Mon dieu!

I read a lovely book today. It is called 'The Razor's Edge' and it is written by the only author who can keep my attention through a whole book. In fact, it is one of the few that I have finished in recent times, and the only one that touched my psyche anywhere. Maugham is a very persuasive, astute writer. He's irreverent, almost patronizing sometimes, he obviously has a very high opinion of his abilities to discern human failings and greatness, and he well should. He knows human nature like the back of his hand. He is outrageous is his assesments, oftentimes sexist and chauvinistic, but most of the time displaying an incredible finesse in portraying emotions, and more importantly, thoughts. He is the only author who can hold my attention for pages together, with nothing but the inner voice of his protagonist. They aren't even always original thoughts. Sometimes I catch an uncanny similarity to images and sentences that have resided in my own mind. There is this bit when a guy who's set out to find answers to a thousand questions, and he doesn't exactly find all of the, but a door is opened to him when he is sitting on a cliff, with, I was very surprised to read, Kerala's green all around him and sees the sun rising over it. Rather quaint that on the day that I get the desperate urge to go on a long holiday by myself, away from the chatter of routine and the boredom of trying to make things the way you would like them to be, and discover Kerala not as a sight-seer but as someone who has intimate connections with it. I dont know whether to call maugham a great big copycat, or to think that everyone has these ideas at some stage or at various times in their lives.. or perhaps there are only so many ideas in the world and they are going around. Maybe the idea of a bliss that transcends the cares of the world is so alluring and so hyped that most of the world has made it their view of their ultimate aim, 'salavation'. Why else would so many people think the same thing? Maugham write about God like I have read in the writings of Bhagat Singh, and Spinoza, and it can't possibly be that he writing it aware of the fact that he has been influenced by other opinions, no honest writer would do that and I have too much belief in Maugham to ascribe such
shallowness to him. So he must believe it too, or at least have thought about it on similar lines. How can a concept as vague, formless and evolving as God elicit such similar responses from everyone, one set for the believers, one for the non-believers, and one for the agnostics?

I've realized too that any confusion I have to about the future, my wish that I could see into it so I could at least tell whether I'm somewhat on the right track, they all melt away when I look beyond, far beyond the things I want to do, to the way I want to feel. It is hard to describe, but lucid enough. I don't expect to feel at peace with the world all the time, but I want to believe that there is an element of perpetuity that can be achieved, 'nirvana', if you will. A state of mind that is not drastically affected by circumstances, emotions, opinion. I feel the same way about thAnd if I know that feeling as well as the back of my hand, then I should pursue the things that will lead me there, right? I should give up those that I know will only make me stray more, correct? What makes people chase mirages? When they know that so many things are beautiful in their lives, why strive to straighten a tail that will never be straight? Why push the one that is unhealthy and weak into a corner and pick on it till the only course left is to put it out of its misery? Ego, and I speak only for myself. Mulishness. The desperate need to finish and make good something I've taken on. The inability to admit to mistakes. To give up something as a bad job. Ego is not my strength, it is my biggest weakness.

To find a goal. A goal taht drives one to persevere, to see the world with new eyes, to learn to overcome ur shortcomings, to learn as much as you possibly can, to run the race at ur pace, to do things and make things happen. If one knows ones goal, one could answer these questions: 1) What do I need to do to get there? Now? 2 years from now? 5 years from now? 2) What is stopping me from doing them today? What more do I need to start doing now? 3) Have I picked up everything that there is to regarding the same? Am I as well informed as I could be? Is there something I should know but I don't? It might seem that a concrete idea about a feeling, oxymoronic as that sounds, if plausible, could be a goal in itself, but I doubt it. It seems too inconvenient to pursue. Then again, that it is inconvenient doesn't make it any less of a goal, only a more difficult one to attain. What if I say that goal might become clearer if I took that long holiday to travel, explore, watch, listen, think, write. It is what I want to do. Will I will be able to? Will not the practicalities come in the way? What if I say all I want to do is get away from competition and being one of the tons of poor fools who trudge along on the neatly laid out paths with society's ideas of good and bad as markers? What if I say I dont want an MBA, I dont want my mind to grow and understand and evolve as a means to gok what 'tangible' Shangri La, but as an end in itself. There is a catch, though. It is most likely that things would not work out that way. It takes enormous courage to set out into wilderness when one not sure what one is looking for. I'm not sure I have it. I'm not even sure I want to go it alone, although sometimes I feel that complete and unfettered independence is perhaps the only way I can feel free enough to be the person I think I am. I would want things like love, admiration, fame for which I'd need other people, I would want to give to make someone else happy, I would want to experience symbiotic happiness. But only if in doing these things, I conform to a self-image that is as permanent as the colours in a piece of stained glass. Completeness is not achieved by the numberof people one is close to or by the intensity of relations. Completeness, as far as I am concerned, has nothing to do with a soul but me. I know that pursuing something that isn't a reality even in my own mind will not be easy, but at least I'd be being true to myself and to the lives I touch. At least I won't feel the lassitude, the apathy of someone who just as soon would get a new start as break away from the roots of dissatisfaction in her life. But then what use is a mind that can learn and understand, but not enough to control and drive itself? What use is a mind that depends on others for comfort, companionship, understanding without being able to cajole itself out of wallowing in unhappiness?

The book also opened doors to Vedanta and the Gita, neither of which I've taken very seriously until now. It now seems like all the reasons for which I was fascinated by Buddhism, is really the core of Hinduism too. Buddhism seems to be the bare essentials of Hinduism, minus the conveniences that make it easy for a common man to practice, minus the multitude of gods which gives man something tangible to look to and ask for help and salvation, to thank, to be angry with, minus the provision for worship that assures him that there is a channel of communication with the Absolute, minus the ritualised, communal religiosity that makes it the faith of the priest, the businessman, the warrior and the worker. I don't pretend to subscribe to it, I don't think I subscribe to any religion yet, but I do believe in religion. It would probably be more precise to say I believe in faith. I do, however, have immense respect for the great minds that evolved the concept of Atman, the Absolute, and at the possible pain of blasphemy, of the gods of Islam, Christianity, Zorastianism, and all the other religions that give peace of mind, support and confidence to so many people. For the tenable structure of thought and reasoning they understood would endure, and supply the answers to questions that plagued every man. For the ideas that are the reason why there is order among chaos, a peace on the surface of an anarchy that would surely break out if man's confusion leads him to lose his everday reason, there being no underlying belief system that is organized, optimistic, rational and as real to him as his own existence. For formalizing into a language, that feeling of equanimity that some get from seeing the sun rise above a canopy of trees. Hm. :)

Some book eh, that? Not that it takes much to get me thinking of the road to salvation, but all the better if one gets there feeling like one has explored as many highways, roads and gullys as one could possibly could, non?