Towards succes - away from reality

One of the sweetest pleasures of progress is to look back and chuckle at the life we led, the small dreams we dreamt and marvel how far we have come. Remember the time when your father waited eight years for a Bajaj Chetak only to make do with a Bajaj Super? Or how often your father commented on the prices in the menu on the rare occasions that you ate out? Or how we would take an auto-rickshaw after bouts of agonised hand-wringing and a taxi only in an absolute emergency?

With material progress, comes the ability to buy new products, to live a more comfortable life. But new products can do more than change the way we live.

Embedded in many new products is the new way of thinking, a new mindset. Many of us have made the transition from having a 'small town' mindset to a more 'cosmopolitan' one. These transitions are usually marked by strong sense of self, a confidence about our individuality and a greater sense of distance between “I” and “Others”.

There exists a definite pattern beneath the idea of material progress. Take the progression in transportation. At the lowest rung of the scale in India, lies public transport. Weather one is travelling by bus or train, one is part of a nameless mass, inhaling vapours from and rubbing shoulders and several other parts of one's anatomy with anyone who happens to be squashed next to you.

We have no control over the environment, not on the timings of the bus, not on the way it is driven, and our only concern is to hang on to our precarious perch as the bus lurches its way to its destination. The bus is the reality that is given to us and our only role is to be the undistinguished oatmeal in the sticky human porridge of bus passengers.

From public transport to owning a two-wheeler is a huge step. Now, one has personal form of transport, which means that control now rests with the individual. In the Indian context, this is important, since it marks a certain independence, a coming of age.

Owning a two-wheeler underlines the independence of one's entity, armed as one is with the ability of going when and where as one pleases. There is a cost to be paid; we are exposed to the elements, there is no escaping the sights, sounds and smells of the formidable reality that roams free on Indian streets.

If the two-wheeler is primarily about personal control, the car provides a personal cocoon- a home on wheels. We are now shielded away from elements; we travel as a family and can continue behaving as one, in spite of the travelling, it makes us relatively indifferent to the act of travel and allows us to continue our normal pattern of living, regardless.

As we upgrade our cars, the distance from reality continues to grow. Air-conditioning makes us impervious to the temperature outside. It also allows windows to be rolled up, which completes our separation from the world outside. Every additional feature and accessory serves to emphasise this separateness. The music system drowns out outside sounds, tinted glasses cut out the natural sunlight and better suspension tries to eliminate the “real” bumps on the road. In every way, the attempt is to create a new habitat that substitutes the natural one.

This pattern can be seen at home too. The poor sleep on the floor, and with every step of success, this “hardness” softens. From the floor to a chatai to a mattress is a progression in softness.

Material progress increases the distance from reality in many other ways. Today, we use water purifier and drink bottled water when we travel; we become “careful” about what we eat on the road-side. We use perfumes to excise our smells and odours that reality emits.

The drive for success is in some ways nothing but a relentless battle that we wage against our reality. We seek to replace the habitat we are handed out with the one of our own making. We are increasingly becoming the center of out custom-built universes or perhaps being marooned on our own private islands – it depends on how we want to see things.