Living by Proxy

In my spare time "I channel - surf the TV". So do my sons Mohit and Abhishek. I pause at each channel for 3.75 secs on an average with stopover at CNBC for about 15 secs. For Abhishek and Mohit a similar pattern is seen with major pauses at Discovery / HBO. When both me and Abhishek are at home there is a struggle for the control of the TV remote although both of us do the same with the remote to have a similar viewing pattern as an end result. The loss of remote is a major irritant for us both. Neither of us can live with proxy remoting !!

We all cracked fireworks at some point in time in our lives during Diwali. Each one burns his / her own crackers by lighting them with his own stick of match. The hearing and visual gratification of noise and light patterns produced by my cracker is the same as that produced by my neighbour's who is also lighting the crackers at the same time at the same spot. Still I love igniting my crackers. Actually, the pleasure is in igniting "My own" cracker. We cannot "Proxy burst" the crackers.

Similarly we cannot enjoy or derive benefits by proxy in more direct physical activities like eating a meal or sleeping or enjoying music. We must eat, sleep and listen to music ourselves to be able to derive the gratification. Same is true for any other similat physical activity. Someone else eating or sleeping on our behalf would simply not do. Quite obvious, even to a naive person! Proxy living in physical world is just not done.

What about our emotional worlds. Manifested emotions of joy, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, anticipation etc are getiing reduced. Increasingly, I find that we proxy live our emotions.

We watch TV endlessly. Womenfolk the soap operas, Gents watch the news / sports channels, children - the cartoon networks, younger generation - music / discovery channels. Rooms and money permitting each family member may have a TV of his own to watch his own channel.

By watching soap operas the women get their dose of emotional gratification by proxy living their relationships. The frustrations against mother in laws, the pleasures of critically reviewing other womens' jewllery / costumes, the complaints against daughter in laws or contempt at how wicked a brother in law may get. Complete emotional fulfilment without the dangers of any reaction from the counterparty. The gratification achieved without expressing any emotions or receiving any rebuttals thereon. Conflicts avoided and fulfillment achieved. During family meetings also, instead of gossiping about other family members and thereby inviting conflicts, it is safe to gossip about TV soap characters. Emotional gratification by living a proxy life.

By watching news / sports channels, the men achieve similar emotional gratification by proxy living their lives. The frustration against the political system / bureaucracy nullified by heated debates/ panel dscussions, the lack of achievment in real life negated by watching a cricketing victory, the inability to perform activity in life filled by feeding the brain with a lot of information through news which is nothing but not even noise. Try recalling the news of past six months or even 10 years and how it has directly impacted your life. Or what difference the events you have watched as news on TV have made to your life. Events themselves may have made a difference but not watching them as news. The emphasis here is on watching the events on TV as news. The effect of watching or not watching news would have been "none at all".

Similarly, the aspirations and dreams of the youth are proxy fulfilled by the music channels / movies watched on TV.

Watching of TV and thereby getting our emotional needs fufilled in such a manner reduces the need for human interactions. Creation of interpersonal conflicts and their resolution both get reduced. Conflicts and their resolutions, in my opinion give rise to so many emotions. Imagine a life without TV. It will give rise to so many human interactions and so many real emotions and their manifestation. An example:

1. Try not listening to or watching a music video, instead, sing yourself (howsoever badly, and make others listen) and experience the joy.


2. Conversely, try not listening to or watching a music video, instead, listen to someone from the family / friends sing (howsoever badly) and experience the disgust.

Proxy living of emotions, let's give it an acronym - PLOE (pronounced as ploy) also delays conflict resolutions in real life. Somebody you have had an altercation with and have not spoken to for months, the duration of restoration of relations would be shorter if their is no PLOE.

Once PLOE is reduced / eliminated, I beleive, life will become more intense and emotional gratification achieved with interactions with real persons will be of much better quality

If only I had that......... Big Car, Sony 54" TV, Gucci

Quotations picked up from www

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. ~Eric Hoffer

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. ~Vernon Howard

The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. ~Mad Magazine

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing. ~John Berger

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. ~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk

There must be more to life than having everything! ~Maurice Sendak

The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more. ~Kin Hubbard

Forethought and temperance are the virtues which produced thrift, and with thrift the economic progress of society. And those are the virtues which today are gravely compromised. ~Adriano Tilgher

My work, My Pleasure

My 21 year old son Abhishek has just returned from office. His first sentence upon entering home is, "What a life!!, wait for the working week to get over and the weekend to arrive. After the weekend is finished, the same routine getting repeated”. Shocking, coming from a young lad who has an enviable job with a multinational company that pays him a salary his peers would strive hard for. He has fixed day-office timings (no extended hours) with offs on Saturdays and Sundays. His performance at the job has been par excellence inviting commendation from his superiors. Thanks to his versatility, he gets all the challenging assignments. To sum up – he has an excellent quality of life. That he is exasperated and frustrated is beyond my comprehension.

My spouse, Savita is an efficient housewife. She goes through the chores of the house - cooking, washing, cleaning with clockwork precision on a daily basis. Twenty hours a day, seven days a week. The chores are repetitive without any variety. The clothes have to be washed in the machine using the same quantity of detergent and with the same process. The aloo ki sabzi or the parantha or the chawal have to be cooked in the same manner every time. In fact, the family members would dislike if they are cooked differently. The inventory control is perfect (never have we been made to eat a colourless dal because kitchen has run out of haldi). There is so much of perfection in all her activities that sometimes I wonder if she is run by a microprocessor. She, in fact enjoys every bit of it. If a family member decides to skip a meal she is furious and if some guests drop in, it will be her pleasure to serve them. She never complains of monotony or of having to lead such a predictably routine life.

My mother and brother follow the Brahma Kumaris school of thought. They attend their daily class regularly without fail. They never feel bored with it or look for variety. They would love to travel large distances to attend these classes which have a similar content every day.

So why does Abhishek feel like having been held captive to a routine by his employment? In any case what does he do on the weekends? Does channel surfing on TV most of the time? Occasionally goes for a movie? Goes out for dinner with friends once in a while?

Why does Savita not feel having been held captive by her life. On the other hand she finds the tasks of her routine quite captivating. Without it she will probably lose her persona.

Why do mummy and Alok enjoy the same way of life day in and day out and feel quite exhilarated about it.

I am reminded of a discourse from Swami Chinmayananda in which he says, “If a person’s job involves manual labour like shifting some heavy material or a task wherein a lot of running around is required, one would complain of hardships and feel tired at the end of it all. However, when the same person participates in a game of football, or goes to the mountains on a trek, he feels elated after the same degree of hardship. Here the hardship is “achieved” voluntarily, whereas in the former case it happens because of an assigned task. A night without an A C may be intolerable but we may travel large distances to spend the weekend camping in a tent where there is not even a fan.

So is it all about how you view your life and the attitude with which you participate in the activities that it has on offer?

Or, is it about the extent of belongingness that you may have for the institution? For Savita the institution is her famiy, for Mummy and Alok it is the Brahma Kumari Ishwariya Vishwavidyalaya and for Abhishek it is his employer company.

Or, is it about undertaking an activity as a duty or as a pleasure?

I look forward to comments from all those who read it. It will be my pleasure!

महामंत्र

हरे कृष्णा हरे कृष्णा, कृष्णा कृष्णा हरे हरे;

हरे राम हरे राम, राम राम हरे हरे॥

शेयर बाज़ार और गीता ज्ञान

मेरे एक चाचाजी हैं जो की शेयर बाज़ार में डील करते हैं । कभी शेयर खरीद कर कुछ समय बाद बेच देते हैं तो कभी पहले शेयर बेच देते हैं और खरीदते बाद में हैं, मगर ज्यादातर वो मुनाफा ही कमाते हैं। एक बार मैंने उनसे उनकी सफलता का रहस्य पुछा तो वो बोले की में तो गीता में कृष्ण द्वारा प्रतिपादित सिदधान्तों का पालन करता हूँ और पैसे कमाता हूँ। मुझे आश्चर्य हुआ की शेयर बाज़ार और गीता का क्या सम्बन्ध मगर उनसे बात करके मेरे ज्ञान चक्छु खुल गए। उनसे हुई बातचीत का सारांश यहाँ प्रस्तुत है।

चाचाजी उवाच संख्या १
गीता में कहा है "द्वंद्वे विमुक्ता" अर्थात अपने आपको हर तरह के द्वंद्वों (जैसे ग्रीष्म - शरद आदि ) से अलग रखो और उनसे प्रभावित मत हो। हर परिस्थिति का आनंद लो। इसीलिए मैं तेज़ी मंदी से प्रभावित नहीं होता और दोनों से ही मुनाफा कमाता हूँ । तेज़ी में मैं शेयर खरीद कर बाद में बेचता हूँ और मंदी में मैं शेयर पहले बेचता हूँ और फिर बाद मैं खरीद कर मुनाफा कमाता हूँ।

चाचाजी उवाच संख्या २
गीता मैं कृष्ण ने तत्व ज्ञान बताया है, " संसार की हर विशेषता मैं मैं ही हूँ । जैसे सोने के हर आभूषण में, हर तरह के डिजाईन के हार या अंगूठी मैं तत्व तो सोना ही है, ठीक उसी प्रकार हर तरह के शेयर मैं, चाहे वह रिलायंस हो या स्टेट बैंक , के अन्दर तत्व तो पैसा ही है। जैसे एक आभूषण को गला कर सोना प्राप्त किया जा सकता है और उससे फिर दूसरा आभूषण बनाया जा सकता है उसी तरह एक शेयर बेच कर जो पैसा प्राप्त होता है उससे हम फिर दूसरा शेयर खरीद सकते हैं । इसलिए वत्स अपना ध्यान तत्व (पैसे) पर लगाओ और तत्व (पूँजी) से तत्व (मुनाफा) पैदा करो।

चाचाजी उवाच संख्या ३
"कर्मण्ये वाधिका ........... " मतलब अपना कर्म किए जाओ और फल की चिंता मत करो । यदि तुम्हारा ध्यान फल की तरफ़ गया तो तुम्हारा कर्म ग़लत हो सकता है।" शेयर बाज़ार मैं भी तुम अपना कर्म करो यानी जब बाज़ार अच्छा लगे तो शेयर खरीदो और जब मंदा लगे तो उसे बेच दो। फायदा और घाटा मत देखो। ऐसा करने से तुम खरीद बेच करने का सही निर्णय कर पाओगे और फल यानी मुनाफा अपने आप आएगा।

चाचाजी उवाच संख्या ४
"नैनं छिन्दन्ति शास्त्रानी ............." यानी आत्मा को न तो जलाया जा सकता है न ही किसी शस्त्र से इसे नष्ट किया जा सकता है। आत्मा बारम्बार एक शरीर को त्याग कर दूसरे शरीर मैं प्रवेश करती है । इस बाज़ार मैं भी जो पैसा है वो कभी नष्ट नहीं होता सिर्फ़ एक निवेशक से दूसरे के अकाउंट मैं चला जाता है। इसका कुछ हिस्सा दलालों के खाते मैं भी जाता है मगर यह कभी नष्ट नहीं होता । यही शाश्वत सत्य है।

चाचाजी उवाच संख्या ५
"कुछ लोग कर्म योग से और कुछ अन्य ज्ञान योग से मोक्ष प्राप्त करते हैं। " इस बाज़ार मैं भी बहुत लोग कर्म अर्थात डेली ट्रेड करके पैसा कमाते हैं और कुछ अन्य लोग अपने ज्ञान को टीवी पर परोस कर अपनी आजीविका चलाते हैं। मगर दोनों का ही उद्देश्य पैसा कमाना है। दोनों ही अपना ध्यान बाज़ार पर केंद्रित कर के कर्म और ज्ञान योग द्वारा पैसा कमाने की सफल या असफल कोशिश करते हैं।

चाचाजी उवाच संख्या ६,

"यदा यदा ही धर्मश्य्ह गलानिर भवतु .......... " अर्थात जब जब संसार में धर्म नहीं रहता और अधर्म का राज्य होता है तो कृष्ण आ कर धर्म की स्थापना करते हैं। ठीक इसी तरह जब जब बाज़ार में तेज़ी नहीं रहती और मंदी का घन घोर अंधकार हो जाता है तो हर्षद मेहता या केतन पारीख जैसा कोई बिग बुल बाज़ार में प्रवेश करके मंदी ख़त्म करके तेज़ी की पुनः स्थापना करता है और भक्तजनों (निवेशकों ) को प्रसन्न करता है।