Seasoning with the Changes
‘It’s all in the running’, we are told. Not knowing better, we tend to follow the hazy footsteps that are visible through the dust and storm, like everyone, with everyone. Do we remember why we believed in our most fundamental undertandings, and why we still do? Naman Jain opens up in a raw crescendo, drawing parallels to the long standing yet unsettling comfort of the seasons, in this one-to-one conversational piece with the reader.
The seasons are changing. This time around, in the splashes and puddles that managed to last longer than any of us expected, they finally seem to be (un)winding up now, no matter for a little while. In a place like Trivandrum, where it is not feasible to earmark the year with stark changes in temperature phenomenon — the tar-melting afternoons of summers or lake-freezing nights of winters — we somewhere learn to spend our lives crusading against the rains and judging by the time/times of the day it pours, to realise which month of the year it might be. There, of course, come days when the rains are more punctual for classes than we have ever managed to be. Interesting, how with an extensively complex interplay of a thousand different parameters, and their implicit correlations, this timing almost looks as simple as a clock’s ticking, perhaps conniving at best.
Galileo put together a similar idea brilliantly, which could elucidate this point, “The Sun with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else to do in the universe.”
Notice how there is a fancy feel to the idea having been put this way. Or interestingly, how easy it got for you to buy this thought without dispute. The simplest references to things beyond our reach, the intangibility and of course an illustrious name attached to it, for instance, gives us a respite. But questions? None. Out in this muddle, in the constant ghostly urge to ascribe logic, reason, meaning and productivity to each second spent, we give in to the pleasure of unknowing. Such bliss. Maybe through all the pious rut, devout misery and cumbersome(also, metaphorical) math that occupies our days, forgetfulness caves inside our consciousness like a dear acquaintance only to see us, becoming its ally. Yes, of course, it is that — the gifted daze; not us.
Did I mention that we miss out on questioning?
Perhaps it is in the tipping desperation to recognise patterns or continuously create newer ones that settle. To be able to categorise any traces of individuality, and build mechanisms to swipe left or right. Because, of course, it is easier. To acclimatise with and within, no matter the changes. Almost like how we accept each day of October rains as an extension to July’s; like how we ascribe each humid afternoon of 40 degree Celsius, followed by a 19 degrees Celsius of the same day’s windy night, as a half day of tropical Summers and a half of near-Himalayan Autumn. Nothing too extraordinary. Nothing close to what we can know. All falling infallibly into convenient sections– the Seasons — for what they are, but what they never were.
It is a marvel almost — how subtly the seasons change, and how consciously we forget, to ask the right questions.
While it is all falling too evidently too short, and yet the law of averages is all we see. Here and there, this is but not exactly sparse. It is a marvel almost — how subtly the seasons change, and how consciously we learn to forget, to ask the right questions.
Did I say that before?
Well, let us delve into an instantiation, and see if we can get lucky — go ahead and summon up the most fundamental insight about science you might explain to a child. Maybe it is about the idea of temperature, the beautiful diffusion of ink in water, the lighting of a bulb or the falling of rain. Probably about how water and ice are veiled relatives, or the fact of probability itself. Or possibly explain about why we undertake the mighty act of breathing, why mirrors act like they do or imaginably about the substance that the rainbows made of. Maybe they’ll ask you what’s above the sky, and beyond that. And beyond that. And maybe beyond that too.
All of these intriguing little worlds of questions would lay their roots in the fascinating imaginations of these tiny little particles — jiggling, rumbling, toppling, waving and playing all sorts of games with each other to manifest as one effect or another. All these once exhilarating ideas have now exhausted you, I understand. But just take a moment and look at this — do you remember why you came around to believing that atoms and molecules exist in the first place? Try this: How many tests can you list out at the moment to support that conviction? Or, maybe with a little more introspection go ahead to figuring out how many of these ‘tests’ have you actually seen or done, to be able to believe it?
It is alright. I understand after a moment of quiet, the arguments would go around to how we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Undoubtedly legit. About how we cannot burden our brains with trivial information, for if we chose to believe it then (referring to grade 5’s wisdom), it must have been pretty convincing, and now that we are over it, we are bound to look for bigger things. And my answer to that would be a simple and complying “of course”, because there has never been an objection to that. But isn’t it at least a little funny that you came so far, to make theories, and predictions and applications and perhaps a living out of the same, yet not exactly remembering if you started right? Well, eh. It is just one dopey problem; let this pass.
Oh wait, did I gab about the asking-questions bit yet?
We can conveniently defer to another season for the time being. While we are at this– musing at the snatches of nostalgia, remember how schools used to be? How the time used to fly by on most days, and left you yearning for 10 more minutes for the game to get over, for another story, for another turn, for another glass of orange squash, or just another Pokemon battle to get over, and your parents would happily stand there waiting for you, those 10 (read: thirty) minutes, that again flew by so fast? There came birthday parties and annual functions, picnics and festivals. All you seemed to need was just one more hour, or one more day with your friends or maybe just in your own company, in your cosy room to live it all, like nothing came before that and none could ever ace that moment after it. Unknowingly, you somewhere knew what it meant to stay. It seemed like a perverse sort of pursuit, really, to talk about growing up, or managing time, or becoming.
The more you want something, the more you move away from it.
Cut to: Move away, you did. From the confines of your home, and to this place which has become one, or is in the process of. Something you can ascribe your dispositions, drive, disparities and even abhorrences to, no matter how hard you try against seeing it. And look around — remember the freedoms you so dearly yearned for in all your prayers? The little ones maybe — to go out and play ball at 11pm with friends, to watch a movie series with your best peeps through a whole Sunday, to talk to the trees for hours and not be seen by anyone, to say nothing and sit with your favourite books the whole night, to not eat anything but fruits for a week, to build a makeshift skateboard with your friends and volunteer to drive yourself down a slope without a helmet, to work in the laboratory through nights and sleep through days, to eat cereals in a bowl filled with Coca-cola, to eat DIY Maggi sandwiches for breakfast, to sit under the stars and have nothing to explain, to go on unplanned treks or cycling spree and find yourself lost after thirty kilometers in, to survive on nothing but coffee for three consecutive days and plot a graph to prove/disprove that either effect of caffeine is hokum or that your favourite coffee brand is useless, or to aim for the stars and not be judged because it IS rocket science after all, or maybe to build the version of you that you love and not be questioned twice.
The freedom that does not fight over other’s spectrum or constantly compares itself to anyone else’s thoughts, beliefs, or capabilities; but the one which truly is.
The freedoms that are born out of neither need nor necessity, but out of who you are. The freedom that does not fight over other’s spectrum or constantly compares itself to anyone else’s thoughts, beliefs, actions or capabilities, but the one which truly is. Incomparable and inimitable. Do you see those anywhere around your existence? Do you see yourself giving shape to any? Is it a ghost that haunts you or are you too mature to think about this, because all this is a risible affair? Is it you or is this someone else’s idea of what your freedom should be?
Do you remember to ask the right questions or have you gotten too involved in merely naming the seasons, that you may now as well have entirely forgotten what they really signify?
That they don’t change all at once, and when they do, they almost don’t.
