Loving And Leaving The World

Everyone has heard the story of Gautam Buddha who loved his wife, child and the royal home and yet left them in the middle of the night quietly to seek answers to some of the nagging questions about human existence and suffering. After years of reflection, meditation and discussion, he found some answers which over the centuries have turned into a book of religion and a way of life almost. But what keeps me wondering is why he had to leave his happy home to contemplate on matters which were solely intellectual and centred on the praxis of happy spiritual growth. Couldn’t he meditate upon those matters in the comfort of his home by interacting with people around? Do matters philosophical, divine or mystical necessarily conflict with worldly phenomena? If love of life is anathema to our spiritual fulfilment then how can we realise it during our life time? Does the spirit of life flourish only by avoiding the ordeals of real life? Sahir too had doubts. ‘yeh bhog bhi ek tapsaya hai, tum tyag ke mare kya jaano’(love of life is also an ordeal, by running away you won’t ever know it)

Notwithstanding these doubts, we can see that this stereotype of loving and leaving the real world has become a very popular modus operandi in visionary pursuits? The example of Buddha and others have set a template for all those who wish to seek answers to some deep, emotive, psychic urges of man. In literature and in real life there are many who have used this stratagem – of first experiencing riches and then giving them up for finding alternative modes of happiness or some inner peace or self-awareness. The trigger in each case may be different but they all left their thriving life behind and went into a stint of deprivation and seclusion.

The most recent imitation of this mode of discovery is the much talked about book ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’. The monk is a famous lawyer, deals only with high-worth clients, makes his millions and buys luxuries like a huge mansion, a private jet and a Ferrari of course. He loves his success so much that he forgets about his wife and family and finally works himself to an on-job heart attack. And that is when the cookie crumbles for him. He leaves everything materialistic behind and heads for the Himalayas where he becomes a monk and learns the seven principles of a meaningful and happy life. Doesn’t it read like the story of a modern day Buddha?

On a much smaller scale, R.K. Narayan’s story ‘Selvi’ narrates the story of a humble singer who rises to eminence and lives a life of affluence in a huge colonial house sprawling over several acres. Then one day, when her mother dies, she comes to realise the futility of life of greed and alienation that she had been leading and decides instantly to renounce it and go back to her modest dwellings to sing for her old poor folks.

The story of ‘back to basics’ is best illustrated by another famous novel ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’. Billy has US-education, wealth, status and all the accoutrement of modernity with a highly sophisticated and an outgoing wife. But his heart is somewhere else. With discontent and restlessness overtaking him, he is at odds with the superficial and pompous lifestyle of the urban upper classes. So one day, on a personal voyage of self-discovery, he leaves everybody and loses himself in the jungles of Maikala hills and becomes a part of a primitive tribe, living an elementary life completely in sync with nature. There, he discovers the essence of life as he meets and marries a tribal girl. In that community he finds love, mutual co-existence and meaning of life, not the politics of dominance or the materiality of opulence or the shallow spirituality of civilised world.  

The act of renunciation is not particular to Hindus or Buddhists; it is equally rampant in Islamic culture where faqiri or roving mendicancy or austere lifestyle is considered an essential condition for imbibing the spirit of Sufism.  Tarq-e-duniya is not necessarily running away to jungles, but keeping a distance from the worldly power and pelf. Spiritual growth demands intense focus and no material distraction. Ashfaq Ahmed’s ‘Manchale ka Sauda’, available both as a novel and a drama series, presents the transformation of a rich industrialist, owner of a swanky Bentley and a house with French windows, who gives up on all these things and turns into a Sufi wiseman. He wanders in the wilderness and rests in the remote ruins to find peace for his inner tumult. His mentors on his way to Sufi enlightenment are also humble, lowly people such as a shepherd, a cobbler, a road cleaner and a postman with little or no worldly possessions. 

This paradigm of first loving the world and then dumping it is not a staple of the fictional world alone; it is as much popular with some individuals in contemporary world. We have numerous stories of people in high places who just abandoned their riches and turned to something that gave them spiritual excitement. Om Swami is a real-life monk who sold his 150-crore software corporation having several international offices, deleted his email account, went into the fold of a Naga sadhu and then marched straight into the Himalayas where he meditated for 18 months. After taking on the robe of a sanyasi, he parked himself in a distant corner of Himachal Pradesh from where he writes books and lives off their meagre income. Another example is a Gujrati millionaire, Bhanwarlal Doshi, who made headlines a few years ago, because he left his plastic manufacturing business of 600 crores and became a Jain muni. Interesting facts about his initiation are: the ceremony lasted three days and was attended by thousands of people, many of whom were lodged in 500 hotel rooms booked especially for the event.

The question arises whether spiritual quest or the urge for the sublime happens only after the body has satiated itself of the worldly needs and other physical pleasures? Can this disillusionment happen before one is done with the world? What is primary to life – this world or the spiritual well-being? We can easily say both, but know that, all cannot afford both. For many, the burden of a daily grind is too much to afford any higher aspirations. Matters spirituals can be a luxury for some. Faiz drops a hint.

Duniya ne teri yaad se begaana kar diya

Tujh se bhi dil-fareb hain gham rozgar ke

 (The world has made me indifferent to You, its day-to-day agonies have much greater pull)

The Hand That Speaks For You

Here is a love story from my university days. A woman patient falls for her doctor. She writes him a letter to have him out for a dinner. The doctor replies but, as is usual with them, writes in a very clumsy handwriting, which the lady is not able to decipher. Still shy of calling the doctor, she hits upon an idea. She takes his reply to a chemist and asks him to help. The chemist gives a close look to the letter, blinks and reads again. Then, he asks the lady to wait for a while, leaves for the far end of his shop and comes back with a bottle and tells her to take a spoonful before every meal.

I regret the comic and somewhat sad end to her romance, but also wonder why doctors write in that illegible scrawl. Is it because of the lack of beauty and romance in their life or is it because they are secretive about their trade? If it is the latter, I can understand, because the lure of love and romance, I guess, spares none. Did they write their love letter in their youth in that same obscure hand? I mean in the days when letter-writing was the norm for affairs amorous. Letters were then supposed to be mirrors both to a bleeding or a brimming heart. Written not only in a neat hand, they also had images of hearts, flowers, dainty fingers, coy eyes drawn in ink or imprinted faintly on the paper (sometimes perfumed) they were written on. Not only words, poems or couplets too written with a flourish in different shades of ink with impressions of tears, blood and lips adored these letters to express the tumultuous pangs of a pining heart. Such was the romance of letter-writing in those days. That is why Jagjit Singh bewails

Tere khushboo men base khat main jalata kaise

Pyar men dube hue khat main jalata kaise

Tere haathon ke likhe khat main jalaata kaise

(How could I burn the love-laden, perfumed, handwritten letter of yours?)

That was a time when handwritten documents were valued, prized and preserved – love letters were one of those. Though one of the unique qualities of written word is that it is autonomous – it leaves the writer behind, yet in writing by hand the writer in some way accompanies the text. A handwritten note is generally doubly coded. It conveys, of course, what it says, but at the same time it speaks a lot about the person too. In letters written by hand, whether designer, effusive or measly worded, you can partly see the writer.

That is why schools in old days emphasized so much on good handwriting. Making young learners develop a neat and clear hand was a part of the moral and technical training – to pay earnest attention to the minutest details. I have not forgotten an incidence from my school days when sitting on the front desk I was taking dictation by our teacher. To my utter shock I found a sudden rasping slap landing on my left ear. I didn’t know that my teacher was watching me write. On the four-lined copybook, I had put the capital letter ‘J’ on the lower three lines instead of the top three. My teacher could not bear to see his front-row learner making such a serious mistake, hence that sudden blow on my face. To this date, I have not forgotten that rule and many other etiquettes of good handwriting.

In those days, writing by hand was a kind of art that we learnt from the start. Teachers and parents would hold hands to teach us the art of print or cursive writing. In my school, the copybooks or takhtis (wooden tablets) of students with good handwriting were circulated in every classroom to set an example. And, the principal, I remember, would himself offer a nicely chiseled reed pen and an inkpot to the best student as a reward. The school drawing subject included lessons in fancy lettering, where a variety of fonts, bold, script, shaded, 3-D or outlined were taught for calligraphy. Writing with a flare, what Ghalib calls ‘shokhiye tehreer’ was an act of art.

I can see that handwriting can tell something about its writer – their concern for the reader, their level of patience, their sense of beauty and exactitude; but I was somewhat amazed at the length of the nexus that some analysts found between writers and their handwriting.  According to a study by National Pen, the handwriting of a person can tell as many as 5000 different personality traits. For example if the size of your letters is small, you are shy and studious; if they are large, you are outgoing and outspoken; if average sized then you are well adjusted and adaptable. Similarly, other features like spacing between letters and words, the slant of the letters, rounded or pointed shape of letters, narrow or wide looping of letters like ‘l’ and ‘e’, heavy or light pressure of the pen, quick or slow flow of writing, all can tell a lot about your mind, attitude, character and outlook. Isn’t that incredible?

The weirdest of these predictive features is the way people shape their dot on the letter ‘i’. if it is placed high then you have a great imagination; if it is on the left then you are a procrastinator, if it is on the right then you are organized and empathetic; if it is in the shape of a circle then you are a visionary and if it looks like a slash then you are self-critical and impatient. The study also confirms that doctors use patient’s handwriting to diagnose diseases like high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia etc. Handwriting reading in a way joins the speculative sciences like palmistry, astrology and pulse diagnosis.

Notwithstanding our doubt about its accuracy, it must be admitted that handwriting can speak a lot about the person behind it. Its double coding makes it a more alive and intimate way of communication. In a romantic way, handwriting makes both the speech and the speaker visible.

With the advent of keyboard that personal touch to writing has been lost. People don’t anymore write love missive with their hand or send condolence messages to their dear ones on chipped postcards or write wedding invitations with kesar marks. The digital fonts and styles are uniform, bland, unambiguous and unromantic. On top of it, the social media, in its very format, makes you chat with unknown people who you can friend and unfriend anytime. The person behind the digital text is nameless, genderless, stateless and by virtue of it ‘characterless’.

It has silenced the hand that used to speak for you.