WHAT'S THE BEEF?

Full disclosure: I am a Hindu, I eat beef but not frequently, as I haven’t developed much of a taste for it. However, I don’t have any problem with anyone else (Hindu or not) eating it in front of me, behind my back or indeed, anywhere in the world. I’m not as well-versed with Hindu scriptures as say, a Baba Ramdev-style “godman” but I have read several translations of the Bhagavad Gita, which many believe is the definitive text on Hindu philosophy. And that’s where I got the fundamental belief of Hinduism that appeals most to me – tolerance.

The Gita says that there are many paths to God/Truth/Infinite Wisdom (call it whatever you will) and none is better than the other. Everyone is free to choose for themselves but not for others. This is also the founding belief of modern India as a nation – a “secular” republic that gives its citizens the right to practice their beliefs without imposing them on others who choose differently. Right or wrong, it’s in our Constitution. Whoever tries to impose a different view of this is going against the law. Be they President or Prime Minister or political goon or even ordinary man/woman on the street.

So what’s with the beef ban? Is there a section of society really concerned about cow slaughter? If we believe this, we must believe that a mother would never harm her own child and live in a Rajshri movie. Game of Thrones is more like it. Indrani Mukherjee’s shocking story was dominating the headlines lately till the media gagged. Now we don’t hear anything further about this case, by accident or design or something more nefarious. Will we know the full truth or is what’s out there, so complex, accidental and subjective that it’s incomprehensible?

A sociology student I know once told me a story. In the ancient India plagued by droughts and starvation, a king decreed that cows must not be slaughtered and eaten. He believed this would save weak & vulnerable children’s lives as they would have milk to drink. To ensure people followed his decree, he likened cow’s milk to mother’s milk and put the bovine on the pedestal of mother. I don’t know if this story is true but it’s as plausible as any other creation myth I’ve heard.

Living in the Kalyuga, we need to accept that we have no kings or leaders looking out for us and must learn to develop our own judgement. It’s all politics and self-interest today. If killing a cow is like killing a mother than what is killing another human being like? Like killing someone like yourself over a simple difference of opinion. Like killing a writer or a cartoonist because they offended your sensitive principles or held you up to ridicule so no one would take you seriously any more.

Let’s remove the blinders that allow us to live in a parallel dimension, untouched by the chaos around us. Examine motives. Yours, mine, his, hers, the people we support, the people we oppose – everyone’s. Chances of overlap are slim – unless we choose to believe in either tolerance or quid pro quo. Quid pro quo is a never-ending spiral of corruption & violence, always having to ensure we hold enough cards to make the others do what we want them to. Tolerance means giving up interference and trusting others to respond and reciprocate. It’s no more risky than the other option and it gives us a comfortable place to rest our conscience.

Killing a cow and eating it doesn’t necessarily make a bad person. Killing a person should. I’m not vouching for cannibalism but killing for food is the only type of killing that makes some sort of sense to me. Any other killing is cruel, immoral & criminal. Certainly not something any religion should support.

And as for politically-motivated violence – let’s start seeing it for what it is and give the offenders a real reason to stop. If it didn’t work for them, they wouldn’t do it.

ONE WORLD OR VIRTUALLY TOO MANY

As I woke up this Sunday morning, I inadvertently switched on Twitter instead of switching off the alarm on my phone. All I could see in my blurry morning daze was the top trend #pacquiaomayweather.

That’s a strange name for a tropical storm, I thought. What else could a May weather trend refer to but some unexpected, yet now anticipated climate devastation. That too, surely, headed straight for a first world country, somewhere rich enough to press the panic button and trigger worldwide concern before the event.

A little later, I saw my young cousin watching TV avidly, and got curious as to what could engage a millennial with the idiot box in the age of instant, on-demand content. So, of course, I went to investigate this aberration and that’s when I found out that what I thought was a tropical storm was in fact a boxing match, one with the highest prize money ever!

I admit I am slow to start in the mornings. I also admit that I have the least interest in sports and consequently the lowest awareness of sporting events amidst anyone I know. 

Yet, am I not wired in and connected to the one world created by global technology?

That promised world where visuals transcend the translation difficulties of language and people from myriad countries follow the same celebrities and like the same memes. If I am indeed a citizen of this world, should I not have known what millions of other people had known?

Am I only a frequent visitor to the one world? Or is the one world composed of many different regions that act as many little worlds in themselves, like a country with diverse states?

While digital technology has lived up a little to its claims to bring the world closer, it has also facilitated an explosion of data – in the form of web sites & platforms, the sharing of information & opinions, the upsurge in both quantity and variety of content. It feels overwhelming.

The virtual world is not a simple place to explore, you can start with one objective and get sucked into a wormhole of impulses that lead you astray quite easily. And it doesn’t match so exactly with an offline experience as to be able to replace it entirely.

For example, getting news on the Internet is not the same as reading it from a good old-fashioned newspaper. I could read a newspaper page to page, absorbing everything because it is finite and static. As I read news on a web site, there seems to be too much to go through and all of it constantly updating – I cannot read it the same way. At best I might scan through the latest headlines and follow one or two happenings of interest to me. So rather than bring me into the one world, it encourages me to shrink into my mini-world which seems simpler and safer to me. I’d rather get my news from a newspaper and use the Internet to check for the latest updates on the specific stories I want to follow. It just seems easier that way.

It turns out that I do not inhabit or use the virtual world as per the predictions of media pundits. It’s just one more world in which I can exist but it’s certainly not the only or the most important world to me. 

IN OR OUT?

Some days, we have the phrase ‘think out of the box’ ringing in our ears, especially those of us who work in the marketing and advertising fields. Whether we are working alone or in groups, it’s an exhortation that is supposed to motivate us and help that elusive little insight or idea appear magically out of nowhere.

Creative thinking is difficult to pin down despite wonderful books like James Webb Young’s A Technique for Producing Ideas. Everyone has come up with a great idea at some point but very few can do this consistently. And in professions that rely on any form of creative output, these few people are Gods that the mere mortals look up to admiringly and hang around in the hope that something will rub off on them. The Gods preside over meetings and reign supreme in group brainstorms, while the mortals take notes and recycle words to express allegiance to one idea or another or blasphemously hunt & kill those ideas that they can’t relate to.

The problem, we are told, is that the mortals are accustomed to boxes – those cubicles they have been assigned and remain willingly confined to, while the Gods roam free in the spaces between boxes. So are enslaving boxes the fate of the mortals and free spaces the domain of the Gods?

Perhaps, the difference between the Gods & the mortals is not what it’s made out to be. Both depend on the existence of boxes and without those boxes, both would be equally lost.

Magic and logic, after all, are the yin and the yang of creative thinking. The best creative people I have worked with have always expressed a more than healthy respect for logic and the best suits would be redundant if they were unable to appreciate & nurture magic. It turns out that the Gods are not those who pretend the boxes don’t matter, nor are they those who are afraid to venture out. The Gods see the boxes as well as the spaces in between, they are able to hold both images in their heads and create meaning.

The premise of ‘out of the box’ thinking rests on the existence of the box. If the box didn’t exist, there would be nothing outside it or even inside, for that matter. The box is the compass that shows the direction. The choice to follow it or to oppose it is ours. And sometimes the best ideas can come by choosing to do both.