Musings of the Idle Brain ..

The moment of truth had finally come. The last of the exams were ended, and the long trip home began. With Indore being one of the few cities that had virtually no air access, save the monopolistic reign of jet airways and Indian, our trip was destined to be by the great Indian railway. The Grand Trunk express line was over a hundred years old. It was by this line that we departed Bhopal at 7 in the morning, after a delay of over2 hours. The wait was excruciating; dirty waiting halls, hangover from loss of sleep, and biting cold. We took occasional trips to get some coffee and fruit juice, which all meant facing the much colder outside. In one of these trips, srini came across a roadside poha stall. Amazingly, this little place sold steamed poha at 4 in the morning. Rajesh ordered himself a plate and the rest of us eagerly expected a positive reaction so we could dig in or order more. After a long 5 minutes, he gave the thumbs up and triggered srini to order another one. When rajesh returned his plate, the guy at the shop simply wet it and gave the ‘clean’ plate to srini. This instantly killed all our appetites and brought us back to reality.

This leads to a very interesting question. Is the mind the reason for my hangover? Was I simply exhausted mentally? Or does the body and mind work in synchronicity, giving signals of fatigue only when the human body really needs rest? For the small amount of time that all of us were waiting for rajesh to sample his poha, we simply forgot our fatigue. We were instantly energetic, and literally jumping around.

So is the mind simply a defense mechanism? Does it only prevent a massive energy loss by convincing the body that is it indeed in need of rest? The matrix showed how humans connected to an elaborate network known only as ‘the matrix’ feel pain and other nerve impulses by virtue of the brain. Therefore the only logical conclusion is that the mind has a more profound impact on our thinking and feelings than what is perceptible. This leads us to many more questions about the nature of consciousness. So when is an object alive? Does sentience prove existence? Or does the presence of a soul prove it? Second, what is the soul?

Anyways, here we are at the end of day 1 of my train journey. We spent the entire day either sleeping, Playing ‘Uno’ or cracking jokes which would otherwise be classified as ‘kadi’.

Day 2 didn’t begin on any auspicious note, per se. I woke up with a sprained neck, due to my using the laptop case as a pillow. The downside of sleeping 6hrs on the previous day was the lack of it during the night. I had to literally cry myself to sleep, only to wake up at 5 am the next day. i.e. today. We passed a station called sulurpetta at about the time I woke up. If its one thing we can thank the British for, it’s the extensive Indian railway. It played a vital role in bringing the nation together. Its this networking that all us managers are taught to do at every good B School. Essentially, the railways provided a means of contact between towns and villages of different cultures etc, which is what a manager is expected to do if he wants to establish himself in all the corporate circles. This analogy is not without its flaws, but it sure is good time pass.

This brings me to discuss one of rajesh’s statements – ‘all in life, be it love, marriage, or your work, is pure time pass. Nothing holds value in the long run.’ This had two reactions from my side. First was my not-so-obvious contempt for nihilists, The second was a confusion regarding whether this guy really was a nihilist. Nihilists were followers of Fredereich Nietzche – an 18^th Century philosopher who was a proponent of the ‘nothingness’ school of philosophy (nihil – latin for ‘nothing’). In his POV, belief in nothing was the key to a blissful life. Now, what rajesh had said doesn’t exactly fall into this category, but rather led me down a path I didn’t want to believe. He was, in reality, stating one of the fundamental tenets of advaita philosophy – ‘all is illusion’. What he meant by time pass was not a condescending disbelief, but a rhetoric aimed at telling me the impact of ‘maya’ in all our lives. So what is the exact picture? What can give man the everlasting happiness that he craves so much?

I suppose even Ayn Rand cannot answer that question, but she tries ever so hard. Right now, we are crossing the station of arambakkam, and the scenery on either side is simply breathtaking. It’s a pity us city dwellers miss out on this beauty for the sake of convenience. Maybe this is why environmental activists fight tooth and nail to preserve what is left of the natural home we were given to begin with….