Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Billions of Fortresses

Sunday was a shocking day for me.

I got down from my house with my folks to leave back for college. As soon as I sat in the car I realised that the stereo wasn't there ! I had sat in the car just the previous day and over the night it had disappeared !

What was even more shocking than realizing that it had been stolen was the fact that the car was parked right in front of the place where the colony guard is supposed to sit !

Now things get stolen everyday from people so I guess it's not that big a deal for anybody. But this was the first time anything had been stolen from us (and hopefully the last time). It's a very humbling feeling of sorts in many ways.

I mean we spend our lifetimes in trying to secure ourselves. We get educated to have a secure future. We buy all kinds of locks and security alarms for our houses. We graduate from bikes to cars for a safer ride. Infact we enter social circles and make friends, etc. in order to secure our needs for belonging and ego. We basically try to build this cocoon around us and lock ourselves in it ... victims of our own insecurity
........ And then all it takes is enough will or hunger of some other individual(s) who take something away from us and make us realise just how penetrable and vulnerable we really are.

It's not just stealing. A wayward comment is sometimes all it takes to make us feel vulnerable and shatter our defence mechanisms.

What's more interesting is that once the feeling of security gets breached, we retract further into our shells and put up more and more layers around us. (we just got an automatic security alarm installed in the car). We become more aggerssive or submissive. But the detachment increases nonetheless. People become more and more suspicious of strangers and even friends and relatives. It's like visiting a posh colony in urban Delhi where people live in there well equipped palaces and are either oblivious or suspicious of anybody else.


Ofcourse we don't live in a utopian world so I can't think of any possible solution for this dichotomy. Moreover I haven't reached the echelons of spirituality where I can shun away materialism and relationships to feel blissful secuirty. I guess what is possible in such a case is to prioritise. I'm not implying a preplanned ranking of everything with worst case scenarios and the works. Real time assesment shall suffice.

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