Putting yourself in other's shoe.

One of the benefits of internet is ease with which you can download a movie and watch it.This is specially true for English movies which are easily available on internet for downloads. (Movies in other languages with English subtitle are a bit difficult to get)  Movies which otherwise I may have never watched, I can get them without any trouble.

              To kill a Mocking Bird is one such movie. It's considered an American classic and is based on the novel of the same name. (On a similar note Hollywood is way ahead of Indian movies when it comes to adapting literary works on screen.) The story is set in 1930s around the time of great depression. It  is about a lawyer Atticus, his relationship with his two motherless children,  a boy and a girl aged 10 and 6 respectively, and about a  case in which he defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl. This was the time when racism was prevalent in US and sanctioned by law. Even though Atticus defends the accused convincingly, the  prejudiced white jury rules the accused guilty.

    In the novel the daughter whose name is Scout is the narrator. The movie maintains that flow with  daughter's voice in the background used for narration and nearly all the scenes feature Scout. So we see the story unfold from the eyes of a 6 year old.
                        
                               I specially liked the way relationship between Atticus and their children is portrayed. There is a scene in the movie where Scout just had a fight in school with some boy. Scout is a tomboy and she has the tendency to get into fights with fellow students whenever she thinks that they are wrong. Atticus explains to Scout that one has to put himself/herself in other persons shoes before blaming him/her. That's a wonderful lesson. Sometimes in life getting the perspective from the other end makes the situation very clear and helps in clearing our doubts. If we are prejudiced against something or someone this is something we need to do.  This is what the movie is about.  The jurors, due to their prejudice, rule against the accused. They fail to see the truth or act on the truth because they see the accused from a different prism because of his race. So do the majority of  the small town folk.

          The movie  is titled so because it is considered a sin to kill a mocking bird because the mocking bird does no harm. It does not destroy crops. Punishing a innocent fellow is just like killing a mocking bird.

Now a days Life seems to be a lost cause......
...........It seems life has no meaning.  When I look at it. It makes sense. Why should life have a meaning ?
There are billions of souls on this earth. Is it possible that each one of us has a  meaningful purpose. ?

May be I am wrong or may be I am not. We don't have a single life. If reincarnation happens each soul lives many lives. Perhaps all the lives that we live when accumulated serve a purpose. It's the whole that is meaningful and not the parts that we live.
Right now I don't see any meaning in the part I am playing in  this life.

There was a time when I believed that I could do anything,
Now I believe , I can do nothing.

Sometimes I forget that ...
the life is the way it is,
and not the way I want it to be.

Not all people are successful.
otherwise there won't be any success stories.
hmmm....
Well success is relative.
People succeed because there are others who failed.
So if there are no failures , there won't be any successes.

Economics of Nature

There is an excellent article on importance of biodiversity here.

One of the point it mentions is that the benefits of nature to us are free.

By and large, we do not pay for any of this: our economics does not, for the most part, include paying for nature. But we pay when it is lost(biodiversity). Less fertile soils make it harder to grow crops. Dirtier water is more expensive to make fit for human consumption. The collapse of fisheries leads to unemployment. The loss of mangroves increases the impact of tsunamis. The loss of animal species increases the risk that humans will catch diseases such as Lyme disease. Again, the list goes on.

We do not pay for what nature provides. The gifts of nature are free. We start paying only when we loose some gift of nature. We pay for the bottled water because there is no clean drinking water left. We pay for the AC in living rooms because there is no clean air in our cities. We do not value the bounties of nature when we have them in plenty.

The modern living has distanced humans from nature. We live in a sealed compartment where technology has created a layer between us and the natural world. Our direct dealings with the natural world are increasingly rare.

We pay for art. Nature is the most stunning peace of art. It is as beautiful as anything can be. It is full of magnificent sights and sounds . And it is free.

Our economics is based on the model of human activity and ownership. We pay for things where human labour or ownership is involved. Nature belongs to us all.

As technology has made us less dependent on vagaries of nature we have become aloof to our natural surroundings. Instead of taking advantage of what technology has provided us, our greed has made us indifferent to the diversity that exists around us.

Mountains and desire

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless ,speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are the things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.
But of course ,without the top you can,t have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides. So on we go.....we have a long way......no hurry.....just one step after the another.
(From Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance)

No one ever travels so high as he who knows not where he is going.
Cromwell

When the end is near ....

While browsing the net I found this interesting article in NY Times.

This article reminded me of the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom which I read sometime back. This book tells story of Morrie , a retired professor who one day discovers that he does n't have many days to live and his lessons to the author who is a former pupil.
The author is busy with professional life when he gets to know about the professor's condition and decides to pay him a visit. The one visit turns out to be a weekly flight to Morrie's home where each time Morrie has lessons on life for the author.These visits have a profound effect on the author. It is a thought provoking book and touches your heart.
Another book on a similar genre is "Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life" by former CEO of KPMG Eugene O'Kelly . At 53 he was living a very busy lifestyle of CEO having very little time for himself and his family when he finds out he has cancer and has few months to live.(reminds me of the hindi movie Anand)
He decides to plan his death and the few months he had on his side. He decides that he will meet all his friends who were near and far and meet them once for final time and "unwind" .
In the book he says that all his life focussed on building and planning for the future .Now was the turn for him to learn the true value of the present.
These books and the article reflect how knowledge of death transforms a person and gives him one last chance to introspect....

Coming back to the news article here is a excerpt from the lecture which I really liked.
"OK, let’s talk about football. My dream was to play in the National Football League. And most of you don’t know that I actually – no. [laughter] No, I did not make it to the National Football League, but I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones that I did accomplish. I had a coach, I signed up when I was nine years old. I was the smallest kid in the league, by far. And I had a coach, Jim Graham, who was six-foot-four, he had played linebacker at Penn State. He was just this hulk of a guy and he was old school. And I mean really old school. Like he thought the forward pass was a trick play. [laughter] And he showed up for practice the first day, and you know, there’s big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn’t brought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of the other kids said, excuse me coach, but there’s no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how many men are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right, and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right, so we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing. And that’s a really good story because it’s all about fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work. And the other Jim Graham story I have is there was one practice where he just rode me all practice.You’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, go back and do it again, you owe me, you’re doing push-ups after practice. And when it was all over, one of the other assistant coaches came over and said, yeah, Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he? I said, yeah. He said, that’s a good thing. He said, when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your
critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care."

It's so simple to be happy but so difficult to be simple.

Yesterday I was watching Bawarchi on TV. It's one of those movies which you can watch again and again without getting bored .The great thing about Hrishikesh Mukherjee's movies is that they always have something to teach. Watching a Hrishida's movie is like learning life's lessons.
A common thread that runs through these movies is the idea of simplicity.The characters are simple ,most often they have simple desires .The settings are simple and the stories are simple. It's this simplicity that is so difficult to achieve.Simplicity has its own beauty.
In our life (as the protagonist of Bawarchi says) in pursuit of larger goals we stop caring for small and simple things.It's these small joys that make our life. These simple things that define and make our life.But more often than not we ignore them. This idea of simplicity can be extended to every subject.For example in science it's understanding of the fundamental concepts that is required to solve complex problems.
It's our inability to deal with simple things in life that leads to our life's miseries.Take for example Dr. Bhasker's character (Babu Mushai) in Anand .Before he meets Anand he was fedup with life because of the misery he saw in the world as a Doctor and cancer specialist. It's Anand who teaches him to enjoy small things in life that make our world. Same is the case in Mili where Jaya Bhaduri's character transforms Amitabh Bachchan
Alas it's not easy to be simple. Being simple is just like being yourself. Seeing everything in right perspective and just being honest. Is n't it so ?
Looking at the larger picture we ignore the small strokes that make life.We tend to cloud our thoughts and our perspectives about others and life's situations sometimes with extreme emotions. We care more about results and less about the approach. So we miss the fun of doing things. It's the journey that matters more than destination ,for we spend more time in the journey.Everytime we too need a Anand to teach what real 'Anand' ,life is.
Of course life is not always simple.But then it is also not complex.It's we who make it complex .
So try to keep things as simple as possible.
PS:In whole of the movie(Bawarchi) Rajesh Khanna is wearing the same khaki dress.I can't recall any other hindi movie in which the hero wears same dress througout the movie.