Indescribable, Uncontainable

There was a time when I was struggling between the ideas of atheism and theism. The thing was... I could not logically believe in the possibility of a God 'being’ or ‘personality’. But as I kept thinking about it, I came upon a much wider and deeper realisation - that there are certain things I can never know for sure and with all certainty, irrefutable beyond the slightest doubt, universally true and accepted. There may be a God or there may not, there may be life after death or there may not. Whichever way, I cannot irrefutably prove anything. Unless I die and then I find out for sure one thing or another. But, by then I won't really be me, the conscious and living person that I am now, whose mind those questions and ideas occupy and concern.

In my realisation and acceptance that there are things beyond the limits of my mind (even though the human mind is capable of vast and awesome things), I was finally able to accept the possibility of a God. That was my connection to... deeper things. You may call it my spiritual awakening of sorts 

I come from a Christian home. I grew up learning about Jesus Christ and the stuff he talked about. Even when I had been leaning towards atheistic ideas, I understood and connected with Christ's teachings on love and way of life. So, as I accepted the possibility of a God, I took with it the possible divinity of Christ, and I was greatly affected by it and got quite into it for a while.

However, in the few years that followed, I continued to struggle with the idea of divine “beings” and “personalities”, as the Christian view of God is that of an omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient being who has a personality.

I finally admitted to myself a few months ago that which I had been hoping and wishing would just go away so as to make life simpler and easier*. As things currently stand, I find that I cannot believe in the divinity of Christ, nor do I believe in a God “person”.

(* I’m not saying that people who believe in a God person or the divinity of Christ (or any other deity/prophet) have life easier and simpler. I’m just saying that life would be easier and simpler for me if I did actually believe in a God person or the divinity of Christ, because then I wouldn’t have to face the complications that my non-belief will cause in my Christian-centered social and family life.)

Here’s why I could never, and still cannot, fully accept the God of the Old Testament as the absolute truth about how or who God really is:

There are all kinds of people in this world, and people are all kinds of different. In a world so full of different ways to be and think and reason and process and feel and react, I cannot believe in any absolute truth the non-physical aspects of life. Reality is plural and multisided. There are as many sides to a story as there are participants in and spectators to that story. I find it difficult to take the Old Testament's word for what is written in it, because every story in it is only one side of the story and is limited to being about only a specific people written from only one point of view (the author's point of view). Also, the Epistles – again, they consist only of singular points of view, Paul's view or Timothy's view or whoever else, of Jesus' teachings and the Mosaic laws. The Old Testament and the Epistles are biased to the interpretations and perceptions/understanding of the person who wrote them. I cannot find it in myself to accept their words as absolute truths.

Most people will conveniently say, “Oh the whole women-shouldn’t-speak-in-church, shouldn’t-keep-their-hair-open, cannot-wear-certain-fabrics-while-menstruating, do-not-eat-pork or do-not-consume-blood-of-any-living-thing thing, do-not-drink, etc., is contextual stuff and, therefore, open to study and criticism since they are based on the social systems and practices of those ancient times and so should not be considered canon…”

Why, then, can that line of reasoning not be applied to the whole of any Holy Scripture/Book or history book. It was written by men after all – men from various societies and cultures, men from different eras, men with their own unique intellectual processes and opinions and likes and dislikes, etc.

I don't know if there is a God. I cannot prove his/her/its existence or non-existence and I never will be able to. I do, however, believe in that greater thing that connects all of us together, our humanity, and beyond and much more. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is and I don’t know how to explain very well what I mean by this bigger thing, because I can’t define it. I think that’s the beauty and wonder of it! The fact that it is bigger than us and beyond us is what makes it inexplicable, uncontainable, indefinable and indescribable. I will never be able to define it or fit it into a fully graspable idea, because it is greater and beyond who I am or ever will be and what I know or ever will know in my lifetime.

People have many names for it, depending on who you ask. As for me, I don't care to name it or to not name it ‘God’ or to name it at all. Also, if a God does indeed exist, he/she/it may or may not have a personality. I don't know that either though. So, I've decided that I'm not going to try and fit these things that are beyond and greater than me into a box with characteristics and traits which will never fully or truly define it anyway; I’ll just let it be what it is, in all its unfathomable glory, and allow it to keep revealing its wonders to me.

Cheers! 

The Naga Identity and Socio-Economic Crisis

A few years back, on orientation day at my college, a Punjabi girl came up to me and asked me where I was from. I told her I was from Nagaland. She seemed delighted at that knowledge and then said, “Oh! How long have you been in India?” Keeping sarcasm in check, I politely explained to her that Nagaland is in India. In fact, Nagaland was the 16^th of the now 28 states to be included in to the Republic of India. India received her independence in 1947. Nagaland became part of the Indian Union in 1963 under the Ministry of External Affairs till 1972 when it finally came under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Back then, there was one consolidated group that fought for Naga independence from the Indian Government – the Naga National Council (NNC). In 1975, a group broke away from the NNC who named themselves the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), of which there are now four different factions after further differences arose.

The socio-economic condition of the Naga people is affected directly and indirectly by our complicated relationship with the parent Indian Government and the confused social circumstances within which Naga society finds itself.

The Naga identity was given to us by outsiders. We were never ‘Naga’ before the British (and along with them, the Indian Government) and the Christian missionaries came. We were simply Angami or Ao or Lotha or Sumi or Konyak, etc., i.e., we identified ourselves only by our separate tribal identities. Before the British stronghold on Nagaland and the advent of Christianity (in the 1870s), our social system consisted of trade by barter, agriculture dependence, oral tradition of record-keeping, craftsmanship, animism, head-hunting, etc. Then, what most civilisations and societies build up to for centuries, our society was made to rush up to in mere decades. This caused major gaps in the ideological and social beliefs/values between the generation that was before and the generations that followed. Hence, I believe, that the history of our collective ‘Naga’ identity and the upheaval of our social systems brought upon by the advent of the British and Christianity are the broad causes of the Naga identity crisis. Modernity and development, modern system of formal education, communication technology, organised religion, pop-culture, modern means of transport, manufactured foods, retail industry – it all came flooding in. All of this, while the leaders of the Naga people were (and some still are) trying to negotiate our freedom from the British/Indian Government and, at the same time, benefitting from our affiliation to them in terms of monetary subsidies, development grants, administrative grants-in-aid, etc.

Here is what the Naga society looks like in its current state:

1)      We have both constitutional law and customary law at work – double jeopardy.

2)      We had the ‘Naga’ identity imposed upon us which no Naga knows how to fully identify with yet, because what is the Naga identity really, when tribalism is put before the collective identity that we are supposed to represent.

3)      We are a 90% Christian population. The remaining 10% are all non-Nagas who live in Nagaland. There is an ever raging but unacknowledged (by most) battle between our religious values and our traditional customary values.

4)      The NSCN forcefully (as opposed to ‘on free will’) takes taxes from the people, oppresses the citizens by instilling fear of getting kidnapped and/or shot at, fights amongst and within themselves for power and control (or usually something as insignificant as personal disputes), pokes their noses into church matters (singing “Hallelujah!” here while shooting or extorting from someone there), and endangers the lives of the people whose freedom they claim to fight for.

5)      Examinations & interviews for Government jobs are rigged. Even before the examination, a number of the vacancies advertised are either:

a)                          reserved by ministers, politicians, and ‘underground’ members (as we like to lovingly call our “freedom fighters”), or

b)                          reserved by some rich people with under-achieving children who ultimately won’t even show up for work themselves.

All of the above presents to us a situation of regional and representational imbalance where:

a)                          under-developed areas or areas that need rejuvenating are neglected by the people in power because they will only bring improvements to their own tribal areas (tribalism at play),

b)                          the 3 eastern districts receive almost double the funds (an approximation) than the other “advanced” tribes receive, especially in agriculture and road development, and yet insist on remaining “backward”,

c)                          there is a growing number from an already large number of educated unemployed for lack of sustainable job opportunities and losing available job opportunities to under-hand activities,

d)                          self-employment suffers at the hands of the taxation and under the harassment of the underground,

e)                          our political leaders misuse public funds to invest in their own capital which they later promote as “growing industry and enterprise of the Naga people” (private resorts and clubs, farms, hotels, etc.).

I believe that the root of our socio-economic problems lie at the multiplicity and incongruity of our fealties which is a manifestation of our identity crisis. We shuffle our allegiances between the different identities (and ideologies that those identities prescribe) as and when different situations confront us – separate tribal identity, ‘village of origin’ identity, clan identity, collective Naga identity, religious identity, traditional identity, modern identity, Indian identity. Most Nagas are either apathetic to or ignorant (or just plain confused) about the injustices and imbalances prevailing in our society. I believe that this confusion is a result of the chaos that sudden modernity brought to our traditionalism. We are in a transition period, and it is a violent period in the development of any society. Unless we have visionaries, strong voices and workers to help steer ourselves towards growth and sustenance as a community, we might be in for self-destruction. Our identity as a people is under threat of being lost to ourselves, let alone to outsiders. Who will stand up and speak/act against injustice!
I want to help fight for change - to empower my people to stand up against injustice, especially that carried by my own people. I believe every one of us can do our bit to enable this change - speak up, stand up, stand our ground, spread awareness, be active within the community, and most importantly, "be the change we want to see" - it begins with the self.

Check out 'Women For Change' - http://www.facebook.com/sftimetochange

Wee little love notes... :)

7:39pm, Wednesday, 3rd March, 2010

In a sea of people

To see only you

It's got to be magic

It's got to be something cool

Something different than the usual

15 Nov, 2008

So i scare you away...

Well then, i don't really care.

Cuz what's the use

If you can't take my love,

If you can't match my love.

There's nothing different,

Nothing grand,

It's all the same.

So where's the place

For soulmates and lovers

If it's all gotta be the same;

If you can't take my love,

If you can't match my love.

11th August, 2008

And there you were,

Sweet little pea-flower.

I, in my drunken state,

Fell asleep upon your gaze.

28 July 2008

Our lives entwined,

Find not the way back

To when we were without.

'Me and You', 'You and I'.

What question lingers now,

In your certain mind.

Truth apparent answers -

It's you and me.

My First Love

I didn't think I'd be writing on Valentine's Day of all days 
But here's what made me :

I had my first love when I was 11  
Yes, I was young... but, trust me... I was in love :P
Heartbreak at 11 sucked big time! My first love rejected me... *sigh*...

Anyhoo! So... my first love sent me a YouTube video for Valentine's this year. Haha! I just found it too cute,  the act of it   Here's the video:

Sampha and Jessie Ware - Valentine

a random pot of scribbles and what-nots

Just because it's Monday
Doesn't mean I'm ready to fight again -
The odds and dissidents,
The waging war of wills,
Of minds and conscience conflicting.

28.01.09
It feels impossible
To hold it all in
When all I want's to burst forth
And then not feel a thing

13.06.09
Don't build your lies...
Out on my frontyard
I can't bear
To see it everyday
I've got lillies to bloom
And daisies on my sidewalk

17.06.09
And the river flows
When nobody knows
And no-one can see
The mountain it broke

Aug '09
You are every first person...
And I can't escape

07.03.10
While I'm waiting
With a heart ready to be swept off its feet
Even ready to be broken
I'm trusting in heaven

27.03.10
How selfish is love
Or rather, how selfish are lovers...

12.04.10
I hate you
Heartache
You persist and pursue
I hate you