Just Solitude and Life

“Be alone-that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”- Nikola Tesla 

Clutching on to the sheets, he lay flat on the bed, staring at nothingness on the ceiling above. Seconds go by, then minutes, then hours. He lay there unperturbed, just not being able to find the energy to get

up. He was alone in the house. So what is it he is experiencing? Loneliness, you would say and you that wouldn’t be far from the truth. But how can it be, when he has always been that sprightly happy-go-lucky kind of a person you’d call the soul of the party. How come that this cheerful unworried guy is feeling loneliness? Isn’t that emotion reserved for the frail and feeble? 

Loneliness, like love, hate, anger and spite, is one of the many emotional states we all experience at some point of time in our lives. Solitude in contrast to loneliness may even be desirable at times. I prefer solitude over companionship any day. I’ve always wondered why contemporary society focuses so much on sociability. I mean what can be a better company than your own. Right? I look around and see people pronouncing loners a little strange even though I believe they are perfectly all right. Do you know what is the harshest most vicious punishment given to a convict in the prison? Solitary confinement. How that is the harshest punishment is beyond my understanding. Yes, I understand the sociological reasons for the punishment. But I just can’t get my head around it. I mean one can fully understand one’s gamut of emotions, and the reason for being while living in solitude, which obviously isn’t possible while living a highly communal life. Call it a blessing in disguise then that forced solitude is beneficial and desirable. Solitude gives us the space for self-reflection and introspection. It gives us the fuel needed to dive deep into our consciousness and find reasons or explanations to our anxieties, anger, envy, distress and so on. 

Einstein preferred self solitude and often remained with his thoughts for months at a stretch. He found communication devices such as telephones horrible because of their ringing and preferred to stay away from them. He went sailing at times, alone, immersed in his thoughts. I don’t need to extol the most

brilliant and exceptional person who ever lived to sell solitude as some universal remedy. All great thinkers, philosophers, inventors and leaders have sought solitude. But to think that only great people need solitude would be missing the point entirely. I have actively longed for solitude and experienced that it transcends human thoughts and values. One actively learns to engage with oneself through one’s own company, giving rise to transcendental experiences in the process. As someone once said, “If you are lonely when you are alone, you’re in bad company.” 

For me solitude is bliss and I would never want to miss an opportunity to enjoy my own company. Some people call it a little too narcissistic for their liking, but I call it a necessity in today's fast-paced life. Of course, not everybody agrees, as for some solitude is akin to experiencing obscurity, the beginning of the end. 

- Sunny Gusain

*Views are personal

Offend the Offended

“Religion’s greatest trick wasn’t convincing some people that there is a God and that He was all-powerful, it was convincing everyone else that you couldn’t ridicule the idea.”- Ricky Gervais 

At the very heart of religious dogmatism and fundamentalism is the archaic notion that religious people hold regarding their beliefs being above scrutiny and scepticism. Belief and faith, for a rational mind like mine, are in fact under the lens more often than other matters. As Richard Dawkins describes in his book the God delusion, Faith, by definition, believes in things without evidence, which is a dangerous

proposition for the world in the 21st century. Once you allow people to hold beliefs and notions that are above criticism and scepticism, it more often than not results in a sort of rigidity in their psyche that any logic or reason-based explanation to the fallacy of those beliefs are brushed under the carpet as being offensive. It is not the religious believers who are at fault but the non-believers, (or apostates) who invariably tend to mild down on their censure of religion. The conscious endeavour of rational people not to offend believers for their anti-scientific beliefs, prejudices and notions has resulted in breeding fanaticism. “That’s offensive”, these two words put together have muzzled liberals and seculars to express scientific facts running contrary to the entrenched beliefs of the believers. 

Being Offended is the principal defence behind which ludicrous beliefs of the people survive. If I were to claim today that my grandfather could lift a cow when he was alive and that he could jump across

rivers at the drop of a hat, I would be called a lunatic and a man of questionable integrity, but replace my grandfather with a mythological God and everyone enthusiastically accepts it to be literally true. They wouldn’t accept any scientific explanation to the implausibility of such an event ever having occurred. What I find to be the most fascinating thing about science is the ability of the observer or experimenter to shield outcomes from processes and experiments irrespective of his prejudices, faith and beliefs. 

The prime reason why people have such beliefs is childhood indoctrination. Impressionable minds would believe in flying monsters if taught from early childhood. It is my dream and wishes that children should never be exposed to religious dogma and superstition until they have lived long enough to develop rational thinking. All children are born cynics and sceptics with an aptitude for critical thinking and interminable questioning. I believe if someone could be indoctrinated on superstitions, dogmas and prejudices, they certainly can be “indoctrinated” on universal human values of integrity, compassion, love, ethics, morals and kindness. The trick is to catch them young. 

The spirit of enquiry is curtailed in a child from infancy and the civil society has allowed religious dogmatism and indoctrination to continue relentlessly throughout the modern world. It is time that we rise to challenge ridiculous dogmas and outrageous claims of the believers. 

You know what brings the death of a society, when being called an intellectual becomes an expletive. 

-Sunny Gusain 

Classic Democracy- Still Relevant?

You walk into an aircraft. The flight takes off smoothly. Everything is going as nonchalantly as it can. It's a long flight so you doze off, relaxed and satisfied. Suddenly you are woken up with a jerk, and even as you are frantically searching for the seat belt hooks, you hear the dreaded announcement. "The plane is going down as both pilots are unconscious, anyone with the necessary skills to fly the aircraft please come to the cockpit immediately." Fortunately, one trained pilot raises his hand among the crowd of passengers. Another one makes a passionate speech of why he should be flying the craft instead of the trained pilot although, he confesses, no experience of flying a craft. People decide to vote for it. They vote for the passionate one instead of the trained pilot. The jetliner, not surprisingly, dives to its death, killing everyone on board.

An amusing story with a tragic end. Sadly, the story is an allegorical account of the current state of democracy around the world today. When the ancient Athenians came up with the idea of Democracy around the 6th century BC, they would have never thought that it will spread like a wildfire around the globe. Even far-flung areas not inhabited at the time of the Athenians would accept democracy as a way of life would have been too farfetched for them to comprehend. So what happened to the sacred idea of democracy? Is democracy still thriving around the world or the romance over?

to be continued....

-Sunny Gusain