Hi The World

The skylark sang at midnight in the desert

Clouds covered the Moon

Rain; the desert bloomed

Is this the dune of flowers?

Midday sun overhead; the empty sand all around

Listening to Nikhil Banerjee playing Sindhu Khamaj or Ravi Shankar Tilak Shyam while sipping at a Balvenie is tasting happiness. Watching the sea coming alive with light in the dawn is tasting happiness. Singing We Shall Overcome, believing we shall overcome is joy.

Growing up in a small town in the backwoods of North East India, there was so much to overcome - the small town prejudices; the xenophobia that we all suffered from; the easy reversion to a lotos-eater's life; the temptation to blame all ills on the other person, the other community. To paraphrase Auden, it was so easy to live so that when there was a riot we rioted and when there was peace we cohabited. But the most important, the most difficult thing to overcome was the inclination, common to lotos-eaters, to accept matters of faith as matters of belief, to accept whatever was told to us without question. It was so easy to do so and so difficult to question, to overcome the laziness. Examiners did not like questions, deviations from the standard interpretations of texts.

As I grew up, I felt, in my arrogance, the arrogance of youth, that yes we would overcome these, that as a country we could come out of the prejudices that led to the limitations which need overcoming.

Today 20 years later, the challenges remain, they may have taken a different form, but they remain. The questions grow more invidious. Whether it be the need to fit in and at the same time remain different, to maintain one's own identity; Or to challenge beliefs and still have faith is possibly the most important.  

At one level it is the need to have faith in God despite the importance of questioning the existence of God, which is beautifully expressed in the Nasadiya sukta of the Rig Veda, which questions where everything comes from, which questions where did God originate. At a basic level I suppose the need to believe comes from our basic need for comfort - this can be expressed as the need to have faith in God, in the ability to Overcome the problems that afflict that us today..

Today this need for man to believe in something, to have faith is expressed in the extraordinary faith that is there around the world in Barack Obama. The need for comfort that things will become better, whether economically, socially or societally. 

I suppose therefore that happiness really lies in having faith, in having hope.