Charity begins at home

The Bhagwad Gita has had a telling influence on the Indian culture. The Gita, as you might be aware of, has been a part of the Indian  epic- the Mahabharata. The epic introduces us to a myriad of complex characters of which my favorite was Pitamaha Bhisma. Some of you might know, he was blessed with a boon of dying at will - Ichhamrityu. Doesn't that sound great? At the outset, it did to me as well. However as I started reading further I realized that dying at will in the context of Bhisma's life was more of a curse  than a boon. What my naivety failed to realize initially was the fact that he wasn't blessed with immortality, he was only blessed with the boon of dying at will. Death had to come by eventually. To delve a little deeper, let's also understand that he would be ageing and beyond a point his life will become more of a liability than an asset. To make things worse the context in which he was living latter half of his life was turning out to be excruciatingly painful. To cut a long story short, he saw his immediate family members in a terrible battle against each other and what was worse was the fact that he had to take sides. What aggravated  things further was the fact that he was compelled  to take the sides of the group that was at fault and despite taking their side he had to bear with repeated insults. From reverence to insult, from being the asset to Hastinapur to being a liability to himself Bhisma's life had turned into a burning hell. By the time he embraced death for himself , there was no iota of an intent to live any further.

The reason behind this annoyingly long introduction is what I observe in a section of the society today. The fact that almost everyone is joining hands to increase longevity of lives forgetting to improve the quality of the lives that we are living. Researchers across the globe are striving meticulously to increase the life span of average human beings- and noble is their endeavor indeed. Hypothetically let us assume our life spans doubled and we live close to 150 years. Imagine what we would be like at that age. While it is true that there have been speculations of human beings living that long in our history books, but in today's context how would that be? While the desire to live longer is there, are we even half as fit to last that distance? Man is looking at ambitious and expensive projects on exploring where else in the galaxy he can settle. The quest is indeed praiseworthy but nevertheless how about attempting to make our planet that we live in, just a little more live-worthy. Too bad we already are blessed with a planet that supports life. I am sure you would have read about the irony on the fact that we spend good sums of money on setting up wifi everywhere possible and chop down trees - the providers of free oxygen.

My friend and I - both novices in economics were having a discussion on what money is. His view was money is a unit of work. My belief was money also is a unit of what it can buy for instance- land and natural resources. While an economist would shoot down both our definitions, it got me thinking. If land would be one of the representatives of money, every year with the temperatures going up and global warming taking a toll, melting more ice, increasing the water levels, thereby engulfing a little more of our land, does it imply the same amount of money can buy a little less this year than what it could last year? The more I think about this the more apprehensive I feel.

While I am no environmentalist, I urge the readers to understand the gravity of the situation that our planet faces. Sri Krishna in Bhagwad Gita mentioned that the wise man thinks more about the mango tree than the mango and wiser man cares for the forest that the mango tree is a part of. While it is great that scientists are toiling hard to see if our life spans can increase, let each one of try to see if we can better the quality of our life. I did read earlier that the irony on there being more diseases despite there being more medicines. There's no point adding years to life if there's no life in those years. While it is great that researchers are looking out for options other than our planet that would sustain life, I urge my readers to take one step that makes the one that we live in a better place. After all, charity begins at ...... .