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Wisdom is one but unwisdoms are a thousand.
The worst is the urge to give advise to people who never asked you for it nor have any intention of following it. But with some people it is as compulsive a weakness as spitting while chewing a zarda paan:
Somerset Maugham was not above it as he narrates it in his Razor's Edge. Larry, the hero of the novel, announces his decision to give away his monies and become an itinerant taxi driver (after he realizes the hassle of attachment to worldly possessions):
Maugham: I don't often give advise...
Larry: Don't worry, I don't often take it...
Maugham: But a decent bank balance allows me to ask anyone I detest to go to hell.
Larry: I don't want to ask anyone to go to hell. But if I wanted to, the lack of a bank balance wouldn't come in the way...
I have not attained self-realization (yet), but I had always followed Larry's dictum. I never give unasked advice and never follow it when given. Yet, once in a while, folks do ask my advice and I know they would ask a dozen more people before taking their decision. If it works, they take the credit to themselves and if doesn't, they blame their advisers. So, when cornered, I do give my unwisdom away and forget it without following it up...another common weakness many have.
There was a time in my post-retirement life when I was bombarded with advices. Soon after retirement, for reasons known only to myself, I sank into a severe clinical depression. It was as if I was seeing myself drown unwillingly.
Now, everyone's depression is his own unique prize possession valued beyond everyone else's. Everyone who had it, cherishes it (if he survives it). Like Angela's whale of a shark which was about to swallow her good and whole when she lost hold of her aquaplaning board. No one should underestimate it. Like Tuppy did, dismissing it as a mere flatfish or even a floating plank. With the result that Angela canceled her engagement in a huff.
But everyone who had never undergone even a hint of depression think they have a right to offer eminent advice how to get over such a simple and imaginary whim of a malady.
It is ok...as Jesus said on the cross:
"Forgive them Father, for, they know not what they do"
But I can't forgive my eminent clinical psychiatrist who, on my third trip to him, asked me if there was any improvement after his medication.
I mumbled, none...on the other hand...
He was then cut up that I wasn't cooperating with him and pronounced:
"Either you take up a job or find your peace"
That was like the proverb:
"Marriage is the cure for his madness...but who will marry a madman?"
I can't do a job unless I have peace; and I can't, according to him, find peace unless I find a job. It was like that snake catching her own tail trying to swallow it.
I don't know why depression is called blues. It has nothing to do with the blue color. It comes in all the rainbow colors.
Mine was blood-red.
It started with internally generated electric shocks whenever I was trying to fall asleep. I used to suddenly wake up with palpitations of the heart...I knew what shocks were since I was working in my M Sc with 500 Volts DC.
My Psychiatrist called the phenomenon 'arousal'. I knew a different and pleasanter sort of arousal. This was nothing of the kind. This refused to be followed eventually by derousal...no greater nuisance can be imagined. The episodes of these shocking arousal increased by leaps and bounds till I couldn't sleep at all. That was when my brain went haywire. Thoughts were racing through all its six lobes.
History records many feats of fasting for days and months. Gandhiji held the record for many years. His fasts were unlike mine...he didn't cheat. Nowadays Gandhiji's records have been torn into shreds.
Fasting is child's play compared to going for days together without sleep. Gandhiji would have given up in three days flat if he were prevented from falling asleep by waking him up whenever he dozed. Ask Guantanamo residents.
After a couple of weeks of sleeplessness the only meaningful thought was how to end it all.
During this period, as thoughts raced faster and faster, I turned more and more silent and withdrawn. The thoughts soon turned from rapidity to rabidity. Morbid is the word.
And I refused to pick up calls on my phone and asked my son or my wife to take them and transmit the gist to me. It was during this phase that I got a huge number of unsought advices, tips, taunts and twitters. All the callers were extra-kind and solicitous and avowedly helpful. They were not uneducated. They were IASes MDs, Ph Ds, Bankers, Managers, Yogic and Tantrik experts, Devotees, Knowalls and Browbeaters (wifebeaters?) among others.
The first advice I got was NOT to sleep during the day so that sleep would AUTOMATICALLY overtake me in the night....this belonged to the "Why don't they eat cake?" category.
The next was that I should buy a carrom-board and play with my wife so that my mind is diverted from whatever it was busy with, trying to focus on how to pocket that damn queen.
The next was a peremptory order to my wife to stop watching ETV soaps all the time and take me to the Ravindra Bharati auditorium day in and day out to listen to the ongoing classical music extravaganza.
And then walk me to the Tank Bund so my senses of sight and sound are soothed.
Forsooth!
I visited Ravindra Bharati yesterday to watch a children's Annual Day. The kids were lovely to watch but the seats were cramped, the loos were stinking, the entire edifice reeked of cries for maintenance.
And the Tank Bund was competing in its mal-odors with whatever rivers flow through the Hades...
The next set of uncalled for advices amounting to impertinence can be labeled Dharmic Instructions.
Recall that my reaction to all these words of (un)wisdom was a stark outward silence and inward curses.
An old and learned lady recited the Gita shlok whose import is that one should lift oneself up by one's bootstraps.
Boot was my instant reaction.
Another lady chose to taunt me:
"You know the Gita and portions of the Upanishads by heart and yet..."
Another lady had this to say by way of sage advice:
"Don't breathe shallow...breathe deep...it is done by using the diaphragm actively and letting the stomach do the rest"
One more lady was more cheersome:
"Babajee is camping at Hyderabad right now. He is available to the lay public at the NTR Gardens between 9 and 12 in the mornings and 6 and 9 in the evenings"
Another gent was pressing my wife to bundle me and take me to the Rahu-Ketu temple in Kukatpalli and make me do the Navagraha Shanti Puja. My wife told him apologetically that her hubby doesn't believe in planetary influences (gravity being too weak a force).
He then offered to get it done at Vijayawada in my name...very nice of him. But the catch is two-fold:
1. I have to partake the prosad he sends me thereafter by courier
2. I will have to pay the Rs 1000 that the Puja costs...otherwise it would be HE that gets the benefit
When my wife informed me of this delinquency I just stared at her and she withdrew.
And then there were people who offered me the Art of Living family of books free of cost...they were very nice people but didn't know I forgot how to read...
Ultimately I got cured when the doc changed the drug one late night...rather late...wisdom, unlike unwisdom, dawns latish.
...Posted by Ishani
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Wisdom is one but unwisdoms are a thousand.
The worst is the urge to give advise to people who never asked you for it nor have any intention of following it. But with some people it is as compulsive a weakness as spitting while chewing a zarda paan:
Maugham: I don't often give advise...
Larry: I don't want to ask anyone to go to hell. But if I wanted to, the lack of a bank balance wouldn't come in the way...
There was a time in my post-retirement life when I was bombarded with advices. Soon after retirement, for reasons known only to myself, I sank into a severe clinical depression. It was as if I was seeing myself drown unwillingly.
Now, everyone's depression is his own unique prize possession valued beyond everyone else's. Everyone who had it, cherishes it (if he survives it). Like Angela's whale of a shark which was about to swallow her good and whole when she lost hold of her aquaplaning board. No one should underestimate it. Like Tuppy did, dismissing it as a mere flatfish or even a floating plank. With the result that Angela canceled her engagement in a huff.
But everyone who had never undergone even a hint of depression think they have a right to offer eminent advice how to get over such a simple and imaginary whim of a malady.
It is ok...as Jesus said on the cross:
"Forgive them Father, for, they know not what they do"
But I can't forgive my eminent clinical psychiatrist who, on my third trip to him, asked me if there was any improvement after his medication.
I mumbled, none...on the other hand...
He was then cut up that I wasn't cooperating with him and pronounced:
"Either you take up a job or find your peace"
That was like the proverb:
"Marriage is the cure for his madness...but who will marry a madman?"
I can't do a job unless I have peace; and I can't, according to him, find peace unless I find a job. It was like that snake catching her own tail trying to swallow it.
Mine was blood-red.
It started with internally generated electric shocks whenever I was trying to fall asleep. I used to suddenly wake up with palpitations of the heart...I knew what shocks were since I was working in my M Sc with 500 Volts DC.
My Psychiatrist called the phenomenon 'arousal'. I knew a different and pleasanter sort of arousal. This was nothing of the kind. This refused to be followed eventually by derousal...no greater nuisance can be imagined. The episodes of these shocking arousal increased by leaps and bounds till I couldn't sleep at all. That was when my brain went haywire. Thoughts were racing through all its six lobes.
History records many feats of fasting for days and months. Gandhiji held the record for many years. His fasts were unlike mine...he didn't cheat. Nowadays Gandhiji's records have been torn into shreds.
Fasting is child's play compared to going for days together without sleep. Gandhiji would have given up in three days flat if he were prevented from falling asleep by waking him up whenever he dozed. Ask Guantanamo residents.
After a couple of weeks of sleeplessness the only meaningful thought was how to end it all.
During this period, as thoughts raced faster and faster, I turned more and more silent and withdrawn. The thoughts soon turned from rapidity to rabidity. Morbid is the word.
And I refused to pick up calls on my phone and asked my son or my wife to take them and transmit the gist to me. It was during this phase that I got a huge number of unsought advices, tips, taunts and twitters. All the callers were extra-kind and solicitous and avowedly helpful. They were not uneducated. They were IASes MDs, Ph Ds, Bankers, Managers, Yogic and Tantrik experts, Devotees, Knowalls and Browbeaters (wifebeaters?) among others.
The first advice I got was NOT to sleep during the day so that sleep would AUTOMATICALLY overtake me in the night....this belonged to the "Why don't they eat cake?" category.
The next was that I should buy a carrom-board and play with my wife so that my mind is diverted from whatever it was busy with, trying to focus on how to pocket that damn queen.
The next was a peremptory order to my wife to stop watching ETV soaps all the time and take me to the Ravindra Bharati auditorium day in and day out to listen to the ongoing classical music extravaganza.
And then walk me to the Tank Bund so my senses of sight and sound are soothed.
Forsooth!
I visited Ravindra Bharati yesterday to watch a children's Annual Day. The kids were lovely to watch but the seats were cramped, the loos were stinking, the entire edifice reeked of cries for maintenance.
And the Tank Bund was competing in its mal-odors with whatever rivers flow through the Hades...
The next set of uncalled for advices amounting to impertinence can be labeled Dharmic Instructions.
Recall that my reaction to all these words of (un)wisdom was a stark outward silence and inward curses.
An old and learned lady recited the Gita shlok whose import is that one should lift oneself up by one's bootstraps.
Boot was my instant reaction.
Another lady chose to taunt me:
"You know the Gita and portions of the Upanishads by heart and yet..."
Another lady had this to say by way of sage advice:
"Don't breathe shallow...breathe deep...it is done by using the diaphragm actively and letting the stomach do the rest"
One more lady was more cheersome:
"Babajee is camping at Hyderabad right now. He is available to the lay public at the NTR Gardens between 9 and 12 in the mornings and 6 and 9 in the evenings"
Another gent was pressing my wife to bundle me and take me to the Rahu-Ketu temple in Kukatpalli and make me do the Navagraha Shanti Puja. My wife told him apologetically that her hubby doesn't believe in planetary influences (gravity being too weak a force).
He then offered to get it done at Vijayawada in my name...very nice of him. But the catch is two-fold:
1. I have to partake the prosad he sends me thereafter by courier
2. I will have to pay the Rs 1000 that the Puja costs...otherwise it would be HE that gets the benefit
When my wife informed me of this delinquency I just stared at her and she withdrew.
And then there were people who offered me the Art of Living family of books free of cost...they were very nice people but didn't know I forgot how to read...
Ultimately I got cured when the doc changed the drug one late night...rather late...wisdom, unlike unwisdom, dawns latish.
...Posted by Ishani
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