Siddhartha Bhasker's Blog, page 2

Rotten PhD's

 

Every year Nobel prizes are announced. And we Indians appreciate the winners in science as if an uncle in an Indian society appreciates the family of his colleague whose child has bagged a job in a top firm in America. Something they wish their child had too, but unfortunately never will.

Why don’t we produce winners in science, top class scientists who make a mark in their field? Scientists who change the field for the better. Work that when you read it, it runs down to your heart that says ah! People who are widely respected in their field all over the world. People who are heard and whose opinion carry weight in the world. Most Indian scientists we hear about are those who have shifted to the western world early in their lives and have been trained there. Our country has so many institutes, Universities. Why can’t I recall one biologist, one economist, one physicist worth following in this country?

It’s a tough question to answer. Like any complicated questions, the answer has many strands like a hydra. We may not have a scientific aptitude. We lack funds. All our good students go to the west. There is little academic freedom in this country to pursue your work. There is little appreciation for good work unless someone from the west puts a pat on the back. Indians don’t have an original eye. The list goes on. It will require more than a thesis to get to the answer.

But there is something I want to say. It’s about the Indian PhD system. In the west, if one looks at most of the successful scientists, their love and aptitude for science evolved during their PhD. One cannot do good research unless one loves science. Loves problems. Love to apply scientific methods to problems. Doing research without the love for science is like sitting in a boat without a row, there is hardly any chance you will move forward.

I can safely say that the Indian PhD system crushes your love for science. I remember I was very excited once during the early days of my PhD, I thought I had discovered an interesting research question. I went to some of the professors at the Institute with the problem. I let my advisor's know that I wanted to work on this problem. The issue was close to my heart and the work was against corruption in India. Instead of encouraging me, my advisor's almost shut me down. I was made to feel that I was doing something that was totally worthless. The message was to work on something which the adviser wanted. My interests had no weight.

Fortunately, I have had the good fortune to spend some time with the PhD students of the US. There is a sense of camaraderie when you work there. Advisor's give a chance to explore your interests. They are more professional and inclusive in their behavior. And this was for my internship, I felt that the PhD’s are more inclusive too and have academic freedom.

 It is a terrible experience to do a PhD in India. How can you expect someone to win Nobel Prizes if you don’t even allow them to explore their interests? Filling a student with a passion for research is absolutely essential in a PhD system. But the idea here is to just produce papers on the topics which are trending. Passion is like a ghost, it is to be shooed away. Compliance is the mantra. It might work in some systems, but in the PhD system, compliance is like a hammer that breaks the back of the scholar. And we here in Indian are breaking their backs. So unless there is an exception, the rule is that every year we will have to hear the news of Nobel Prize winner like our society Uncle. And till then we have to make do with this rotten system. 

A simple thing

 

One must have heard many times: ‘Yeh to pyar mein paagal ho gaya’, or ‘Sar pe chhot lagne se iska dimag kharab ho gaya’, or ‘Iske sath dushkarm hua tha, so iska mood thik nahi rehta hai.’ If you go mad in love, or have a brain injury, or a sexual abuse, our society has easy explanations. Every consequent event in your life can be tied to that known event as if the event of the past is a horse pulling the cart of your life. As with many things in our daily lives, it is hardly known why people in such circumstances behave like they behave, and if there is a scientific explanation and cure for the phenomenon. The grand assimilation which the Indian society is so capable of just assimilates these occurrences like many other things like corruption, bribery, illegal drugs and so on. What is behind these people and many others who suffer something called a trauma?

A traumatic event in your life fills you with negative emotions of all kinds. When the event occurs, the mind and the body is overwhelmed by these emotions. One can be shocked, irritated, angry, in pain, jealous etc. It depends on the reason for the trauma. And can occur with people with all walks of life and of all classes. Parental neglect can cause trauma to children. An accident can fill you with a dread and trauma. An abusive husband or a wife can overtime inflict deep scars. Love as we know has caused many a trauma. Cheating husbands and wives are a prime example. Why do these events cause so much pain to us all through our lives and why is it important to deal with them professionally, something which is not drilled into our lives as children or adults?

A scientific known fact about trauma or a simple thing to remember is that traumas can be easily triggered. If you have had an accident, then a movie where the characters suffer an accident can trigger your trauma. The trigger could be anything in your life, a thing that people hardly pay any attention to. If you have a cheating husband, the stories or image of his person of interest can trigger. If there has been a childhood abuse, then people similar to the abuser can also trigger the events of the trauma. Or even having sex later in your life can trigger it reminds you of the abuse. If your parents have been abusive, then an abusive teacher can trigger those childhood traumas. What happens when the traumas of the past are triggered?

The emotions replay themselves. You go through the same emotions which you had undergone when you witnessed the trauma. It is as if the past events of life have resurfaced and are being replayed. The body and the mind go back in time. The person looks as if without any external cue they are suffering. People close to them could also deduce that they are acting out or manipulating others which is not true.

It is a scientifically proven fact that women who have been raped in childhood are more likely to undergo subsequent rapes. Children who are abused are likely to be bullied and abused in the future. Such traumas can lead to severe mental illnesses. It is surprising that even though research has firmly established these facts, it is hardly known to us in our everyday life. When we say someone has gone mad in love, we do not understand that the person is undergoing a trauma of failed love again and again. When a woman can be easily lured and slept with, she is called names and bad mouthed, even though it could be her past abuse which is leading to her sleeping around.

We need to understand this clearly. And put a stop to the lax assimilation we have so easily accepted.

(A lot of my understanding for this piece comes from the book ‘The

 body keeps the score’) 

Dusshera: Right and wrong.

 

Today, just outside my society building, three effigies are standing. Dressed in colorful clothes, with faces dipped in the blood of cruelty, they symbolize evil. They will be burnt. People are already standing in good numbers to see them up in flames. The victory of good over bad, right over wrong.

I often have difficulty saying right from wrong in today’s world. In some parts of India, the three effigies that are going to burn are not evil, but gods. Ravana is worshipped. He has temples. To acknowledge him as evil would be to betray the devotees of this great king. Wouldn’t they hate that their king or their god is being caricatured and then shamed for people to display their support for the good?

These doubts come to me when I ponder over other things as well. Building an industry is good for the economic growth of the country. It is the right thing for it gives employment, raises living standards and provides goods to the consumers. It is an answer to the poverty of people, a light in the growing darkness of their empty bellies. But then one thinks of the trees being felled, the pollution in the air, the lands of the locals displaced, the waste being thrown into the rivers that one wonders whether it is at all good. A child may have an empty belly but he still has a land, a home to call his own. If the factory takes that away for nothing, what good is it?

I think about women being asked to comply, to leave their jobs to look after their husband and children, to call the kitchen of the house their temple. It is right for them. The man can earn and she can support him in household chores. She has to dress the way the husband’s family wants. But then what about her independence, her wishes, her power to determine her destiny. What about the slow drift from her times of freedom to this fiefdom, of becoming an idea of someone else. What good is it!

I think about the good behavior of the mentally ill. Of leading their life zombie like on medications. Of keeping quiet and in subservience to the people around them. To not speak on things they do not understand, to not expect much from their life, to be told that the best thing for them is to roll through life as if vitality has been sucked away from them. To be looked and laughed at. To be labeled so that others can form instant opinion of them. What about their opinions? What about the truths of their lives? What about the stigma and shameless they feel because people around them are just not good enough to understand them? What about the injustice and wrongs done to them just because others put the blame of their insufficiency on them?

I think about PhD students of this country. Of having to study under able guides who will build them up for future success. Of being told to study science as if it were the Vedas those were to be remembered. Of being asked to stay away from topics that are not fit to be explored. Of limiting their curiosity as if curiosity is an obedient wife which should be put in place. Of writing what is good for the consumption of the guide. What about the beauty of wonder and the power of awe? What about taking a stroll in unexplored territories? What about asking tough questions that can inform the society? What about challenging the status quo, what is wrong in all that?

Sometimes these questions come into my mind. Sometimes one thinks about rights and wrongs. Some wrongs that could have been right. Happy Dusshera.

 

Sushant Singh Rajput

 

If the soul lives after death, I think Sushant’s soul would die many more deaths looking at what is being done in his name. People, who would have given a rat’s ass about his pains and anxieties, are now jumping up and down in his name as if they are diving and coming up in an ocean. But these waters are murky. And in the fight for the truth of his unfortunate passing away lies the story of how mental illness is treated in this country, especially when politics and crowd wisdom get entangled in such a sensitive topic.

The first thing to remember is that he had Bipolar disorder. This is a serious mental disorder where a sufferer goes through manic and depressive phases in life. It has still not been established that it is genetic but some people have a genetic predisposition to such mental disorders. This simply means that if two people go through the same traumatic period, one of them who is predisposed can get the disorder while the other one will not. Sushant would have had a predisposition and he must have been going through deep pains just because of this problem.

But the problem is not the disorder itself. Bipolar can be controlled by medicines especially lithium, the use of which has been going for more than fifty years now. The problem is the people who may have given him trauma and also the stigma he would have faced in the environment he was living in from people who knew there was something wrong with him. I do not need to elaborate on this too much. People who live with any mental disorder know how important it is to hide it lest those around them know it. For someone who is as successful as Sushant, the pressure would have been great.

When you are sick with a serious disorder, it is not immediately evident to you that life can be good if the problems are controlled. You feel that your world has come crashing down and your career is done for. This feeling is not just because of the sudden depletion of talent but because of the people around you. You have seen mad people being laughed at. You have seen them being ridiculed and discriminated against. You have seen them in movies, in books, all confused and unable to live a good life. You have seen them as murderers, as stalkers, as someone who is a nuisance. This fear of mental illness, which not be only because of the symptoms but because of what the mind and seen and perceived over time can lead a person to take every step to hide it. It becomes something to run away from, something to be ashamed of.

This idea is reinforced by society. Our society is not ready to understand mental illness. A simple case is that of Rhea Chakravarty. It gives me great concern about what people are doing to her. What if she does something as well! It is the same people who give you trauma and laugh at you who are demanding justice for Sushant. If you are so hungry for justice why don’t you give justice to someone who has been suffering from mental illness around you? Someone who has so easily been forgotten and sidelined. Most of these guys don’t even know what mental illness justice means. From what the therapist says, Rhea had been a support for Sushant. If she had tried to help him, it is a terrible thing we are doing to her. Most people don’t give much importance to the mentally ill. Their idea is to let them take a pill and keep away from important matters.

It will be interesting to see what the investigation finds out. The hand of nepotism and lack of meritorious processes in Bollywood may have been the cause. A proper investigation will not only take account of the immediate trauma Sushant suffered but also the trauma he may have suffered in childhood and growing up. Mental illness is complicated and it’s effects have to be peeled off slowly and carefully. Recent research has shown that childhood trauma has a big role to play in serious mental illnesses.

I hope this case does not get mired up in politics and getting at your enemies. A true investigation can fight many superstitions we have about mental illnesses. Given the interest the case has acquired, the effects of a truthful investigation will be immediate and will be the start of a process of giving justice to people who suffer day in and day out. Till then, we can only hope that his soul gets the peace in heaven, something which is deserved on earth.

 

The devil in the room

 

I read an article today about the devastating effects of the Delhi riots on the mental health of the survivors. It was written that most of them were scared, unable to think normally, and ruminate a lot about past events. They are poor and do not even have a home for themselves to live. The fear of recurrent persecution hangs like a sword on their heads. There were some volunteers who were providing these people with psychosocial support. The general consensus is that it may take years for the people to get back to normalcy if it is at all possible.

What a terrible thing we do to people! Anyone who has had mental health problems knows how difficult it is to navigate the world when the mind stops behaving normally. It is as if thorns are pricking your head all the while. Added to that the inability of the people around to grasp your issues and be empathetic. The general idea circulating around is that the other person is ill and should be left alone. Or even worse the angst on the person on why he or she is not doing what the world expects them to do!

What occurred to me is how much as a country we have put this problem under the carpet. I am getting this feeling that a good part of the lack of productivity in India could be because of the mental health issues of people, workers in particular have not been considered. Nowhere in economic models do we see any variable that corresponds to high mental functioning. Mental health conditions are hardly taken into consideration while determining human capital. Nowhere in the speeches of the people in power, we find a mention of the fact that good mental health is a priority. This issue is not at all discussed anywhere except a few organizations and volunteers who take up the matter in their hands.

It’s a terrible mistake. Because bad mental health is not because of weakness or biology. A large factor that determines the mental health of a person is the environment the person lives in. In an unfriendly environment where coercion, mistrust, uncertainty, or violence prevail, mental health suffers. Conditions of discrimination are ripe for deteriorating mental health. Be it, women, in households, students in intuitions, workers in factories, oppression due to caste, police brutality, are ideal grounds for the mind to give up functioning normally. As a society, it is possible to get rid of these ailments we have. How little we are doing to get them off in a real sense.

I think its high time such discussions take the center stage. Politicians, higher education institutions, schools, offices, the government have to realize that we have a devil in the room here. Empathy and compassion should be a necessary trait for a person to rise above the ladder. As of now intelligence and compliance seem to be the two biggest traits needed for these. A good example of this is the New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. She has empathy in her, she cares for her people in the real sense of the world. New Zealand has taken appreciable steps to raise their mental health status. We need more leaders like her, not the kind of leaders we have who rise up with the help of a Machiavellian strategy. Our leaders add to the mental health burden of people. Power in India, in my opinion, adds to this problem. People in positions of power are not trained to feel empathetic. It’s an important flaw we have to mend.

Finally there have been many Delhi’s before. And if we do not demand more empathy in our leaders and positions of power, there will be more Delhi’s in the future. We don’t in fact need a Delhi to talk about mental health. If you look around our society, there are a number of silent sufferers. It’s a shame we as a society can allow this. The devil has to vanish.

Chhadha Uncle

‘Sab waheguru ki kripa hai’. This is what Chaddha Uncle says when I tell him that the chicken biryani he prepared was out of the world. I had picked up the last piece of rice and eaten it from the plate. The whole plate had nothing left. My fingers were clean as well. ‘Please spread it among your friends.’ He requests. ‘These times are difficult’ I say yes I would do it.

Chaddha Uncle is tall and well built with an earring in his left ear. He has a thick beard. He lives with his wife. The first time I took an order from him, he told me his story in brief. He is in the catering business. He has served in the military canteen, in government offices, and at Universities. It’s been more than twenty years that he has been in this business. He never says that but I deduce that people love his food. He has now started a WhatsApp group in society. His menu is regularly updated in the group. I mostly order chicken from him on Friday’s. So I do not feel the need to be in the group. But one can see users praising his food every day. They say they will order this and that tomorrow. Or that they want the same order today.His biryani has a smell that enlarges the appetite. The color of little red rice on the plate pulls your senses. ‘Drink ke sath lijiyega. Tab pata chalega. Mere bahut se customers drink ke sath pasand karte hain’ I tried doing that but one can never finish the first peg before the whole biryani is gone churning in the stomach. The chicken is cooked so well, it melts into the mouth. ‘Marinate karta hoon mein.’ I believe perfectly that he does it.In this god-forsaken place I live in, sandwiched between Delhi and the small town of Sonipat, Chaddha Uncle is a respite. There are no good restaurants close by. Swiggy does not deliver. One hears rumors of Zomato delivery but I did not find any locations on the app. And I bet restaurants wouldn’t be able to match what he cooks. ‘Cooking is an art form’, a friend of mine told me as he was preparing Maggi with tomatoes, peas, and onions carefully settled into the steaming noodle. ‘You must have a sense of smell if you want to be a good cook,’ he added. I saw him smelling the vapors, his hands trying to cup them, and bring them to his nose. ‘It needs time,’ he said to himself. I stood there revering his methods. When I cook Maggi, the method is plain and simple. Put water, put the noodles, put the masala, let it boil for a while. And that’s it.I bet Chaddha Uncle and that friend of mine who now works in Canada would have become best friends. They are the practitioners of a form very few of us can get correct. But so many of us depend upon. The only thing I could cook for lunch in these times of Coronavirus is Khichdi. That too watery. Eating that khichdi day after day is like living on prison food. I think versions of Chaddha Uncle should be there in every society. This way one would know what good food is and what an art form tastes like. Let's not forget that every art form needs its connoisseurs.  

On Love

Someday when humans are extinct, and our successors are studying us, a long time after we are gone, they will find a rich life behind them. If they are solid researchers and dig deep, I am pretty sure, wonder will grip them like roots grip the soil. They will find technological masterpieces, infrastructural marvels, culinary delights, and lovely artifacts. They will find stories that stir the soul, men and women who seem unbelievable and a reality which will not only confuse but bewilder them. What is the one thing that will arouse their curiosity the most, one aspect of humans which has been omnipresent since ages and will last till the end, the one thing which they would label the cradle of our existence? It will not be a difficult choice. I think it will be love.
When love happens to you, you are taken in by surprise. It’s not like an exam which you can prepare for and there is no option of giving a re-exam if you fail. It just happens as if life is a small mosquito that has bitten you and flew away unnoticed. There is no Good Knight or All Out which can put off this mosquito. It’s a messenger from God with the message that your life is going to change. And change it does.Your body starts changing. Your wishes start changing. You, an animal, become one. The focus is to impress your love. Doing things that can get the person to love you back. For your love to be acknowledged. These expectations bring fear, anxiety with them. When and how to express it? What if your love is not reciprocated?  And in my country, what if others find out? And so on. It’s a very sweet feeling. As if sweet honey is dripping from your heart. As if a dry land has been drenched with rain. As if someone in the dark all his life has seen the light. Nothing else in the world has so much power over people. You wallow in it day and night. You want to be close to the object of your love as much as possible. Other things in life lose meaning. Your life has found a fork on the road and can go either way.Only a few people make it the right way. They are the most blessed of humans, our successors will find out. Whatever turn their lives may take, their hearts are in the right place with the right people in their lives. God has been kind to them. They live in peace, the one’s whose love is reciprocated.It is the other way, which life takes most people of the world through, that is the creator of all the trouble in this world. It is like an invitation to hell. Disappointment gives in to grief, trauma, sadness, anger, and all the other sister emotions you can conjure. Your life looks meaningless as if the honey has been sucked out. Nothing feels right. At least for a brief time, you feel worthless. You are a deflated balloon and it would take much effort to inflate you again.  Our successors would find that none of the social structures we have built take love into account. At least not in my country. Maybe in the developed world, where going out with partners is all right after a particular age and exploring love is considered essential. In my country, there is only once where you are allowed to explore love which is sanctioned and promoted by the social structure. That is when you have to marry. Just once. You can take time to find your love as if it was a professional well-planned meeting. Our ancestors who made these structures tried to take the position of God as love makers and had no idea what they were snatching away from their children. In matters of love, god does play with dice. And your turn may come early in life or much later. (More on this if I get few comments on this blogpost). 

World Schizophrenia Day

Today (May 24) is World Schizophrenia Day. Crudely speaking a day to remember mad people. A bunch of people whom the world would conveniently like to forget. A scar on the otherwise engaged population. A black mark on the otherwise multicolored happy bunch of mostly mediocre species whose sole aim is to promote their own brand of which mad people tend to tarnish. So why do we need to have this day for those who would better not be present, a day to mark an illness which may have brought incalculable sadness to so many around the world through the ages?

Schizophrenia is a disease with both negative and positive symptoms. Positive symptoms include delusions, psychosis, hearing voices, and hallucinations. Negative symptoms include lethargy, lack of motivation, restlessness among many others. Having this illness is like God has given you a permanent place in hell. A hell where you have to battle the demons alone and without any training. And if you have people with you who would help you out, they too are made a member of this satanic place. Their battles in life have multiplied.If you read the research about schizophrenia, it will be enough to give you depression. Doctors have nothing good to say about their patients. People with this illness lack reward motivation. They lack the Theory of Mind. They are more likely to commit a crime. The list goes on. Imagine a person who has negative emotions thrown at them all day and all night long. It’s like you are in hell and above that people are making all efforts to throw in a burning pit (assuming all hell is not a burning pit).It’s difficult for someone with all these symptoms to compete in this world. It’s like they are in a race with 20 kilos of weight on them while the other participants run free. Most people give up. And society considers this as the status quo. Few bother to stop and think about whether it was possible for the person to go on. Whether society could change themselves and make way for someone like them. The pace of the world is fast. So people with this illness better take rest. This is sometimes out of empathy but mostly to weed them out of sight and keep moving.This death of hope is our most crucial blow to the patients. A hope crushed is a life destroyed. People keep saying that once you get this illness, you are never going to lead a normal life again. Something dies inside the patient and sadly inside their loved ones. It’s like a fight has been lost even before you are in the ring.Everything is not that bad though. In all this gloom there are lovely flowers. Everyone has at least heard of John Nash, the famous mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Even though Prof. Nash did most of his pioneering work before he was sick, he still kept working after he was able to overcome his sickness. There are other positive examples. Many families fight hard for their loved ones. They are a delight in the otherwise harsh world.A big sunshine is the effort put in by the mental health community to help the patients. Even though the illness is not very well understood and all their prescriptions may not be useful, the mental health community is growing every day. Many of them are empathetic and passionate about mental health which helps the patient community in leaps and bounds and sometimes is a lifeline for the families. In my country though, except for a few enthusiasts and practitioners, the mental health community is surprisingly absent. It’s a tellingly abysmal condition in the small towns and villages where patients are doomed if they have a condition like schizophrenia.So now I come to the question I started with. This day needs to be celebrated because we need to know more about the disease. This day needs to be celebrated so that we can show more empathy to the patients rather than shutting them down. More importantly shutting their ambitions down. This day may enlarge the mental health community. Most importantly this day should bring in hope, hope that a normal and happy life is possible. After all what are we without hope. Happy World Schizophrenia Day.

Diyas, crackers and friendships

The title does not have tuning bulbs. But let me start with them. When I was a child, there was mostly one kind of tuning bulb. Little bulbs enclosed in a case. A lot of those cases connected through a wire. One had to stand on a stool or a chair and put them on the balcony through the nails and the railings. And then wait for the magic to happen. If you stood in your own balcony, you couldn’t see the whole design. So you had to run down the building and take two turns to come face to face with your balcony and those dazzling bulbs. It would be a moment of pride for the little you.

Now I can see all kinds of designs for lighting the balcony. We were happy and innovated with what we had.The magic of Diwali started in the evening, when the sun set. In the small town of Bokaro, issues like noise and air pollution are not discussed, at least I didn’t hear anyone complaining about them. It’s a free ride for crackers. You coerce your parents to buy as much as possible, with all kinds of varieties. There were the milder ones like the Aloo bomb and then there were the strong ones like the bullet bomb. Added to these would be the ones which did not make any noise like the Anar. And once you chose amongst them, you had to decide how many rockets to buy.Some of us were afraid of burning the crackers. So we searched for a stick with a hole at the tip. The bomb would go in the hole and then from a safe distance, one could light it. Others were fearless. They could keep the bomb on the road and then light it peacefully and had time to run away as well. There were sounds all around. One always had to be careful lest someone threw a cracker at you or if someone was lighting at cracker just at your back. Before we got down with the cracker business, it was the diya business that had to be concluded. Parents would buy a bunch of diyas, ghee, and small cotton strips. Each diya had to be carefully filled with some ghee and then a cotton strip placed on it carefully and then lighted. These diyas were placed on the empty spaces in the balcony, on the windows and the roof. We were not allowed to leave before the tradition of lighting and placing diyas was complete. Friendship was at a crude display during these times. Friends would burst crackers together, sometimes scare each other by bursting them close to each other. They would count and ration the crackers so as to be in the game for long. Then as the night wore along, we would visit the houses for food. We would go to each and every family in the colony and relish the food served to us by the aunties. Some of them would be magnanimous with us and even had non veg dishes, which we children liked a lot. At every home, we would be asked things, mostly about school especially if you were a good student. And sometimes we would come out of a home and make fun of the owners. We would compare the dishes, all kinds of things would be there in our conversations. Late night would be the time for the big chatai bomb, the one which bursts for five minutes. We would all watch with bated breath as the whole bomb would be laid on the road. And then the bhaiya who had bought it would light it up. The whole sector would hear it as it made its noises.    Ah, those times!  They will never come back for us.

Joker: good or evil?

Does good win over evil? Dusshera just passed. It has been stated to us since our childhood that it reminds us of the victory of good over evil. That ultimately it is the good which triumphs. After living half of my life on this earth, I am a little confused. If good had to win over evil, wouldn’t all of us would be living a good life without any evil doings going around in the whole world and in our lives?
Instead, we deal with evil day in and day out. Not just in the world, in the country, in the city, we live in but in our lives as well. In our personal minds as well, good and evil fight a battle all the time. Evil has a say in the battle and it is a strong contender. If we get over one evil, another one crops up over the due course of time. The same is true for good. And their battle is continuous, omnipresent.What is evil? Who makes something evil and who tells us what is good? Are these just social constructs? Was Mahisasura evil for everyone in this world or just the people who did not like him? Was Ravana evil for everybody, we know this is not true. And Ram too doesn’t look good in some respects. If you ask the feminists! So how do we decide what is good and what is evil? From our own understanding of the world and the world’s understanding of itself!What is evil inside of us comes from our understanding of sin. Killing someone is sin for some. But when hundreds and thousands are killed in the war, it is not considered sin but will of God. If society around considers something as sin, the things connected to it become evil. Evils come from these connections. And they then compete with good which again comes from social constructs as well. Yes, I have watched the movie Joker. A man who is a villain or a hero depending on who you are. The experiences which the Joker went through made him a villain. For some. And a hero. For the others. So what was done to him was sin for some and what he did was sin for the others. The movie tells us a good story. Of how a man descends into madness and how the so-called evil captures his soul. How experiences, since childhood can make someone a cold-blooded killer. Nothing in this world is without a reason. He became what he became because of what he went through all his life. So who is one going to blame for all the acts he committed? Is it him or is it the people who gave him trauma? The answer to the question will make you a particular kind of person. If you think it’s him, you are of a particular kind. If you think it’s the society he lived in, you are of a different kind. And if you think it’s a mixture of both, well most probably you are of a third kind. Kinds of people. Kinds of good and evil.So the classification of good and evil for a person is not universal but an idiosyncratic view. This is something many people do not understand. They believe what is evil for them must be evil for others as well. And if it is not, then there is something wrong with the people of the other kind. The same holds true for the instances of good. We claim universality yet we are so human and so individualistic. And that is why everything is not always good. Because most things in this world are neither universally good nor universally evil.Enough of gyan. Thanks for the good act of reading. I hope I did not awaken your little evil for the time it took.