Liberated or Dispirited....?


Coming in the wake of Women’s Day, I wonder if women really are as liberated and free as they profess themselves to be. Lull the mind into believing what you want, at the basic sub-conscious level; much easier than facing startling realizations.

Every time women all over the world, achieved victory however tiny, ranging from winning a law suit against a predator, citing sexual harassment, to the laws of a particular culture being changed, giving women equal say in matters of marriage and divorce, my heart would leap with joy. The gushing of a young, unadulterated mind, untainted by spoils. Pure. I felt let’s say emboldened.

Today when I stand at the brink, at the very same threshold, women all over have crossed before me, I cannot but help feel my stomach lurch. My mind is in turmoil for I am at a crossroads in life. I’m young, successful, aspire to soar to heights unknown. Aspire to further my career in all dimensions. Money, fame, lucrative deals beckon just as any man. I have a view from the top, and enjoy it all. Soon I come crashing down.

I just as any other woman, will join a man in wedded bliss. For a short time I will be caught up in the fantasy surrounding the post honeymoon paradise, and all will seem rosy and peachy. He’s my hero, my man. Soon I will bear a child, not because I have to, but because I truly believe it is a gift of life. My once soaring career takes a step-back, for only a short while, I assure myself. My baby needs me now. So I turn into a part time working- from-home-mother, enabling me to change nappies. And I do it without a second thought. After all a man can NEVER be expected to make such sacrifices. Soon my little one grows, and my motherly duties progress to fetching and dropping my cub to play school, art classes, karate and whatever to keep his/her mind occupied. I want my child to have lots of friends, so I organize various kid extravaganzas, allowing my child to interact with others of a similar age group.

I find myself mingling with other such once-career-driven-now-stay-at-home-mums. We exchange notes, with a promise that we shall return to it all, in a short while. The little one soon branches out like a banyan tree, duties now changing to imposing curfews on teenage revelries, dating, drinking, smoking and all such vices, the promise of long ago now forgotten. Before I know it, the little birdie has flown the coop. So where does that leave me?

An old, weary, forty-something woman who’s too dispirited to sift for the remains of her vestigial career. A glorious return, such as the famed rise of the phoenix from the ashes remains but a distant dream.

Designer Babies

The trend to own everything designed by a designer continues, permeating through every aspect of our lives. Designer clothes, boots, sun glasses, bags, shoes……..the list is endless. You name it, you got it. The new one being designer babies. Huh! Now what the hell is that?

Designer babies is just a fancy name given to fancily promote genetic engineering. To be specific genetic mutation. It all started with Dolly the sheep, who was cloned from an egg. That led on to Rainbow the cute kitten pictured in a beaker. Followed by Lucy the mouse. Every since then people have been animatedly expressing their opinions regarding genetic engineering, hailing it and cursing it. It’s supposed to be a “cure” for eliminating herditary traits, and enhancing the better ones. We’re probably more closer to creating “designer babies” than we would like to admit.

Apparently, a survey published in the U.S. medical journal, “Fertility and Sterility” have shown that about 3% of the fertility clinics in the U.S. have been potentially processing awkward and horrifying requests by parents to genetically manipulate the DNA so that their child would have the same disability as the parents for eg. dwarfism or deafness. Truly malignant is’nt it? I shudder to think the other various ways humanity could misuse this technology, for the more you set out to probe into matters that are best left alone, the more nosy and greedy you get. Although not yet allowed on humans, it will not be long before some bright mind will devise a way, legally or illegally to create a clone of say Hitler………from probably a fragment of his nail, hair, anything that contains his DNA.

So basically rich couples who don’t know what to do with their money can just walk into a fertility clinic and literally order what they want in their baby and what they don’t. Kind of like hiring an interior decorator to do your house. Or picking from the menu at a restaurant. It becomes a status issue, to have the most perfect baby, both physically and mentally. So that they can brag about it in their political circles, and feel proud of themselves for having created a “superior” human being. The perfect height, skin colour, intelligence, eye colour, vision, sex and to some extent probably personality.

It ranges from manipulating the sex of the child, to selecting a particular embryo which will be allowed to develop, especially when the couples are at a high risk for certain genetically transmitted diseases, allowing them to screen out those embyos which happen to carry the gene. The scientific term for all of the above is Integreted Gene Management (IGM).

Soon the natural method of reproduction would be replaced by an artificiality both in manner and procedure. This is probably just another insight into the fact that money can buy you just about anything. Yes, the possibilities of IGM are endless, especially for those couples who suffer from cardiovascular problems, diabetes etc. all of which are heriditary. It will also offer a new lease of life to couples who have discovered at the embryo stage itself that it probably has genes for Down’s Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy and can save themselves a lot of suffering and heartache by discarding it in favour of another embryo. But what worries me is, that everything has a price. And it should’nt end up being too high to pay.

What exactly is death? Some would say that it is a mere transition from this world into what is commonly known as the after life. Still others would term the transition as painful, while life and even death itself, as relatively peaceful. Then there are still others, the more philosophical one’s amongst us, who view life as a piece of machinery, which when newly purchased has an appreciation value, and as time rolls on, gets depreciated in turn. Then there are those who firmly believe in the existence of Angels, God and the Devil, along with paradise known as Heaven and the hot pot known as Hell.

I cannot but help feel sorry for those chosen few, for their firm beliefs have downed shutters over their eyes which prevents them from viewing life in it’s actuality, you may call me a cynic and maybe I am, but a tiny part of me also envies them at the same time. I envy them for their ability to view life in simple black and white, with no interspersing shades of grey whatsoever, for their ability to always look for the proverbial silver lining in the face of massive devastation, however tiny it may be, and above all for their capability to simplify the multitude of complex problems otherwise known as life into a tiny mathematical equation which can give but one result, and completely ignoring the various permutations and combinations which would probably give the rest of us a massive headache, on merely dwelling upon it.

I guess the above are people who we could term as “happy”. Now once again the cynic in me says that “happiness” is a status that most of us spend our entire living existence trying to achieve, while the better amongst us claim to have seen it, felt it, but have also apparently achieved it simply through their “peaceful” existence combined with their radiant aura and their sole ability to view everything that life throws at them, as nothing but God’s wonderful way of shaping mankind for the better.

Now maybe they really are happy, or maybe they have just tricked themselves into believing they have attained the equivalent of divine nirvana, simply because they do not have what it takes to view life in all its shortcomings, which believe me is an endless list. Or just maybe, they truly possess the courage to view life accompanied by all its shortcomings and see “the inner truth” while the rest of us simply have an extremely jaundiced view.

Personally I would term “the inner truth” as nothing but sweet little lies, and unless I’m faced with some sort of startling realization or divine intervention that all these monks keep claiming to have been faced with, I’m not likely to change my point of view. Unlike them, who believe the grass to be a bright green and the sky a lovely blue, I am acquainted with the but bitter truth that the green grass turns yellow, and the so-called blue sky is filled with the darkness of tornadoes and cyclones, which evoke massive destruction, destroying every living thing in it’s path.

Most of us are just chasing time, and trying to fit in a career, marriage, kids and maybe even grandkids in that tiny span, until time catches up, and we die. Why do we even bother? It’s probably because most of us are firm believers in the abstract truth that “we alone are the makers of our destiny”. Now if that were true, why should tears stream down the orphaned child’s face as his parents are hit by a speeding vehicle, when they were minding their own business and spending some much needed quality time with their kid?

One may argue that things happen for a reason, and that at the end of every dark tunnel, there’s light. I refuse to believe in such sheer nonsensicality and I refuse to be a victim of such absurdity. And who’s to say that death is peaceful, or that one would attain peace, something which has managed to continuously evade us in this meaningless existence, in the after life? The impracticality of it astounds me. And so do the fools who believe it.

There are those who imagine paradise to be filled with lush green grass, dancing butterflies, accompanied by a pretty rainbow, at the end of which would lie the pot of gold, some as a bar where they can commence their endless drinking binge and still some as a mere extension of the pain life really is- probably a bed of nails.

The first faction is just stone crazy, the second nothing but ineptitude drunks, and the third plain cynics. But interspersed somewhere between the three, is the truth, in search of which men are willing to devote their entire existence, and if possible the after life too. My question is, even assuming one manages to find that elusive truth, what is he or she going to do? Is it that one suddenly comes to terms with the gripping reality of life, or is it that one is suddenly blessed with all the beauty and the serenity that life has to offer? Or is it that one is hit with a bolt of comprehension in which one decides to forsake all material wealth and goes off on a trekking expedition to the Himalayas, where let me remind you it is freezing, but the individual apparently does not feel the biting cold for he or she has “surrendered all to God.”

Personally I have not heard of anything more stupid. Mankind never ceases to continuously amaze me with its idiocy in at first terming life and existence as meaningless and then try to determine the “significance” of it all. What is the sense in trying to establish the connotation of a hollow existence?

Most of us are quite content with going through the singular motions of everyday life, without attaching too much importance to it, for otherwise we just might crack and the layers of the carefully arranged façade would be all to a naught and we would fall apart at the seams. Why do we need to figure out this existence, especially when we’ve decided ages ago that it’s quite meaningless? And then again if it’s really as meaningful as some claim it to be, we don’t need to figure it out at all, the pure brilliance and clarity of it all should just dazzle us.

The edge of reason is what separates the suicidal from the mentally stable. The vibrations given by each one of us determines our ability in accepting life for what it truly is- just a loop of birth, death and rebirth, over which we truly have no control. And then there are many who do not believe in rebirth and such nonsense, and that nothing lasts forever, and that by childishly holding on to that thought, we refuse to accept that absolutely nothing is permanent and that our footsteps do not leave indelible markings.

Some amongst us spend our entire pathetic existence trying to please others, and some trying to please themselves. But I tend to respect the latter more than the former, for at least they are being candid about their motives for the former in actuality are trying to please themselves- only through others. And then there are those who live to serve others in this life, and hope to die simply to serve themselves in the after life. The irony of it all never ceases to flabbergast me.

But yes, I will envy the individual who can truly view life in all simplicity, while the rest of us try our best to edit unwanted memories, actions or deeds. He or she is truly blessed.

Only time can say where the road goes or the day flows. And I divulge that at certain rare moments when I’m watching the fiery sun fade as it dips below the ocean, or when I feel the warmth of the soft grains of sand slipping through my fingers as an indicator of how quickly time flies, or when I hear the roar of the waves as the foamy crests crash against the golden shore in unison, deja-vu hits me like a ton of bricks and I get but a glimpse of what we all seek high and low………………peace in it’s true sanctity.

And it is but a futile wish on my part, to be able to capture that moment or to be able to freeze time, even if it is just for an instant, for at that moment, all time is suspended and no matter how much time fails erase, it ceases to matter. And although I’m no “Monk who sold his Ferrari” (for I don’t own one), I would sell my soul, to be able to attain that elusive moment as a constant companion.
I cannot help but be faced with the verity that as time rolls on, and we age, we trade our childish innocence for adult cynicism, and as I watch the tranquil face of the sleeping baby, I am aware of just how much I have lost, and how much I yearn to once again re-possess that priceless gift, as we journey on this endless road, seeking absolution when all along it’s right before us, in the one consign we refuse to gaze at- deep in our hearts.