The uncommon truth about common sense!

While one may complain about common sense being uncommon (For the ignorant, this is a saying by Voltaire!) Well, everyone I have known or presently know has uttered something about common sense in atleast one of their conversations with me. Needless to say, I commonly use the term ‘common sense’ in my daily interaction with my spouse (mainly). Casually glancing through the entry ‘common sense’ in Key Concepts in Social and Cultural Anthropology by Nigel Rapportand Joanna Overing, I discovered that common sense is not something that is done in an impulse. For example, if someone picks up the paper lying on the floor and throws the same into a dustbin then she is not acting with an impulse to keep the surrounding clean and tidy; rather the individual is responding to the situation through a certain conditioning that has been processed within her. Blame it on the genes! To a causal onlooker it might seem that the individual is responding to A particular situation of filth and that common sense is used to clean that filth. No. The person has been conditioned and moulded by her social and cultural setup. Did I get your attention? Well, of course, I just did. So, if a person just passed by the same paper without even giving a second look and acting as if that’s pretty normal, then he is acting the way his social conditions force him to.

It is interesting to connect an individual’s social and cultural setup to commonsense. If Indians talk loudly and gesticulate a lot, blame it on their cultural setup. How can someone from the east behave like one from the west? Next time you want to utter the sentence, “ Doesn't she have any common sense?” you are actually referring to the entire genealogy of a person – father, mother, grandfather, cousin, et al. This baffled me as I always assumed that common sense is an impulse that arises when there is a particular situation. The book also says how contexts many vary but there are certain things that are common to all cultures – certain ethics and codes of conduct. But when I say culture, I am also aware that in India there are many cultures which criss-cross the country but inspite of the diversity, when one steps outside the country one has to go by the tag 'Indian' which is a very cumbersome responsibility to bear. My friend Charan has recently written a post on that Indianism or Indianisms rather which you can read here.

The background for common sense is developed and created right for the time one is a baby. Everyday significantly adds up the existing sets of constructs and actions. While examples of common sense appear quite natural and new, it is nevertheless an amalgamation of the lived, observed and unconscious experience of the mind.

Well, did you say that she doesn't have the common sense to switch off the lights when she leaves a room – blame her cultural background!

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Hurry. Grab. Avail. Discount.

The lingo of advertising has always fascinated me. Even trash can be marketed so very well by using magic words that enchant and attract the customer. More than the usual ads, the discount and sale time ads always thrill me. I receive a couple of newsletters from online shops and almost every time the words 'discount, grab, avail and hurry' are used quite often and unsparingly. No matter how many times one sees those words, they never fail to make you stop for one second and make you think of the wonderful products that might be yours. I was just wondering about those single words and how they might be used in our life.

Hurry

You have only one life. Hurry with positive thoughts and inspiring words. Don't stop. Hurry to make your life filled with goodness and compassion.

Grab

Grab any opportunity that can make you come alive. Life gives you many options - art, walks, stars, laughter, working with your hands and many such.

Avail

Avail every possibility to be of service to others. Smile and make people around you smile.

Discount

This one is tricky. Let me see. Keep away from everything/every one who try to discount your real value.

So, hurry. grab. avail. and discount.

What do you think? You can add your own suggestions to the words in the comments' section :)

The Migrant Syndrome

The word ‘migrant’ mostly refers to a state where an individual is away from home for purpose of work and employment. Sometimes there are other border issues, which is not my focus of attention in this post. Thus a migrant is in a state of ‘unhome’ where he/she is away from the comfort and familiarity of the home and hearth. Of late, the word ‘migrant’ has been sporadically colouring newspapers and news in general. If an individual is away from his/her home does it also mean that there is a greater sense of recklessness and wanton abandon? We have also heard of the clichéd phrase, “home away from home” and so I would presume that the migrant leaves his/her natal home in search of greener pastures and adopts the new place as his/her home. When one adopts the new city/town as his/her home, then he/she is liable to behave in the new place as he/she would do in his/her natal or native place. But in many cases this does not seem to be the norm.

The new place is treated with callousness and a sense of foreign which cannot be like one’s home or even nearer to it. There comes a sense of freedom and independence which borders on the promiscuous and the unethical. Probably this is one reason why the migrants are seen with a certain disdain by some political parties. This attitude of the migrant also came about in many episodes in the recent past. I would like to highlight some incidents in Goa where the word ‘migrant’ has raised its ugly hood quite often in the recent past. There have been several crimes (read rape, molestation, kidnapping, murder) where the main suspects are perceived to be migrants who commit a crime and then escape. That a local person cannot commit a heinous crime in his/her own place is collective opinion of the police as well as the general public. But my question is, ‘Is the police trying to nail the migrant as a soft target thereby completely negating the hand of any others in the crime?’ No matter what crime takes place, the first comment is that “The hand of migrants is suspected.” I cannot tell whether the statement is a general one or a carefully investigated one.

Are migrants all that dangerous? Or are migrants of a particular class seen as dangerous? But the same migrants also belong somewhere. It would be interesting to observe their behavior in places where they have been born and brought up. There they aren't migrants or unhomed people. In their native place, they don’t have the tag of criminals or law-breakers. Is there something which goes wrong when one leaves the safe confines and familiarity of one’s home and family? Is there no sense of accountability in the new place which has willingly given them employment and shelter? After all, the host city/town has embraced their skill and given them a place to earn their livelihood which was unavailable in their home-town or village.

I don’t blame the police or the public in looking at a migrant worker with suspicion. At times, I also cannot stop having a certain feeling of doubt when I see someone who I can identify as a migrant. After the Delhi episode, I cannot but see every foreign looking construction worker/labourer/driver without thinking of the rape. I know that I am over-reacting but the incident has left me quite bitter and scared. I wonder if the same individuals would have done a brutal act if they were at home with members of their kith and kin. And this situation is not in India alone. There have been many such instances in many other parts of the world as well where migrants are not those who seek employment and sustenance alone but also those who cross porous borders and boundaries illegally and are known as refugees who are also in a state of unhome. There have been many studies along these lines but not many to prove that the state of being unhomed also leads to many criminal and wild activities. 

This post was a thinking aloud post. I would like to hear what you have to say on this issue. 

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Whose space is it anyway?

I switch on the light. They respond as if they are ‘caught in the act.’  I wait for them to leave. They wait for me to leave. They are motionless. I don’t see them looking at me but I know that they can sense my presence.

This is MY house, I think but they don’t care. They never cared. Why should they care? They are not like me living in A particular space with marked boundaries. They live wherever they can find an environment that is conducive for food and reproduction. After all, unlike me they don’t need different rooms, utensils, clothes and other stuff. All that they need is filth, wetness and leftover food left carelessly by me in nondescript places.

I am not scared of them. I never was. But the feeling of them on me is quite icky and unpleasant. I would never want them on me even for a second. Of course, I revere my body as I do my space. Whenever I spot them on and off ‘the act,’ I imagine them climbing on my limbs. I cringe. I imagine a bit too much. I have dwelled on this thought of imagining something and actually feeling something. Sometimes, both are the same. Sometimes, the actual is never experienced, so certain things exist only in the imagination. The invaders’ tale is also similar. Whenever I spot the invaders of ‘my space,’ my mind is on a high-alert imagination mode. I stand there transfixed imagining and looking – looking and imagining. The invaders mirror my action. They remain there motionless. I have half a mind to spray that pesticide which is lying unused (I think that pesticides are unhealthy for the air which circulates inside the house thus putting the family in danger!). Then? Do I kill them and feel queasy about the white blood that gushes out? I do neither. I will and cannot bring an uneasiness to my sight and smell. I leave the spot and allow the invaders to continue their (k)nightly rendezvous.

The next day, I google, “Natural and chemical-free way to get rid of roaches.” As always, Google gives me the answers but I’m yet to try them on the invaders of my house and space. In the meanwhile, I thought I would write a post and in the corner of my eye, I can spot a stealthy movement. I know that I’m being watched.

Cockroach problem, dear readers?      

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Spotting grey and spouting philosophy!

It is interesting to observe the various emotional dilly-dalliances after the first grey is spotted. Thanks to the increased rate of pollution, exposure to the harsh rays of the sun coupled with a lot of tampering of food products, the greys appear at mid-twenties and early thirties much to our chagrin while the generation of our parents and grandparents dodged them quite efficiently until their early fifties or so. I spotted mine couple of years ago, say two or three years ago one sunny morning when my sister was playing with my lose tresses when she exclaimed, “Oh! Vella mudi! (Oh! Grey hair!) Me being the philosophical and academic tried not to make much ado about the grey spoke in muted tones, “Maybe the sun is shining a little too brightly!” but my sister being the sharp-witted one she is, did not give up. Right there, she plucked out the strand and gave it in my hand. I had to believe it then.

It is interesting to observe the responses or rather reactions to the first grey – The thought of growing old first comes to the mind, followed by the aesthetic aspect – denial of growing older and then the pseudo-dismissal that age is after all a number. No matter how much one philosophies about age being just a number, the fact that that number is steadily increasing never leaves the mind.

No matter what King Solomon wrote in the Proverbs about grey hair being a crown of splendour, the fact remains that one can never completely come to terms with the first few greys. King Solomon made the grave mistake of not adding a number when he mentioned “grey.” He was a wise man after all and he would have foreseen that the average life-span would decrease by and by and hence they greys would appear at any given time. But while reading the Proverbs, grey always meant anything grand (read grandfather, grandmother, granduncle and so on) but when the same grey is spotted on my crown, it is anything but grand.

Speaking of grand and grey, I realize that in no matter of time the appearance of greys will become quite a familiar phenomenon. The greys appear; I pluck them out and smile smugly at the thought of having defeated age. I know that the victory will be short-lived but I am like King Bruce who tried and tried to defeat the defeat before the defeat defeats you!

Recollecting that I am the same person who vociferously stated in her passionate feminist College days that “I don’t know why people colour their hair. After all grey hair signifies wisdom” makes me cringe with a sense of having judged people at the prime of my dark hair days. Even now you cannot spot the greys until you hunt for them but I write this post as a remainder for the coming days of wisdom and age and of course plenty of greys.

So, wise readers of this blog, tell me what you think of these shades of grey ;)

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Promises shrouded by Procrastination!

Finally, I have accepted the fact that I can turn the most promising tasks into undone tasks due to my supreme power of procrastination. Since I have chosen to be aware of everything I do, I realise that I tend to procrastinate more than I think I do. On the same note, I realise that I also make lofty promises to myself and regrettably wallow away at the end of the day mulling over my procrastination. My state is something that can be easily reversed but sadly I delay even that process.

Every morning I wake up with a smile and a tune and mentally make note of the tasks for the day. All is well. I prepare breakfast, check my mail, see my husband off and promise myself that after a few minutes of Facebook, I will work on that incomplete paper for our forthcoming book. I smile that I can manage things well not realising that Facebook has already plotted for my time and energy. The few minutes of Facebook suddenly leads me into the kitchen for preparing lunch. What!!!! have I been so long whiling away precious time? The great procrastination pushes its hood slyly and remarks, "Well, I can start that paper after lunch." But after lunch, the body demands its siesta. The rest is history.

I can be surprised that after years of knowing my weaknesses, I can still ignore that warning within me rather tactfully. In the evening while my mind wanders in the direction of the unwritten paper while doing the rounds of our evening walk, I dismiss the thought by a mere, "I was quite busy." If you would've noticed, I wasn't busy as I assume I am but rather not prioritising my day. And, at the right time the Universe, as always gives me a message through MindBodyGreen in the form of an article: How to Stop Saying "I don't have enough time to exercise." Inspite of this article talking about exercise, it holds good for every other activity.

I guess it's time to rip the shroud of procrastination. Wish me luck and positivity.

So, what do you think?

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