Last evening, over a cup of chai and a samosa at Raju's chai shop, I saw something that disturbed me from within, and I was at a loss to explain why. Maybe because I felt I've seen something of the sort so many times before that I'd have gotten immune to emotion, hardened to the extent of insensitivity. I was thrown into a wistful thought spiral.
What I saw was something very banal, very workaday. It was the sight of an old beggar, scavenging around for food, with no clothes to drape his ravaged body, and hardly any strength in his lifeless legs to carry him around. He kept going from one pile of garbage to the next, looking for any scrap of food that could help him get past the night. I sat, there, watching him, dumbstruck by the unfairness of it all. Why was I sitting here, in my clean clothes, eating hot samosas, and he, there? What right have I to be in this comfortable state while there are those whose suffering knows no ends? Is it the inherent randomness (draw of lottery, if you please) that all human beings are blessed with? Is it god's doing? Or is it karma? Being an agnostic, I shall leave out the bit about god.
Karma, though, for me, is one of the biggest excuses mankind has ever come up with. To think that one human being suffers while another enjoys purely because of their respective actions is a little too absurd. Why, then, is one born into a nice, well-to-do family, and another into a dysfunctional, hapless family, having to keep his nose to the grindstone just to have a fistful of rice? Is it still karma? Well, they've hardly had any time to do anything good or bad. Shouldn't both of them be given a clean slate to start with? Does it eventually even out over the course of a lifetime? I think not.
No amount of stress, work pressure or professional problems can ever be comparable to a state of starvation, to a state of such abject poverty. In no way can there be a rational explanation for why I am the way I am and he the way he is. Karma might seek to give me a wall to hide behind and placate myself, but the bitter truth is that karma is all too often just a question of faith, like religion. What then, am I to make of it? Randomness? God? Or maybe an explanation as far fetched as karma extending over the cycle of death and rebirth. If only I could find the book, where 'it is all written', I'd gladly burn it to ashes.
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U know I have always felt that Karma is the veneer we drape over our conscience. We need an excuse to hide our miserable selves from the ugliness prevalent in this world. We see it but pretend to be blind to it coz it's not our business. Coz it has been ingrained in us by this hypocritical and selfish society to turn a blind eye to such things and encourages us to be armchair critics.So essentially both of us are asking the same question and wondering if we do have the guts to act any different.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more with you, Etymo!!
ReplyDeletelegendary post !
ReplyDeletedeep insight into the Karma. Shows your well directed conscience. kudos !
happy blogging.
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nice write up.... though, as you might well know by know, i do not agree with your views and find no need to expound them again,as you know them well... also, you have failed to mention 'particles striking each other'!!! lol!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, content, language and style is top notch.... keep up the good work....
I completely agree with you that starvation is one of the worst curses...
Well karma does say that if you do good in this life, your next life will be better, and if ye do bad, you shall suffer. It makes sense that one should be judged by ones actions. So maybe this poverty is the tool through which god wants to strike the balance that karma warrants, the jurisprudence of god. And maybe the work of "good" that god intended for man to do was to help out these people who did bad, in other words, to help out the poor. Its all a vicious, ironic circle.
ReplyDeleteBut if you really do want to go the agnostic way, then mmbe Karma might not be the best way to explain this abject poverty. It does seem absurd that god could be malicious. I agree with you, even I cant reconcile how poverty could be the punishment for bad deeds. Mmbe the "Zietgiest" way of thinking of the rich nations looting the poor countries and capitalism creating this state of economic rift could be an explanation. The brits did that to us and were actually doing that to ourselves to some extent with the flagrant corruption. How does karma act then, when entire nations go "bad", become corrupt, maybe it punishes the nation by making them poor.
Its something to think about.
@Anupam, no you need not!! and I donno how i resisted the temptation to put in "particles hitting each other" too. :P
ReplyDelete@Subodh, you hit the nail on the head with "its all a vicious circle". Nothing more need be said...
where's the like link on this one??? :)
ReplyDeletefirst thing its really gud tht u have written something on poverty...neva tot tht it kinda affected u...wel if u go by karma, its tht he, is in the poor state because of wrong doings in his past life..wht u said tht the two should be given an equal chance to start is right but mostly its the case that the two arent equal(because of past life effect).My opnion is that karma is a concept to achieve the ideal world,nobodys a villian sorta thing.Another thing is that karma gets inherieted(doesnt sound really gud) but its tht some ancestor was involved in wrongdoing and all the descendants will suffer.Guess this is pretty much practical also. so goin by religion or karma we should try and help the suffers out....get them on track...hence they will not indulge in wrongdoing...and his life further down the line will always be gud...
ReplyDeletePancha, what you're saying is fair in its right. But my principal misgiving is the fact that concepts like past life, faith and destiny come into the picture whenever karma is discussed. And karma is something most people believe is a relatively earthly conception, something which can be experienced. So it is this incongruity that I wish to bring to light through this post.
ReplyDelete