Life, a Game of Plus and Minus

 

Life, a Game of Plus 

and Minus

While revolving around the relatives, friends and circumstances, ever rising and falling wants, emotions and desires come to the fore in the life of the worldly man

By Mukesh Sharma

With the birth of a baby, so many people are added to its life – mother and father, brother and sisters, uncles and aunties, granny and grandpa – all near and distant relatives. Man comes on the earth with relative relationship.

Life, a Game of Plus and Minus

As the child grows up, addition continues with the inclusion of buddies and pals. When one reaches the youth, the circle is further widened with the beginning of a new family – wife and kids, and all the relatives of wife’s side.

While revolving around the relatives, friends and circumstances, ever rising and falling wants, emotions and desires come to the fore in the life of the worldly man.

Bare necessities for life constitute wants – food, clothes and house. Food is indispensable. Clothes are imperative to cover up the nakedness in human society. And house, what a castle is to a king, a house is to a man. Except a few rich heirs/heiresses and of course some blessed one, majority of people continues to live in wants till the bitter end. Man is responsible for the woes of teeming millions. The hell is man’s own creation. However, the fortunate ones are able to add up, by sheer luck, some succeed to live on borderline. But the majority of the unblessed people slip into the abyss of subtraction. Downhill gravity, plummets them to bottom where they are lost without trace. 

Destiny has its own queer ways. Some rise by gravity and some fall by levity. Rules of game differ from person to person.

Each man has its own world; he lives and dies in his own world. There are seas of emotions; there is jungle of thoughts; there are mountains of ego; there are rivers of selfishness; there is endless space of ignorance. Material body keeps floating freely towards unseen  unknown destination till the last breath.

Sea of emotions witnesses endless surge of ebbing and flowing waves – anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness – breaking at the beach. Depending on circumstances, rise and fall goes on. Man is essentially a humble creature of circumstances; he is born in circumstances, lives in circumstances and dies in circumstances. Even the God-incarnate Lord Rama and Lord Krishna couldn’t go beyond their live circumstances. The sun stirs the world, circumstances move life.

Jungle of thoughts is dense and deep. Man keeps wandering in it for the whole life. With the blessings of God a few are able to spot trees bearing fruits and also find their way out of the jungle like Buddha. Otherwise, the most of the people are lost in the jungle of thoughts with no footprints.

Mountains of ego stand tall. Moneyed and mighty are proud of their dizzy heights. They enjoy standing atop and feel that even God is within their reach. Like a frog of well, illusion lives in its own world. Mountain of ego is transient. Sooner or later it melts away like a glacier. Even the ego of demon king Ravana couldn’t last long.

River of selfishness originates from self; it flows along the life right from celebratory birth of self to crematory death of self. Self can’t survive without selfishness.

Space of ignorance is vast and boundless. Knowledge increases ignorance. What one knows is negligible in comparison to what one doesn’t know. Man is born unconsciously. Day of his death is not known to him. And he doesn’t know how to live. He remains blissfully ignorant of himself life-long.

Man is a bundle of desires. Opportunity gives rise to thoughts, and thoughts give rise to desires. Circumstantial desires cease to exist with the end of circumstances. Born in idle time, placatory desires have no basis, but a sole purpose to entertain the self -    hallucination hype. Such desires have short life –  born every moment and dies the next  – come and go continues.

Thus the game of plus and minus goes on and on in a spontaneous process. What cajoling life gives, callous time takes away one by one – childhood, youth, relatives, friends, old age, and finally man reaches the deathbed where the death stakes its claim on the mortal body. Journey of life starts from zero and ends in zero from aloofness to aloofness. Through all additions and subtractions, life comes to naught. Life is a game of plus and minus.

 

Curiosity Moves the World

It is the curiosity that guides love birds to know about each other physically, psychologically and emotionally; it further leads to intense and intimate desire to see, feel and experience each other’s body. When a young man looks at a young woman with prying eyes, he doesn’t look at her simply but desires her; his lusty eyes run over her contour and curves; in a quick succession of thoughts he tries to feel and experience her coveted body with nothing on

By Mukesh Sharma

Curiosity is an inner urge of a human mind to know about unknown, to see unseen and to hear unheard. What is within four walls ? What is behind the curtain? What is what? Who is who? When will it occur? How will it happen? These questions often occur to everyone’s mind. In fact the curiosity is a wishful desire to go beyond 5Ws and I H. It’s an inquisitiveness to look beyond present and to peep into future and far off. All the discoveries and inventions made by the man so far are the result of continued curiosity only. Curiosity rolls the wheel of progress. 

Of course, curiosity changes with age and circumstances. A baby gets attracted to different colors, movements of an object or any sound, for, it bubbles with curiosity for anything around.

To a child, a balloon might sound the most enticing thing in the world. In fact, a child grows up with curiosity; it learns about things around through curiosity only. As a first teacher, curiosity teaches a child to use the pronouns like ‘I’, ‘My’ ‘Me’, ‘We’, ‘Our’ ‘Us’ ‘He’, ‘His’ ‘Him’ ‘She’, ‘Her’,  ‘Her’, ‘They’, ‘their’,  ‘Them’, ‘It’, ‘Its’ and ‘It’. A child learns to identify itself with these syllables. And thus the small world of a child begins to broaden, lengthen and deepen. A child is a baby of curiosity.

 

If the sun stirs the world, curiosity moves the world

What is more, a young man and woman learn their first lesson of love through curiosity only. What the people call love-at-first-sight is too born of curiosity only. The celebrated writer G.B.Shaw says:

My first love is a little foolishness but a lot of curiosity

Evidently enough, it is the curiosity that guides love birds to know about each other physically, psychologically and emotionally; it further leads to intense and intimate desire to see, feel and experience each other’s body. When a young man looks at a young woman with prying eyes, he doesn’t look at her simply but desires her; his lusty eyes run over her contour and curves; in a quick succession of thoughts he tries to feel and experience her coveted body with nothing on. John Donne, a metaphysical poet in his poem “To his Mistress going to bed “ says:

 O my America! My new found-land

Yet another English writer ironically says:

Men are attracted to women navel because of curiosity of thoughts that ‘Heaven’ is not far off. 

Feared by the society, law of land and social ignominy, a man pretends to be a gentleman in the absence of opportunity  -  opportunity gives rise to thoughts, and thoughts give rise to desires and desires give rise to action. Opportunity can make a saint a devil. The possibility of an Aasharam cannot be ruled out hidden in  Baba’s clothing. Here curiosity is the main culprit.

All the successful writers/film makers know how to create and sustain curiosity through the story line till the end; it is sheer curiosity that makes a reader to read a book to the last page for the final revelation; it is the curiosity that makes the audience to stick to their respective seats in cinema hall to know the end of the story. Curiosity nurtures creativity which is essentially a baby of curiosity.

Even scientists are goaded by their curiosity to know, discover, experiment and invent on an unknown terrain and territory. NASA named its lander on Mars as ‘CURIOSITY’ that signifies the role of curiosity in the world of science too. Albert Einstein philosophically says:

Never lose your holy curiosity

Endorsing the significance of curiosity, Zora Neale says:

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with purpose.

In other words, it won’t be wrong to say: Curiosity is the mother of all the discoveries and inventions.

In a democratic dispensation, wily netas use this powerful element of curiosity to get elected and rule over the unsuspecting masses. False promises are made to create curiosity in the populace that makes the public to think that this neta might emerge as a ‘savior’ and that remains a possibility all through years. Democracy is the game of curiosity.

Never let anyone or anything crush your curiosity. What Bill Gates is today because he never allowed anyone or any circumstances to suppress his curiosity for the computers. What Sachin is today because he sustained his curiosity for cricket right from his younger days. So is the success story of almost all the big names in the world. Who are you? What are you? What can you do? How can you do it? These pertinent questions that nag the head of each man and woman, can’t be answered by any guru or any book. Only your live curiosity can answer these questions.

This blogger maintains that even almighty God must have created this universe out of curiosity only. That is why each and every thing in the nature arouses nothing but curiosity.

Undying curiosity for success can take anyone to dizzy heights. A man can learn only as an ideal student of curiosity. A man without curiosity is a dead man. If the sun stirs the world, curiosity moves the world.