and
meaningful communication was very difficult. But, the communication had to happen. The
challenge was not in making it a fruitful one (it was a non-starter even as an idea) but was in
making it less catastrophic. He knew the owner was habituated to seeing any request or proposal
of initiative in business terms; to be valued with an eye towards profitability of the enterprise.
The ROI (return of investment) syndrome had become a typical trait of most corporate
personalities. He would be reluctant to accept changes which would mean taking risks to attain
something not directly linked with profitability in the short run.
He remembered; the sales head had told him after his resignation, „It is easy for you to risk your
rupees 25 k job but very difficult for the Boss to risk his 250 crore empire for changes that you
want him to accept?. The sales head had told him clearly, „So far as the boy stands first in his
school exams, the parents are least bothered where he spends his nights?.
He clearly hinted that
as the newspaper was still in good profit, the owner would be least inclined to initiate any
changes. Only crisis makes justification for changes. He had listened carefully to what sales head
told him and even appreciated his viewpoint on the disposition of the owners. He even accepted
it to be a reality with the Boss.
He was now past his first dilemma and had entered a stage where the conflict was not about
whether to say or not as he had decided to say irrespective of what fruitfulness it promised. The
argument now was to decide what to say. There were lots of issues with media overall and print
media in particular about which he would have loved to talk with the Boss.
But he had good
understanding of the fact that attention span of successful and big people was very short and if he
loaded the Boss with too many problems, he would certainly believe that Mayank was a
frustrated and insecure guy seeking undue attention and importance. The challenge was to pick
up selected issues which could actually hit the interest zone of the Boss.
He also had to keep an
eye on the personality of the owner to ascertain which style of communication would serve his
purpose.
Mayank thought, he would be most pleased and the owner would have been best served if he
could talk primarily about media in the cosmic and spiritual sense. If the Boss could understand
the root issue, he would be spared of the trouble, time and energy to explain the trunk, branches
and leaves. He believed; media needed to be understood in the broadest possible sense. The
cosmos is the media; the life itself is the most potent media. The energy, which runs the cosmos,
is a media. A media is never an end unto itself; it is just a means. Means empowers, it facilitates,
and works as a catalyst for attainment of ends but it cannot be end in itself. And, that?s why; all
good media must have two prerequisites; purity and purpose. The chief trouble with
contemporary media is the chaos and confusion about the two. There is a tendency to get
confused over what is typically associated with media - the objectivity! He had seen enough
misuse of objectivity both in life and media he worked in. He had always been very categorical
that objectivity is never the best practical benchmark for quality and utility. Objectivity, in its
purest sense is near impossible. And if true objectivity is taken into consideration, it often lands
things in a state of non-belief. The ideal benchmark, he believed was purity and purpose.
Each human life is also a media and to understand the purity and purpose of media, one should
also understand life. In human life also, there is complete chaos and confusion about role and
purpose. The defining line between ends and means is blurred and confusion rules supreme when
it comes to deciding things with utmost objectivity.
It seemed to Mayank; the very intrinsic urge of every living cell for self-preservation along with
this perceptional reality about a soul as something detachable from perishable body has created
the templates of hell, heaven, other life and even moksha. Cosmic evolution is a huge
astrophysical event-chain and one single human life is such a petty particle of this chain that it
hardly matters. However, the primeval instinct of aping each other has now created a potent
force and humans in a collective state of things are in a strong position to at least affect their own
petty environment in the world called earth which in itself is like a small particle in the
immensely colossal cosmic system.
If viewed on the basis of complete objectivity; it is essentially a cosmic duty and real purpose of
life for each human body to pass on the gene to the coming generation which is more evolved
and better endowed (not necessarily the Darwinian way) than what one received from the past
generation so that the cosmic evolution is powered positively. This process of healthy gene
transference itself presupposes all goodness of humanity like, social peace and harmony, healthy
family system, personal trust and care, good life & living with sufficient leisure, social
equanimity, sound education, collective living, etc. The word “gene transference” as every
human?s “cosmic duty” and “purpose of life” sounds quite pedantic and too mechanical to be
acceptable but then, objectively the truth looks like only this one. This objectivity however is so
beautifully wrapped in a series of sensually appetizing follies, which revealed souls have called
“Maya” that most average people would accept this as purpose of life. If we say to a young man
that his purpose of life is transfer his best gene to next generation he would term it abject
madness. But tell him that the real purpose of life is to attain social peace and harmony, healthy
family system, personal trust and care, good life & living with sufficient leisure, social
equanimity, sound education, collective living, etc; he would be impressed and accept it. Many
others will gladly accept moksha as the purpose of life. Objectivity is for evolved souls but
average people do not and cannot see things with such high objectivity. For them, it is better that
things are interpreted in terms of purity and purpose. That is why, it is said, „all objectivities are
not practically sensible and all subjectivities are not ultimately bad?.
Unfortunately, both for humanity and media; there is always a huge confusion about means and
ends. Mayank remembered, a great writer had once said in one of his stories, „most people spend
half their lives preparing for life...?. It was a real tragedy that even today, three fourth of
humanity on earth spend their whole life fighting for survival. Of the rest of a quarter, majority
waste their lives either stacking resources for good life or indulging in resourcefulness and
abundance. The media has similar fate; either struggling for survival or indulging in insurance of
abundance. Mayank was part of a media which had no issues of survival. His newspaper group
was a large empire; the venture was sitting pretty on a profitability position and had a long
secure future. Its marketing instincts and team were both perfectly geared up for any corporate
struggle to keep notching up higher profitability benchmarks every year.
The media in India
anyway was having a good time as literacy and purchasing power were growing much higher
than the population growth rate. The overall economy parameters were all in reasonably good
health and there was no panic, some cautions apart. This, Mayank felt was the right time for
media, especially his own newspaper to think of the purity and purpose.
He did not think changes were always risky. Even if it were, many media houses had enough
resource to take the risks but they were not taking it because of lack of knowledge and not
because of the reluctance to take risks. The content of all media needed to be reviewed in the
light of the new purpose which a vast set of changes had brought forward.
Most media
leaderships and owners actually did not truly understand the changes that pervaded India and
therefore he felt there were little initiatives taken in right direction.
The trouble, as he visualized, with most in media was truly representative of the average
person?s psyche. People in general are mostly reactive to situations and not proactive and this
was since ages. Civilizations that excelled depended on proactive thinking.
The proactive
thinking, which necessitates beforehand initiatives, involves risks.
Proactiveness usually emerges
when there is a calculated risk taking to attain an end which may not seem a probable reality in
present but a highly possible yes in near or distant future. Reaction on the other hand creates
initiatives mostly for handling current crisis to check damage to a contemporary position.
Reaction is for retaining what is there but proactiveness is for attaining which should ideally be
there.
Any big leap forward of humanity impacts every human life in some way or other. Nations, civil
societies, families and individuals get affected but how and how much depends on lot of factors.
Mayank had known, through his knowledge of history that all major developments in the world
had three things in common. First, most of these developments were very good- intentioned and
originated out of the long struggle or deep pain of humanity to make the world a better place to
live. Second, it is a real curse that only a small group of people initiated actions over good ideas
but they seldom penetrated and reached to the mass levels. Mayank being a man from media had
learnt a hard lesson that all goodness started with a minority voice and needed support from all
possible media to reach the masses to ascertain authentication from the majority. He regretted
that most goodness in the past had either got a bad media or no media. The
„no media? was not as
perilous as the „bad media?. He learnt the sad reality that in the long history of civilized nations
and civil society, the media of their times failed to rise up to occasion and chiefly because the
leaders of media were themselves very poorly knowledgeable and aware. The end result was low
or unfocused people participation to support the goodness. The third and important thing was the
natural corollary of the second. As the goodness could not assure involvement and participation
of the majority, a small group of unscrupulous people very cleverly entered the scene as
middlemen and usurped the benefits in connivance with the authorities entrusted with the task of
delivery of the goodness. Here too, he felt, historically, media failed in its role to preempt and
prevent such unwanted usurpation. Rather, in most cases, media and its leaders proved hand in
glove with the pilferage mechanism and enjoyed undue heavens.
He realized the importance of two prerequisites for the success of any goodness that was initiated
for general well-being of humanity. First and foremost was a very aware and proactive media
and secondly, a well-oiled regulatory mechanism for fast and steady penetration and reach to the
masses as well as the insurance that goodness reached in the right and avowed shape and size.
Human ingenuity for pilferage was instinctive; it cannot be completely done away with. It has
been said hundreds of years back by a wise man, „nobody can understand and check when a fish
drinks water while swimming in water?. Self is an undeniable reality and selfishness is also very
natural. It comes out of the genetically designed urge for self-preservation of any living cell. The
nobility of human selfishness is however a social product. The fear or care for social approval
and reprimand decides the intensity of inclination of selfishness to indulge in ingenuity of
pilferage. The basic fear is the fear of majority and the only potent check on human ingenuity.
Human beings are social creatures by nature and what they really dread is not hell or law of the
land but complete isolation from the society. That is why; the only successful insurance for
success of any goodness is the acceptance of majority. Corruption could not be successfully
checked in most nations as our society in general not only approved of it, rather also encouraged
it. We made the rich our icons eulogizing how he pilfered the w