There is a situation. A situation of conflict. And the positions of both parties are quite recalcitrant or even irreconcilable. A curious conflict of views and also of thinking in our family, to which I am an onlooker or at best an incidental participant.
Curiously, this is between my mother 67 and my son 14. The former - a matriarch quite conservative even for her generation - and the latter - my elder son - quite precocious and quite different even for his. The usual generation gap gets even more gnawing as both my mother and son are on the extremities of their respective generational spectrums.
Well this is not a classical case of delinquency. It is not a grandmother chiding a teenage grandson for not studying or for being on a excessively long call with a girl or for being glued to TV or play-station. It is more about life, the way you must live, the values that you must imbibe and the philosophy that you must follow and espouse.
When he was 3 yrs of age, he was made to memorise Haldighati, Rani of Jhansi and a poem on the martyrs of Chittor of anonymous authorship. The one mentioned last is a beautiful poem of unknown provenance, was published in Kalyan about 60 years ago, and was memorized by my mother at the instance of her father, and then passed on to my son by her. Her father was indeed a man of great erudition. So when my son was as young as 3, he did memorize and reproduce on demand, to an awe struck audience – my mother is quite prone to demanding such impromptu recitations – sitting in admiration of an infant reciting torturously chaste sanskritized Hindi verse with a clear diction and “veer rasa” like intonation, but of course no understanding of either the significance or the context.
But that was then. Today he has a mind of his own. He is more inclined to abstract painting, and writing verse reading up on game theory, and rightly or wrongly giving in to believing that some will rise only on the expense of others, but clearly not willing to memorize a eulogy on Chittor’s martyrs.
Whereas, my mother would want him to respect mythology, have some basic knowledge of theology and dabble in philosophy with equal sensitivity, he despises the first two but is quite eager to debate on the last. That is to say, he dismisses mythology as buffoonery for lesser minds, disregards theology as useless interpretation of mindless mythology, and creation of rules by a handful few who would like to manipulate a larger lot for self interest and self preservation. So, all that he accepts in some random measure is Philosophy. This is immensely intriguing as philosophy itself is probably debating, descanting and dissecting all that a commoner would like to accept and believe.
Today I read a dialog steeped in dialectical abstraction that he penned. The dialog is between a Serpent and a Saint. Curiously enough, a supposedly indolent serpent is asking questions of a supposedly eminent saint who is responding supposedly sagaciously, but his responses are dismissed by the Serpent as cliched. The serpent shares with the saint what he believes the right perspective. The entire tenor of the dialog that he has conceived is of an impertinent challenge of the supposed erudition of the saint by a sloughing serpent. It is reflective of his deep seated defiance of authority. His deep seated desire to not walk the beaten path. His inclination to rebel. The perplexity caused by the usual debate of causality, determinism and free will.
Well the outcome will never be known. There are no rights and wrongs in this. But clearly today free will is the predominant philosophy that he wants to follow.
Curiously, this is between my mother 67 and my son 14. The former - a matriarch quite conservative even for her generation - and the latter - my elder son - quite precocious and quite different even for his. The usual generation gap gets even more gnawing as both my mother and son are on the extremities of their respective generational spectrums.
Well this is not a classical case of delinquency. It is not a grandmother chiding a teenage grandson for not studying or for being on a excessively long call with a girl or for being glued to TV or play-station. It is more about life, the way you must live, the values that you must imbibe and the philosophy that you must follow and espouse.
When he was 3 yrs of age, he was made to memorise Haldighati, Rani of Jhansi and a poem on the martyrs of Chittor of anonymous authorship. The one mentioned last is a beautiful poem of unknown provenance, was published in Kalyan about 60 years ago, and was memorized by my mother at the instance of her father, and then passed on to my son by her. Her father was indeed a man of great erudition. So when my son was as young as 3, he did memorize and reproduce on demand, to an awe struck audience – my mother is quite prone to demanding such impromptu recitations – sitting in admiration of an infant reciting torturously chaste sanskritized Hindi verse with a clear diction and “veer rasa” like intonation, but of course no understanding of either the significance or the context.
But that was then. Today he has a mind of his own. He is more inclined to abstract painting, and writing verse reading up on game theory, and rightly or wrongly giving in to believing that some will rise only on the expense of others, but clearly not willing to memorize a eulogy on Chittor’s martyrs.
Whereas, my mother would want him to respect mythology, have some basic knowledge of theology and dabble in philosophy with equal sensitivity, he despises the first two but is quite eager to debate on the last. That is to say, he dismisses mythology as buffoonery for lesser minds, disregards theology as useless interpretation of mindless mythology, and creation of rules by a handful few who would like to manipulate a larger lot for self interest and self preservation. So, all that he accepts in some random measure is Philosophy. This is immensely intriguing as philosophy itself is probably debating, descanting and dissecting all that a commoner would like to accept and believe.
Today I read a dialog steeped in dialectical abstraction that he penned. The dialog is between a Serpent and a Saint. Curiously enough, a supposedly indolent serpent is asking questions of a supposedly eminent saint who is responding supposedly sagaciously, but his responses are dismissed by the Serpent as cliched. The serpent shares with the saint what he believes the right perspective. The entire tenor of the dialog that he has conceived is of an impertinent challenge of the supposed erudition of the saint by a sloughing serpent. It is reflective of his deep seated defiance of authority. His deep seated desire to not walk the beaten path. His inclination to rebel. The perplexity caused by the usual debate of causality, determinism and free will.
Well the outcome will never be known. There are no rights and wrongs in this. But clearly today free will is the predominant philosophy that he wants to follow.
