New Year Rituals

Never been big on rituals I cannot relate to. Following rigidly sequenced steps in a language i do not know does not move me at all. For me rituals have always been about their power to evoke a certain set of associations and about getting in touch with something that has the power to move you to a higher plane as a consequence. And i have always been moved by such rituals - the unfurling of the national flag or the getting up to sing the national anthem have been deeply moving rituals for me. Don't get me wrong - I am not against rituals per se. I just need to understand them.

Suddenly this new year eve, I got thinking about the rituals of wishing the old year out and ringing the new one in. And about how differently we welcome a New Year traditionally in India versus how the West has traditionally welcomed it.

Don't know about others but I struggle with integrating the two for myself.

Traditionally, I feel we don't celebrate the new year as much as we observe it. We follow a different calendar for this, have a puja at home or we go to a temple after daybreak and cook a lot of stuff that is special for that day. On the other hand, the english calendar new year has always been about partying on the eve of the new year(with or without  alcohol), spilling over past midnight and celebrating the arrival of the new day and the new year more by the clock than by sunrise. The praying versus the partying captured the essence of the difference for me.

Left me wondering if this may also become meaningless soon - people on TV, celebrating the new year in New Zealand, when it was still only late afternoon here, triggered it for me.

Electricity has obscured the distinction between night and day, industrialisation has obviated the need to be aware of the seasons and globalization and the digital age has meant that time and space distinctions are no longer that relevant.

We work 24/7 with both light and temperature being controlled so we dont need to have a sense of day or night, Alaska or Dubai. We take holidays when we can get the leave sanctioned, when the schools are closed, where the weather is pleasant and there are no adverse travel advisories.
Hooked to our blackberries, day and night, weekday and weekend, spring,summer, autumn and winter dont really matter anymore.Our work and our leisure times are getting intertwined and clear cut boundaries are difficult to maintain today.So what does a new year really signify other than another excuse to party?

Given this reality, what part would festivals, rituals and occasions play in the future? More so as we begin to participate in the rituals and celebrate the festivals of the many  nations (and their dominant faiths) that we have become part of. For example, I have relatives and friends who are more likely to know when Hanukkah or Thanksgiving is, than Mahalaya Ammavasai or Vaikunta Ekadasi. And i wouldn't hold it against them It isn't relevant to their current context.

Would the power of ritual to evoke what was originally intended for a community get even more marginalized? Particularly when our ability, readiness or willingness to craft new rituals for the new contexts we find ourselves in, has never been tested. This too leaves me wondering...

Would love to hear others out on this one.

Yudhishtra and leadership

Have always been interested in the debate between ends and means. If you are too, read this brilliant book by Gurcharan Das - The Difficulty of Being Good. 

Does a just war justify unjust means or can an unjust war fought with just means be condoned? 

This is the central question he explores - the moral dilemmas of Leadership, as seen through the lens of the Mahabharata and its various characters. He explores the challenges that the prominent characters face in the story and their pattern of responses. 

The analysis of Yudhishtra's challenges was an eye-opener. Here was a man who doggedly pursued dharma and satya, and struggled all his life with questions about morality and duty as a Royal versus what he as an individual, outside of his role responsibilities, would have preferred. 

Yet in general, people don't think very highly of Yudhishtra as a leader. He would not have made my list either. When i spoke to friends about this, i found the same response. Arjuna and Karna are the heroes, apart from Krishna. For some it was Abhimanyu. Not one named Yudhistra. 

Maybe we hold his humanness against him. He is not a strong, surefooted leader who rarely betrays any doubt. He is full of questions about what is right and wrong. He is filled with remorse for telling a lie for the sake of victory. He does not abandon his brothers when the Yaksha kills them for their arrogance. Nor does he abandon the dog on his way to heaven. He is willing to question the system's sense of what was right and wrong based purely on roles and devoid of a personal context. Yet he does not have a grand or theatrical style as he goes about all this. He does it with a sense of propriety, restraint and dignity. 

He accepts the inevitability of war and the realpolitiks behind Krishna's strategies. Yet the question of whether just ends justify unjust means never deserts him. For him means are as important as ends. 

Maybe that unsettles us. He is too human to be a leader.

Maybe that is what we need more of today - human leaders.