On speaking: People speak
lots of crap these days; probably it is a market need to keep the titillation
going, the attention seekers galore. I am rarely finding any interesting or
sensible talks nowadays; it is becoming far and few. There aren’t many people
whom when you hear you take notice, that there is an indication of something
deeper, substantial. Such speaking has become quite rare. There are ofcourse some
riveting stuff online so on, some of the TED talks really are worth the time. Some
of the talks by Osho, that I got hooked to in my 20s really stands out (need to
emphasis, there are crap too), J.Krishnamurthy so on and yes, followers can
only be followers, cheap replications. Recently I happen to listen to Jayant Narlikar,
quite an amazing man (ofcourse I already mentioned about Ted Turner, in context
to recent listening experience).
What does it take for people to
speak some sense? I am reminded of a movie I saw long time back that I took out to watch again recently, from my pirated video stock. My Life to Live is a quintessential Godard stuff, hence a customary
philosophical interlude is always on card, that adds to the charm I guess.
There is a scene where a woman, who is into prostitution, has a rendezvous with
a philosopher (Brice Parain, playing himself). The woman says “It’s odd.
Suddenly I don’t know what to say; it often happens with me. I know what I want
to say. I think about whether it is what I mean. But when the moment comes to
speak, I can’t say it”. The philosopher addresses the issue with an interesting
take from a fiction work “You’ve read The Three Musketeers?” he asks, expectantly
the woman has not read it and she queries “Why”.
“Because, in it there is a character named Porthos…tall, strong and
little stupid. He never thought in his life. He has to place a bomb in a cellar
to blow it up. He does it. He places the bomb, lights the fuse, then he runs
away, ofcourse. But suddenly he begins to think”. And this one is really
terrific, he starts to thinks about “How is it possible to put one foot before
the other?!” “So he stops running. He can’t go on, he can’t move forward. The
bomb explodes and the cellar falls on him…and he is crushed to death. The first
time he thought in his life and it killed him”
The woman, evidently not getting the drift, says “Why are you telling
me this story?”
“No reason. Just to talk”
The woman takes it from there, into an archetypal Godard loop, “Why
must one always talk? Often one shouldn’t talk, but live in silence. The more
one talks the less the words mean”
“Perhaps but can one?...I have found that we cannot live without
talking” says the philosopher.
“I would like to live without talking”
“Yes it would be nice wouldn’t it?...but it is impossible”
“But why words should express just what one wants to say…Do they
betray us?”
The philosopher explains “But we betray them too. One should be able
to express oneself. It has been done in writing. Think someone like Plato, can
still be understood…he can. Yet he wrote in Greek, 2500years ago…we should be
able to express ourselves. And we must”
“Why must we? To understand each other?” asks the woman.
“We must think, and for thought we need words. There is no other way
to think” (this blogger holds that you can think in images, and then use appropriate
words to bring it out). He adds “To communicate, one must talk; that is our
life”
“Yes, but it’s very difficult” the woman confesses, that she is a
prostitute makes it stark, as also that she is killed in a senseless violence
later adds to the irony. She adds after some thought “I think life should be
easy”
Now here the philosopher says something that brings in the gist “I
think one learns to talk well only when one has renounced life for a time. That
is the price. So, to speak is fatal. Speaking is almost a resurrection in
relation to life. Speech is another life from when one does not speak. So, to
live in speech one pass through the death of life without speech…there is a
kind of ascetic rule that stops one from talking well, until one sees life with
detachment”
“But I cannot live everyday life with…I don’t know”
“With detachment?...We balance,
that is why we pass from silence to words. We swing between the two because
it’s the movement of life. From everyday life one rises to a life we call
superior. The thinking life. But this life presupposes one has killed the
everyday, too elementary life”
“Then thinking and talking are the same?”
“I think so. Plato said so, it’s an old idea. One cannot distinguish
the thought from the words that expresses it. An instance of thought can only
be grasped through words”
(this blogger avers that it remains an idea with Indian elite who have
expertise on detaching thoughts from speech, it is quite effortless around
here, achieved by centuries of inbreeding and deceitful ways. Indeed they have
taken to the next level, the nuances of semantics adds to the absurdity of
speaking, as also writing –an occupation that guarantees scholastic attributes,
whatever nonsense one may write).
On walking: “No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker”. That is Thoreau writing exclusively on walking. I really don’t want to burden it with my thoughts, except I have been quite a walker, so I leave some views of Thoreau.
“The walking of which I speak has
nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take
medicine at stated hours”
“I am alarmed when it happens
that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in
spirit…The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body
is –I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What
business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”
“My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but
my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and
constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with
Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more
definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the
insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is
the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot KNOW in any higher sense
than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of
the sun: "You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular
thing," say the Chaldean Oracles”
“I am astonished at the power of
endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbours who
confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months,
aye, and years almost together”.
On writing: I started reading things seriously only in my mid20s,
before that mostly confined to comics. When I say seriously I mean not under
any duress or compulsion but choosing books as I thought appropriate without
any intent or reason, just that I got to read and nothing much. Three to four years of consistent reading,
and then one morning as I saw this man walking across the street in Karol Bagh on a cold morning,
I thought I should attempt on writing. Haven’t ever written even a paragraph
properly it didn’t really pan out the way I thought. It was messy and
regrettable venture but I kept at it, as and when it occurred to me that I
should write. In last many years I have written more than I ever thought I
would, writing still is quite a complicated task. When the thought is to be
converted into English words, it comes out like a bunch of horses out of
starting gate; there is a stampede of words, some words move here and there,
some move faster than others. In the meanwhile some words have their own
problems, the appropriateness, the texture, the spelling so on. The task is to
reign in, streamline it into something logical, into an Indian line, steadily
moving towards sentence, despite these eventual calm stray words do jut out
like a surprise longer odds at the wining post. Causing much irritation, a
steward’s enquiry, some probing, rechecking so on. 
