Skip to main content

Brownian Motion and Karma


Fiction

The first thing that greeted Govinda as he stepped out of home early in the morning was a spider web which stood right at the entrance to his house.  He had come out, as usual every morning, to pick up the newspaper that the delivery man would throw into the yard from the road.

The spider web brought out the philosopher in Govinda.  His mind went on a contemplation trip. 

Why did nature create spiders?  Just to make webs and trap insects.  Insects are created to be trapped in spider webs. What a fate!  What a futile life!  To eat and to be eaten.  And reproduce.  How redundant are these creatures?  Govinda wondered.  How redundant is life itself by and large?

He thought of people.  Most people meant nothing to him: like the passengers who travelled in the same compartment in a metro train, for example.  They just jostle us along: into the compartment at one station and then out of it at another. And then we go on.  Jostling.  The jostling becomes more personal at the workplace.  More intimidating.  Like the spider and the insects.  The boss and the staff.  Among the staff, there are those who are close to the boss on the one side and those who don’t know how to get close on the other.  Jostle becomes hassle. The push eventually comes to shove and the spiders win.

Govinda had once asked Karunasagar Guru about the futility of such a life.  “Life is an illusion,” explained the Guru.  “The result of our karma.  The self is the only reality and it is one with the infinite.  Aham Brahmasmi.  Those who don’t attain that level of realisation are destined to be reborn.  As spiders, insects, anything according to their karma.”

“But spiders eventually win, don’t they?” Govinda asked.

“When spiders are themselves illusions, maya, what does victory mean?” answered the Guru.  “Maybe, such victories necessitate the incarnation of God to put an end to the mounting evil.  Sambhavami yuge yuge.”

Govinda never liked that idea.  Even those gods who incarnated to put an end to evil were themselves deceptive and malicious.  He could never justify many of the things that Krishna, the god of Karunasagar Guru, did.  He perpetrated much duplicity during the Kurukshetra war.

“Bindaas!”  Leslie Pereira would say.  Leslie was a recent addition in Govinda’s office.  He loved music, wine and women.  In that order.  “Never in excess,” he would warn, “unless you want to be knocked out of the Brownian motion.”


Life is nothing but the Brownian motion.  That was Leslie Pereira’s philosophy. Jostle and hassle.  Push and shove.  Some win and some lose.  Naturally.  But the motion goes on.  Inexorably.  Relentlessly.  Without any purpose other than the fun in the push and the shove.

Govinda was awakened from his contemplation.  The newspaper was still lying in the yard. 

He stood before the spider web that stood between him and the newspaper.  “Karma.  Brownian motion.”  He muttered to himself as he cut the anchor threads of the spider web.

The spider became alert.  It moved a little and then stopped.  Even the spider knows how far a push can go to become a shove.  It retreated. 






Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 9, 2017 at 10:31 AM

    You write really interesting content. Lovely story. I can relate to it so much in my everyday life. Yes life moves on no matter what :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 9, 2017 at 11:31 AM

      Thanks. Look forward to more of your presence here.

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaFebruary 14, 2017 at 4:40 PM

    Interestingly, spiders and ants teach much to little kids. The last bit was a little cruel though - haven't heard before of Brownian motion before - guess that random events are not so gentle 🙂

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 14, 2017 at 10:21 PM

      That last bit is not really cruel, Sunaina. The character does not kill the spider, he only cuts off the web which blocks his way. That's the 'way' of the world, isn't it?

      Random events are not at all gentle most often. One of my beloved writers, Albert Camus, saw the universe as hostile.

      Delete
    2. sunaina sharmaFebruary 15, 2017 at 7:43 AM

      Cruel enough for me - cutting the path, blocking the way, killing the creation - way of the world yes, but not a good way really.....:)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam a...
33 comments
Read more

AAP and I

Who defeated Arvind Kejriwal?  Himself or us? His party ruled for just 49 days.  They were momentous days.  He implemented his promise on setting up a number for reporting corruption; in two weeks instead of the promised two days.  He met people to discuss corruption issues, though the crowd was beyond his control.  He did what he could.  He would have done more if he could.  He put an end to the VVIP culture in politics.  The politician became aam aadmi.  Ministers started travelling in vehicles without the screaming red lights and horrifying screeches.  But the police had to go out of their way to provide protection to the chief minister.  Who defeated the chief minister’s vision that political leaders need no such protection from their own people? He revolutionised the admission procedures in schools.  Schools which charged hefty amounts from parents illegally stood to lose.  The aam aadmi would have g...
25 comments
Read more

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...
28 comments
Read more