Concept of TIME (Part-3)

In Part-2 of the article we realised that our consciousness gets aware of time because of the events that keep occurring around us. We saw, that events occur in succession, one after the other. Their sequence of occurrence creates the impression of time in our consciousness. Gap between the occurrence of two events is called 'DURATION of time'. We measure time(rather, duration of time!) with the help of events.
Some events are periodic- they repeat again and again. For example, a pendulum swings from one end to the other again and again. We measure a duration of time with the help of such periodic events. The bob of a pendulum does not remain at one point all the times. So its being observed at any particular, say left extreme position, is followed by its disappearence from there. Then again after complition of one full cycle of swing, the bob reappears there.

Human Behaviour

Helping someone does not always help us earn Goodwill

Normally we are taught that if we help some one selflessly we will earn lots of goodwill.And if we keep helping, we expect that our goodwill account will get compounded, with time and with each person helped, to become a large corpus, and then people will start loving us for our good and helping nature. We are therefore taught in India by our elders to help others selflessly. But things are not so straightforward in the actual society. Actually factors affecting society and human behaviour are so numerous, and so diverse and entangled with each other, that the dynamics of society can't we expressed as simply as Laws are expressed in Physics.

For quite a few year we know a good natured lady. I will not take her real name. Let us call her Rama Ji. Rama Ji has helped us sometimes in the past. We used to give our respect and lots of friendly affection to her in return. She has two grown-up sons. Let us call them Bunny and Gunny. Bunny is elder and Gunny is younger. They were never good in studies. Naturally they had to leave their studies when they could not pass 12th class exam after making a couple of un-successful attempts. Rama Ji used to be self employed in the past. Then she was earning good money and used to liberally splurge on her two sons. Her husband Kartar (name changed) is a father of strict type. He was always opposed to the vagabond ways of his two sons. But whenever he scolded his sons Rama Ji would fight with him to protect the two sons from his ire. Slowly a rift started to develop between the father and the mother-sons team. With time the rift widened to become an insurmountable valley.

The two sons grew up to become typical easy going carefree Delhi boys. They were like many Delhi boys of modern generation not focused on anything in life. So both these boys could not get any regular employment anywhere. Their father Kartar has a small and successful business of his own. He earns well. Initially he was willing to let the two sons join him. But their non serious attitude towards life did not allow the two boys to work with their father for long. Actually the father is of very sincere type who comes to work on time and would work the whole day without any tension. But the two sons wanted to enjoy the life. So sons stopped going to their father's shop after some days. Initially Kartar persuaded the two sons to join him and work sincerely. But sons refused on the pretext that father is too strict and misbehaves with them before the servants. Rama Ji, as always, gave her silent (and sometimes vocal too!) support to the boys. This made the equation between the father and the mother-sons team even more bitter. When both Bunny and Gunny could not get any employment anywhere their relationship with Kartar soured even more because Kartar began making sarcastic comments about his two sons openly. He would some times even abuse his sons and wife too. Things became so bad with time that Kartar stopped giving money to his wife. He stopped taking food in his home too. Rama Ji had stopped working many years back. So now without getting any financial support from her husband, sustenance became a real big problem to her.

When she was still earning, Rama Ji had helped us financially once or twice during our bad times in the past. Actually she is a good friend of my wife. Although Rama Ji is much elder in age than my wife, but still they both were able to forge friendship and their friendship has continued for many years. In our heart we were grateful towards Rama Ji. We also respected Rama Ji because she has mostly behaved well with us. Yes the two sons have occasionally behaved arrogantly with us because (I guess!) they used to think that we are maintaining friendly relationship with their mother in our own interest. Sometimes they used to indirectly make fun of us too. But we did not mind because we considered Rama Ji as a very good lady and so we pardoned everything that her sons would do un-conditionally.

When her husband stopped giving money to Rama Ji, obviously she asked the two sons to go out and earn. Bunny somehow found a small job somewhere. But Gunny could not get job. Slowly, God knows what kind of thoughts started cropping into Bunny's mind, he began to show attitude to his brother and mother. Perhaps he began to think that he is a better capable man than Gunny and that is why he got a job whereas Gunny could not. He would give very little money to his mom Rama Ji for meeting the household expenses. He would save the major part of his earnings in his bank account. So Rama Ji did not get much relief even after Sunny began to earn. Sunny used to make fun of Gunny on his inability to get a job. He would often say "it is not my duty to earn money for Gunny. Why should I only contribute money to meet expenses to run our house? Why not Gunny does something too?... etc. etc... ". But despite his best effort Gunny could not get any job. Actually he had no qualification, neither did he possess any knowledge of employable skill.
One day Rama Ji came to our house and started weeping at her fate. As I have written earlier, we respected her a lot. Naturally we became distressed when we saw her undergoing so much trouble, emotional pain and financial hardship. She was telling that if Gunny finds some job then all her problems will be automatically finished.

I am a self employed teacher. Many of my students belong to affluent families. So I began thinking in my mind to ask parents of some of my students to give Gunny some job. One good person, whose son is studying from me, agreed to give Gunny a job on my recommendation. And thankfully Gunny finally got a job with even higher salary than Sunny. When I had helped Gunny to get him a job, I had only done so because, I and my wife, really wanted to help Rama Ji. I never wanted her to feel indebted to me or my wife. We just wanted her to feel happy. For ourselves we just wanted to earn a little goodwill in their heart.

But humans are very complex creatures. Rama Ji's son joined his job. He started earning good money. Financial condition of her family improved. The two brothers are now again on friendly terms. Bunny is going to buy a new mobile phone for his mom Rama Ji. He now gives more money to her than before. Perhaps after seeing Gunny get a job he has realised that he(Gunny) is as good as him(Bunny).

But they have now began to avoid us. Some times they do not even pick our call when we call on their mobile. Once Bunny even misbehaved with us. Rama Ji too has began to get aloof from my wife. God knows why?

So instead of earning any good will we have lost a family friend.

Now I am always wondering: Is helping someone good?!

Human Behaviour

Humans are becoming Arrogant and Uncivilised

These days people fight with each other without any serious reason. For example, in New Delhi every day on road, we see car drivers and bikers getting very easily angry on each other or on any body for most trivial reasons.
If for some reason your car is suddenly stuck in the middle of the road and thus temporarily blocking the way of the car behind, then it is not unusual for the driver of that car to come over to you and right away start hurling upon you the most colourful abuses.Yes if that fellow sees that inside your car two or three strong looking people are also sitting along with you, then with even greater quickness he will turn polite and sweet.

Thus, man is fastly evolving into a new "dog-like-species" in his/her behaviour in the modern times. He/She respects you, remain polite to you and talks to you without offending you, if you are stronger to him/her or if he has some work from you.The same man will be barking like a bull-dog on a person who appears weaker to him in strength or status the very next moment.

It is not that those who behave as above in their daily life are uneducated uncivilised people in the normal sense of these words - on the contrary, they normally are well established and responsible in their respective life but still they behave with carnivorous aggression with people unknown to them because of the changing values of the modern society. Today those who have power or money are the one who get unquestioned respect from all; their drawbacks are their virtues and they can do any thing they want without the fear of ever getting punished. Courts take indefinitely long time to pass judgements on matters relating to petty offences being commited by people in their daily life.Courts have their own well documented valid reasons for this delay. But this delay, in punishing small offences appropriately, is making people believe that if they are powerful then they can beat or insult a person inferior to them. Because, they know, that at worst, they will have to face a criminal case, which their lawyer will easily manipulate in court room to save them from any possible quick-punishment.
So how can civilised behaviour be brought back to humanity? I will be pondering over the answer of this question for the next few weeks.If any reader has any thing to say on this topic then I will be eagerly awaiting for suggestions.

Poetry-2

Life is a flow

Life is a flow,
and we do not know
where it will go
or what way it will go.
But it goes on and on
and takes us on a roam,
we meet each other
and then we go away-
why did we meet?
Or why did we separate?
We do not know, we can not know-
because life is a flow
that is ruled by a law
which we do not know.

Poetry-1

Waiting for Something

When we wait for something
which is about to happen,
and which we desperately want to happen.
To us,
the wait seems to be very long-
but we wait any way, in tense anticipation
until (thank God !)our wait ends
and that we waited for so eagerly happened at last
we become happy
we feel as if we are free
then slowly our euphoria subsides
we become busy in things that keep happening in our life...
...without wait !

Saurav Ganguly - Strongest Willed Cricketer

Saurav Ganguly is one of the most explosive cricketing personality ever.When no body had so expected, he made a dream debut in test cricket in the year 1995 at Lords England. He scored a century in his first test and thus becoming only the third person to score a century on debut at Lords.From here he went on to establish himself as a reliable batsman in the Indian team in both one-days and test crickets. Then, when the responsibility of captaincy was entrusted upon him in the year 2000, he from the very first series as captain, started showing that he has amazing leadership qualities. And later he rose to become the most successful ever captain of the Indian Cricket Team. He remained captain of the Indian team until year 2005. During his captaincy India played 49 test matches out of which 21 resulted in wins.He also led India in 2003 world cup in which India reached upto the final.
Things changed drastically when Greg Chappel took over as coach of Indian Cricket Team. It appeared that the Ganguly era will end very soon. Chappel-God knows why?!- became an open enemy of Ganguly.Yes at that time Ganguly was not going through a good form as batsman but under the influence of Chappel-induced-memory-loss people temporarily forgot that Ganguly is one of the most successful Indian batsman along with Sachin Tendulkar. That Ganguly has scored 15 centuries in test matches and 22 in one days.Or that he is one among the seven batsmen who have scored more than 10000 runs in one days.
People forgot that in not so distant past we all were fans of his charismatic personality. We all adored him for the way he displayed aggression as captain, the way he swung his undershirt on India winning a match at Lords or the way he inspired his team to pull wins from the jaws of defeat. We forgot every thing because we Indians thought that Greg Chappel is some super coach who on the basis of his magical coaching techniques will make India the strongest team in the world. People like Kiron More who was Chief Selector of the Indian Cricket team at that time became so much obssessed with Chappel that Ganguly was unceremoniously dropped from the Indian National Cricket team in early 2006. People thought Ganguly is finished. But no, his few mad fans(including me!) were right, Ganguly had lots of passion still left in him. He started working hard and on the basis of his good performance in domestic cricket Ganguly made a dream come back to the world of international cricket in the end of 2006 during the South Africa tour of the Indian team. After coming back into Indian team he has performed consistently well and has shown to the world his inner strength as a person. How many of us could have overcome from a similar situation of despair in personal and professional life?
Then skeptics said he is not fit for One Dayers. So ignoring his consistingly good performance in the past one year he was not selected into Indian One Day team. He was ignored for 20-20 world cup as well although every body was aware that he is capable to score runs at rapid pace needed in one-dayers and 20-20's.
But his performance in the ongoing IPL-20-20 matches has again silenced all the critics.

Concept of Time (Part-1)

HOW do we perceive TIME?
"Time" is something that all of us measure in our watches.Concept of time is so basic to our consciousness that even a three year old child uses Time in his daily life without any problem.All our social activities,from trains to offices to cinema shows- just every thing! -are performed according to a time table.Keeping track of Time is so important that every body ties a wrist watch in hand to know Time anytime.
But if we ask ourselves to define Time, or to explain in words that "What this Time actually is!" we will feel that we can't come up with any ready answer quickly.Even science books do not define the concept of Time well.In Physics it is accepted as a 'fundamental quantity'-but Physics does not discuss its concepts.Never-the-less, the entire Physics (which is the foundation of all Sciences) depends upon The Concept of Time for its description of Nature.Perhaps Time is such a basic concept in our mind that there is nothing more elementary to our consciousness than it.And perhaps that is why we are unable to define it properly.But here through this blog post I am going to begin a philosophical journey of examining the real meaning of time.
Please feel free to comment.