Deepa Majumdar
This article is dedicated to Sri Ramakrishna, whose advent marked the beginning of a new age.In the sixties, when Dylan published, “The times they are a-changin,’” things already felt portentous. Imagine how much more portentous they are today.
Those halcyon days of the Shillong-of-the-sixties!How can one forget them? This is no sentimental drivel about a past long gone. This is no clinging to a land and a people who did not want “outsiders.” This is no phantasmal search for authenticity. All terrestrial roots are inherently chimerical. Our true roots lie in a hidden God, who asks for the near impossible – that we seek Him from amidst the furor of the world.
Here we are, caught between two carnivals – the divine carnival flowing with Joy Absolute, and the carnival of worldliness flowing with fleeting pleasures of sense-gratification. A beguiling mirage, the worldliness of the world blinds the planet. How do we pierce through this haze that chokes Nature and the hearts of men already hardened by mammon? The eastern scriptures (Hinduism, Buddhism)urge us to be like the floating lotus,in contact with water, yet dry. Like the lotus, we must float on the worldliness of the world, yet remain untouched by it. One way of doing so is to make sense of the future by reflecting on the past.
The whole point in looking back at my Shillong days, is not to cleave to something already devoured by nomadic time, but to fathom the true meaning and purpose of modernity. It is a look back, so we can leap forward to an age that has no name yet. It is a look back so we can make sense of history as it transitions from one macro-cycle to the next. Here we are, about to leave behind modernity to enter a new nameless age, as the spotlight of History shifts from western civilization to China, andthe rules of racism change.
Brave are the youth born in these extraordinary times, when the world is in turmoil, the environment endangered like never before, and nature rebukes us through a pandemic that puts mankind’s necrophilia to shame. Former Pope, John Paul II asked us to change from a culture of death to a culture of life. By “culture of death,” he meant our heightened death instinct,spurred by concupiscence. But not even the sickest death instinct can compare with this sepulchral pandemic– a ruthless non-moral evil that devours any and everybody, irrespective of race, class, or gender.
All this brings me back to the Shillong-of-the-sixties…
I know Shillong has changed drastically, but what do I see when I look back through the mist of memories and the funnel of time?
Crisp winter afternoons when time stood still and the clouds hung low, as if fishing for our collective consciousness. Bobbing dahlias refreshed by dew. Frost-laden grass that made us long for snow. Luscious gooseberries in terraced gardens bursting with plenitude. Natural orchids swinging from natural perches. Waterfalls gurgling down forested hills. Strains of hymns interspersed with sounds of strumming guitars and soulful kirtans, flowing from across the deep green of the hills. Glowing fireplaces, where wood and coal vied with each other to provide warmth. Tailor-made clothes that shamed mass production and its homogeneity. Home visits from doctors who sat by your bedside to feel you pulse – not your purse. Villagers bent low beneath baskets of fresh vegetables, with time to share their lives over cups of tea. Pre-capitalistic restaurants that felt like home, with waiters bending low, asking, “Will you have more?” A puritanical innocence with respect to the body. A serene pre-television life filled with songs we sang for one another. A pre-refrigerator life filled with fresh meals and garden-grown organic vegetables. A telephone system with live operators who said, “Number please?” and chatted with you. A data-free, gadget-free life in which children played with each other – not devices. An unhurried pace of life. A whole afternoon gliding past as one sat absorbed in the beauty of the moment. A quiet, cozy state of being that hushed becoming, leaving us with excess time, to be spent either in deep contemplation, or lethargic sleep. A God-inspired state of being that did not allow one to speak of God. Religious festivals that refreshed man and nature with the ambiance of mysticism. Yes, those were quiet days that infused in us unfathomable quietude and repose. Little did I anticipate the great disquiet of the future…
But this is only one side of the picture. This is the beautiful Shillong I remember. To balance this, we have the ugly side of Shillong in undivided Assam-and-India-of-the-sixties. Entrenched linguistic-religious identities that spawned sectarianism and hatred. A blind-and-blinding identity consciousness that persecuted minorities, while excusing terrible iniquities in natives, saying, “He is one of our own!” Pogroms and riots that paved the way for insurgencies. Friends and neighbors turning into enemies, thus proving that love and hatred belong to the pairs of opposites. A lethal puritanism that caricatured the ascetic norms and policed women more than men. A puritanical sexism that closeted sexual abuse. Intact families (because divorce was not allowed) full of strife.A class system that sullied all semblance of fraternity. Altogether, a great disquiet. But greater was the disquiet that was to come…
Yes, History swings in extremes. Little did we guess that the swing from puritanism and identity politics, in directions prompted by modernity – towards the so-called sexual revolution, religious bigotry, and rank individuality – would be as drastic as it turned out.What has the past led to? What do we have at present? As always, a combination of the beautiful with the ugly. Greater individuality. Tangible prospects of economic prosperity. Greater cosmopolitanism (digital and real). Greater acceptance of those formerly rejected as pariah. But also, a misguided search for love that has led to breakdown of the family, and a descent into the body, with excessive attention on the carnal and greater violence against women. The advent of a new trinity: money, market, and technology. Easy access to name and fame. Religious bigotry and incendiary attempts at theocracy, both reviving the poison of caste hatred. Above all, a flight of the life-giving ascetic norms, and as a result, a multitude of misfortunes characteristic of modernity: epidemics of depression and opioid addictions, the hi-tech war and cowardly drone attacks, historically unprecedented levels of greed and lust, hence a heightened worldliness, and a hitherto unknown flight of wisdom, etc. For the greater our materialism, the greater our foolishness!
Yet, despite these dreary realities, our human potential – especially our capacity for true joy – can never vanish. Nothing can erase the divine wellspring of existence-bliss-awareness within our souls. Some constants shine forth as the substance that bestows serenity upon fleeting surface changes. For, every “now” in the sempiternal flow of time possesses the seed of eternity. What else is eternity but a frozen “now” bursting forth with plenitude and divine joy? As eternity washes time, we sense the mellifluous still point behind it all – that point where time vanishes into eternity, carrying space and causation with it, as we transcend the body to lose ourselves in the divine Light within. Entombed and blinded by materialism and concupiscence, and lost in febrile desires, mankind has lost touch with the eternal verities that cry themselves hoarse from beyond the subject-object boundary. Eternal stars upon a firmament that transcends time-space-causation, the virtues shine forever. So does the heaven of peace, which rules from atop the mountain of dispassion.
But here we are, far below this feast of joy, blinded and broken by the toll of sins we have added to our original sin of alienation from God. The point though is not to focus on sin but on our divine potential, ever seeking expression even in the greatest sinners.
What is all this leading to? Divine providence, I am convinced, brought about modernity, to alleviate poverty and to show us, through the temptations of these times, that descent into the body, and attachment to money, name,fame, etc. are blinders that sink us in our own narcissism. From the ashes of modernity, I am convinced, will rise the phoenix of stronger ascetic norms – true renunciation and chastity, which we choose with deliberate volition, with no puritanical coercion whatsoever!
Always darkest before dawn, modernity is the darkness waiting to yield a sunrise of spiritual effulgence.