Saturday, September 11, 2010

World peace, the necessity of the future

I was traveling to California last weekend. When I went for my security check at Boston Logan Airport, they had two kinds of detectors. One was the usual metal detector and there was another one which looked liked those x-ray machines. This was there for every conveyor belt checking your carry on bags. As luck would have it, I was to go through the x-ray kind of machine, hold my hands up above the head and pass through. As I did that, many thoughts breezed past. I was thinking if I should be offended. The next person to cross was also a foreigner, an Asian. My suspicions grew and I kept observing. An African American lady, I was at loss how to account for this that I saw two Caucasian Americans also went through the x-ray detector. Meanwhile, on the non x-ray side, I saw one Indian old couple and another Asian guy pass by amongst other people and finally that calmed me down.

Now there are other complications all over the world, the Florida pastor, the Kashmir destructions and the Deganga incident. They are all really unnecessary. For a moment let’s think about the alternative that there were no evil acts in the world. It would have been so different from what it is today! There could have been people escorting me all the way to plane door and as it was a fine weather, I could even have waved them from the tiny windows of the airport. And it was not even a long back that all this was possible. In the old Silsila movie there was a scene when Jaya Bhaduri comes all the way till the runway premises to receive Amitabh. The only reason she didn’t come to the runway seemed to be not because of permissions but that she was shocked at her husband’s death.

The US has such a high value of freedom of speech and being a first world nation, one can truly enjoy the freedom and human rights. But again, because of evil hatred, things have changed. The country can no longer stand by its name – Land of opportunities.

Kashmir would have been such a nice place to live if people had given up arms. Imagine such a cool place would have benefited the Indians and even say south Pakistanis so much during the hot summer days, would have been an ideal winter destination. Such a big hilly area wasted just for some stupid egos.

It’s not that I am some angel who does not know the meaning of anger and hatred. There are people I hate so badly that I really pray that some accident happens to them or I will go to a gaming parlor and play shooting games thinking my targets are those people. But I would never take up arms to destroy them.

The options of no evil are so good compared to the other way round that it makes perfect sense to even forgive and forget all the hated people.

One line from the famous poem “Where the mind is without fear” by Rabindranath Tagore comes to my mind:

…..Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; ….
…Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

This is exactly what is needed in the world right now. Or for that matter ever. Read the whole poem here. I think it suits the scenario of yesterday today and tomorrow. No wonder people call him Kabiguru. In just 13 lines he has really found the root cause of all the evil in the world.

1 comment:

Nirmal Gunaseelan said...

Call me a pessimist, but peace is never possible as long as we are human. After thinking about the root cause of such issues, I always come back to one thing - ego and at the root of it, selfishness. Everyone wants to exert the smallest (or none) amount of effort to get the most out. How and why should it be possible? I'm no communist nor am I praising capitalism here. You should be able to make a profit out of things, have the option of buying gas at the best rate etc., I am alluding to a type of selfishness that goes beyond reasonable human necessities.

I am just wondering out aloud, if people do not want to cheat/steal/accept-things/allow-things, and are steadfast in always doing the right thing irrespective of what they would get out of it - that is the solution. India and Pakistan leave Kashmir as an independent entity - Nationalism is a big selfish attitude isn't it? Why is India so much behind Kashmir? Because they cannot stand Pakistanis enjoying Kashmir? Because it is a gateway to many frontiers that India needs as a regional power? For all these questions, selfishness again comes up as a possible answer.

So, let it be..