It was my father who persuaded me to go on this drive.We were to go to the small village of his new friend at work, Vidya. I must say though it was boring some time in between, the trip in itself was uniquely refreshing.
Vachu(my aunt) the ever cheerful spirited soul, joined us on this trip. The pair my mom and vachu provided good entertainment with some constant chatter and
dad bashing. "Vathsa ordaru route ketudu , endha appa ve nanba mudiyadhe"(vathsa ask someone if we are the correct route,cant trust your dad) ,
"amanda vathsa ketudu orudaru"(yes vathsa, better check once) vachu was quick to add on, this was sufficient to blow my dads calm and loose his temper.
The evening's sun seen through the clouds, with its beams split and lighting up the sky, got me gazing in silence. My sister was quick to notice and add on "doesnt it look like god decending on earth" How true , the sight was indeed divine. The dried up trees, contrasting with the green fields and big lush green trees got my sister's attention and she couldnt have enough of it.
At the same time "Di vachu endha patte ketiya .. blah balh balh " continued in the back ground as the scene changed and villages came into sight. The road, rather the lack of it, got me to drive extra cautiously , got me to curse the people responsible for maintaining them ,
what were they doing, eating hay?? our new CM also needs to look at these roads not only city ones. This is what happens when contracts are given to substandard contractors .. dam corruption... whats happening to our country. Before I got to weave a full conspiracy theory we were at chikka tirupati. A small village with a small temple, dont know the reason why it got the name. After the usual visit to the temple, it was time to continue on and back to kalkunte, which by the way we passed on our way to chikka tirupati.
Finally the place kalkunte agrahara (settlement). My dad said it was where a good number of brahmin iyengars lived, calling themselves kalkute iyengars. The place was small and had a tall teeru(chariot) parked outside the temple just around the corner.
He got me introduced to Vidya, she came across as a nice gal. Nice accented English, polished and sophisticated demeanor.Totally different from the picture I had of her.
As a few people around me socialized the usual Indian game of finding a common friend started
"where do you stay " " oh first block fourth cross rajajinagar! Do you know ramanna on fourth cross "
"Oooh you know them too ? I know them very well , he has two kids blahh blah .. ahhha I thought we must be related as soon as i saw you"
Ooola there you go one down , now who is next. My mom and dad were busy at the game while I was out of my wits to think of something to kill time. After what seemed like eternity and socializing with every one present there, we moved on to the temple. At last the event we had come for.
Strange it seemed to me, that the same people, with common roots leading to kalkunte, come here every year for this brahmhotsavam and yet many of them kept to themselves and mingled only with their family, didn't intermingle or socialize freely with each other much.
The whole temple was grandly decorated with flowers, very colorful. The lord Ranganatha himself seemed to be pleased with the arrangement, had a fresh lively smile on his face. I was busy admiring the deco and forgot I had to ask him to grant my usual wish of health , happiness and wealth to all I know. He must be quite bored listening to me ask the same thing every time in every temple i visit .I must thank him though he has kept me and people around me quite happy.
"Dad the temple looks quite new, but isn't this a very old temple. We need to maintain a record of who build it, which year and why ? We don't value such historical info" I quized my dad , who by now used to my constant questioning of everything around gave me a thoughtful nod.
Just outside the temple the people of the village had some programs arranged, we saw 3 lads dance for "Bin landen e nan mava" , and one old guy in the crowd next to me said " Times have changed , we used to have classical songs , dances and bhajans outside the temple, what has
become of this generation". True indeed I realized we are fast changing forgetting our ancestry and loosing our identity in the process.
Interestingly I was here at the same temple some 20 years back, of course I was just 5-6 yrs old then. The temple rathotsava was on and I don't know why but I remember people throwing bananas at the ratha and a couple of rotten ones falling on me.The mad crowd, confusion, hot sun all had left an impression in my memory about the place. I recognized the street shop where I took shelter from banana rain, felt like walking down memory lane, 20 yrs later.
After waving good bye to our new acquaintance. We made our way back home.Trip memorable enough, got the lazy me to write about it.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Who is Cleverer?
Anywhere we see today IQ is widely publicized as the definitive measure of human intelligence. The society has also bought into this idea as a common sense that a person who has a higher IQ score is clever than the other with a lower IQ. Is it that straight forward to measure human intelligence ?Or is human intelligence something that narrow a concept that it can be measured with such ease? I definitely don't think so.
During a casual discussion with a friend of mine some time back,we came to a topic where I felt that it was quite obvious that people like scientists are cleverer than me,and it did seem like an obvious statement.I was surprised when he begged to differ and that he was in no way less than the scientist. Initially I thought this guy is just crazy or does not understand what he was implying, how can just another person like me or him be clever than a scientist,who can put a man in space! The justification he provided was so simple yet so profound. His justification was that the scientist may be better than us in that field of study, but considering the day to day walk of life,like how to deal with other people, caring for your loved ones or even just a task of how to approach a girl grab her attention and asking out :), the scientist may not be able to match his abilities. These seemingly simple day to day things are very crucial for any human given we are a social being, and these are the walk of life where people make most mistake in and struggle in life. So who is cleverer then? The scientist who can put a human in space but does not have the social skill to even manage his own family or a person who is adept in handling human interactions and hence is socially successful.
After that day as I began to think of it more,it dawned onto me yet more vividly how true his statement was. One thing which is directly clear from the above scenario is human intelligence cannot be narrowly defined and compared between two individuals. Any comparison between two individuals can only be in terms of comparing as to who is better in a particular task.
The other more profound implication of this which is not so straight forward is that all humans are equally endowed in some way or the other, and that there is no one superior or inferior to another. Trying to justify to myself on how the latter implication is correct,I came across this line of thought. Consider human mind as a processing unit which has this unparalleled ability to perform any task when trained appropriately. It can be a creative poet who can play with language creating everlasting impression in the reader,a musician who can conjure up amazing music, a philosopher like Gautama Buddha who preached people how to live life, a leader who leads a country, a doctor who saves life, a scientist, a teacher, an engineer and the list really is endless. And its not just these,a person is able to perform many combination of such tasks,like an engineer who is also a musician and so on. Also tasks like social interaction, ability to talk, write, knowing multiple languages,planning and leading a happy life,every single task we do every day without even being aware of it needs some processing power.
Its my opinion that given all these tasks which the human brain performs,for any person the over all processing potential is the same, its only that the distribution across various task is different. So probably an expert musician has by practice dedicated more processing towards music than another person who invested it for something else.
Another more abstract higher philosophical explanation for this could be that the human mind is endless and unlimited in its true potential (Buddhist philosophy).
In which case all human minds have the same potential and hence all are equal. This though more appropriate is by far more complex to realize and so I stick with the first approach :).
This line of thought and a realization of sorts that no one is cleverer than another, has had profound impact on me personally.
On one hand I feel more comfortable and confident being myself in that I am no less than any one else.On the other has cut down my ego, which a friend of mine says is huge :).
During a casual discussion with a friend of mine some time back,we came to a topic where I felt that it was quite obvious that people like scientists are cleverer than me,and it did seem like an obvious statement.I was surprised when he begged to differ and that he was in no way less than the scientist. Initially I thought this guy is just crazy or does not understand what he was implying, how can just another person like me or him be clever than a scientist,who can put a man in space! The justification he provided was so simple yet so profound. His justification was that the scientist may be better than us in that field of study, but considering the day to day walk of life,like how to deal with other people, caring for your loved ones or even just a task of how to approach a girl grab her attention and asking out :), the scientist may not be able to match his abilities. These seemingly simple day to day things are very crucial for any human given we are a social being, and these are the walk of life where people make most mistake in and struggle in life. So who is cleverer then? The scientist who can put a human in space but does not have the social skill to even manage his own family or a person who is adept in handling human interactions and hence is socially successful.
After that day as I began to think of it more,it dawned onto me yet more vividly how true his statement was. One thing which is directly clear from the above scenario is human intelligence cannot be narrowly defined and compared between two individuals. Any comparison between two individuals can only be in terms of comparing as to who is better in a particular task.
The other more profound implication of this which is not so straight forward is that all humans are equally endowed in some way or the other, and that there is no one superior or inferior to another. Trying to justify to myself on how the latter implication is correct,I came across this line of thought. Consider human mind as a processing unit which has this unparalleled ability to perform any task when trained appropriately. It can be a creative poet who can play with language creating everlasting impression in the reader,a musician who can conjure up amazing music, a philosopher like Gautama Buddha who preached people how to live life, a leader who leads a country, a doctor who saves life, a scientist, a teacher, an engineer and the list really is endless. And its not just these,a person is able to perform many combination of such tasks,like an engineer who is also a musician and so on. Also tasks like social interaction, ability to talk, write, knowing multiple languages,planning and leading a happy life,every single task we do every day without even being aware of it needs some processing power.
Its my opinion that given all these tasks which the human brain performs,for any person the over all processing potential is the same, its only that the distribution across various task is different. So probably an expert musician has by practice dedicated more processing towards music than another person who invested it for something else.
Another more abstract higher philosophical explanation for this could be that the human mind is endless and unlimited in its true potential (Buddhist philosophy).
In which case all human minds have the same potential and hence all are equal. This though more appropriate is by far more complex to realize and so I stick with the first approach :).
This line of thought and a realization of sorts that no one is cleverer than another, has had profound impact on me personally.
On one hand I feel more comfortable and confident being myself in that I am no less than any one else.On the other has cut down my ego, which a friend of mine says is huge :).
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