Littering, coffee, chai, shouts of "Cooouufeee" and "Cha-cha-cha-chaaaaiiiii", littering, stench, people, tonnes of steel, hawkers, blind beggars, singing beggars, blind singing beggars, blind singing married-with-2-children beggars aaaaand of course.... littering.
(I've shamelessly pilfered the above style from J. K. R. :P)
Indian Railways... what a NIGHTMARE!!
Or is it??
Yes, it stinks. Yes, its dirty. Yes, its crowded. Yes, its [n number of negatives].
But, there's something about a train journey, a special charm, a presence, a sense of... u-can-think-about-weird-shit-now, that has always succeeded in overclocking my memory and CPU.
Maybe its the tiny quirks we observe in random people, maybe its the rhythmic percussion under your feet, maybe its the sudden flashes of objects that catch your eye outside the window...
A questionable instinct
The train was delayed for 2 hours today due to "track work" on the Kottayam route. Stuck inside a stationary metal tube @ noon on a humid summer day in the middle of nowhere without even a hint of the slightest breeze... u tend to think someone is out to getcha!
And that is EXACTLY what I thought! (For a second.... :P) I was attributing an unpleasant experience as retribution by "someone" for some wrong I had done to that "someone". And how was it that I had wronged him? By not believing in that "someone's" existence of course!
Voila! An atheist had 'hit' upon the idea of GOD!
I was amazed by how naturally that deduction had come to me. It was like I was programmed to think that I would be punished...
Observing current trends, the more adverse the conditions, more the number of people who flock to religious leaders.
Humans seem to have an innate answer to why something bad is happening to them. "I am being punished because I did something wrong."
Coupled with the classic post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy, this instinctive answer would then lead to conclusions about what was the "wrong" that we had done.
A caveman who used to observe the rising sun for a few days, forgot to do it one particular morn. His hunt that day was awful... and his instinctive answer to the question "why?" would be "I did something wrong and I'm being punished... but what did I do wrong?... hmm I did forget to observe the sun this morning, mayb I shouldav looked at the rising sun .... hmmm the sun must be something/someone powerful ... he must have punished me!"
Having this answer programmed into us seems to answer why humans invented God. But why is this answer programmed into our brain in the first place?
Power is always abused
A train journey always makes me think about industry; seeing so much steel all around, the sight of goods trains leaden with cement, coal and petrol, and of course the labourers toiling in the sun.
And the general compartment of this train of thought was... capitalism vs socialism.
We all know that communist Russia failed. And that "communist" china, is not really communist. Kerala too has a pseudo communist government (at least till the next elections). The sudden shift in political legacy is apparent immediately after crossing the border. CITU, KSU, KCU...[26Cx]U - banners, flags, posters and slogans bearing these alphabets adorn every unclaimed wall.
The corporate world (read U.S) has gone to great lengths to demonize the word "communism". The blind belief that communism = evil among many westerners is a pristine example of how easy it is to brain wash millions of people, if one has the position, the power and the opportunity. (Religion being the other example). Today, communism is synonymous with a totalitarian government, curtailed rights and KGB. What most people don't realize, is that communism, when first coined, represented something exactly opposite.
Kerala is plagued by frequent strikes and violent demonstrations. Every tiny issue is aggrandized and senselessly argued upon. The irritating fact is that opposing parties oppose the others opinion, simply to remain opposed! Every union, every association, every party wants the "needs" of their members to be put in front of other's. Any change, any project, any investment can be, and will be fought upon. And I ask, "what has gone wrong here?"
Answer: Rights.
Surprised? :P. Yes, rights. Rights that people of India have. Rights that give people a very sought after delicacy...... called POWER.
What's this? A liberal that condemns people's rights?!
Does that mean I support a totalitarian government and curtailing of rights? Of course not! What I want to say is, power is ALWAYS abused. In Kerala, the people outside the government have power, and they abuse it. In erstwhile U.S.S.R, the people in the government had power, and they abused it. So then, who should have power? The answer, I feel, lies in the power of power. Power has to be made powerless... meaningless. The very idea that someone can HAVE more power than someone else has to be non-existent.
Now you are gonna label me as an anarchist! But, think about it. In a world ruled by anarchy (again I am talking about the common perception of anarchy... think looting and pillaging) there still exists inequality of power. The looters and the pillagers have the strength, the numbers, the power to do as they please. This is again simply a practical demonstration of the statement - "power is always abused".
A world where power is meaningless. But Marx had already thought about such a world. And he named the politics of such a utopian place... communism. And the stepping stone to this world was conceived as socialism. Thing is Mr.Marx, human beings are too young to give up on the idea of power. Your world will remain a dream world, till nature presents a process of selection which favours people who do not NEED power to survive and the idea of power is naturally BRED OUT of the human race.
