Class

There is something in us which makes us believe that we belong to a particular class of people.This is ingrained within us probably because we have this habit of classifying things and unless we know we belong to a particular class we do not feel secure enough. By classifying ourselves we become predictable and our behavior assumes lack of rough edges and absence of those wonderfully delicious angularities arising out of not belonging. You know in my transactions with people I always look for the people lumped together by way of congenital classes or societal divisions behaving as though they belonged together. I do not know why, while I deal with two women I believe that both of them are together in this thing and that is, a secret bond exists between them which is apart from me and away from me. These are a secret society and a common fate binds them together excluding me from that circle. When I see two economically less privileged people dealing with me I suspect there is something between them which binds them together and I become their common foe. When I see my gardener talking to my driver outside of my transactions I begin to feel they are actually conspiring against a common enemy ,that is me. That is ridiculous and anybody who listens to this will say I am a dirty capitalist pig who is imagining things out of a class hatred borne out of an insecurity that their belongingness is supposed to evoke in me.Actually that is not the real thing .In point of fact I want those guys to stick together and my uneasiness about them is their not sticking together .I expect them to belong to the class in which my mind has slotted them in the background of their own social or intellectual class.I know that the script is already written and precious little will evolve out of the transactions apart from the most banal events in the whole drama . But the burden is so much on the mind and why the hell am I responsible for this -is a certain doubt that wracks my mind.Actually I want my microcosm to exist the way I have designed it, not the way it will evolve through several unconnected events . That means the problem lies essentially with me , my microcosm or the reflection of the world within me. I want everything to fall into place and it suits me to have these guys to belong together in a strange silky bond of friendship

Coming back to the need to belong , it bothers me no end not to belong but at the same time it bothers me equally to belong where everybody belongs. I want everything to fall into a category purely for ontology purposes because if I come across a strange thing which does not fall into a class I feel my comprehension challenged.

The senses

Our perception is largely based upon the senses,their impressions forming the chief source for our experiences.The visual experiences form the major part of our experiences and since it is so a person who does not have a vision has necessarily to use the other senses to compensate for the lack of visual experiences. The question that crops up is whether you cannot do without  at least one of the senses helping you to garner experiences. Too often it is a combination of two or more sensory impressions that forms the experience. Let us examine if pleasure giving experiences in our life are only those drawn from sensory experiences. I find that apart from the direct sensory experiences which give us pleasure ,a recollecting of the earlier sensory experiences often gives the same exquisite experience as a sensory impression. Perhaps William Wordsworth’s definition of “poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility” falls into this kind. For me it is not exactly the sensory experiences recalled that give pleasure but only the haze around those experiences which were not necessarily pleasure giving at that time .Thus perfectly ordinary experiences of the olden times get recalled sometimes giving me a quality of experience truly enjoyable  and this does not happen in moments of tranquility alone but is triggered by a repeat occurrence of one of the sensory impressions of that event which is being recalled.A notable thing is the predominance of the olfactory impressions in the recalling.I have often found that a whiff of a fragrance associated with an  earlier experience in the remote past gives rise to an exquisite experience ,which was not necessarily a intensely joyous experience at that time.

I have often experienced the power of the sense of smell in recalling exquisite experiences. Some times ,I pass the streets lined with fragrant jasmines on the foot path and re-experience the beauty of an earlier experience which was not necessarily a pleasure giving experience at the time.It is the haze and the etherealness of the recalled experience that enhances your experience now .I had often roamed the busy shopping streets of Baroda aimlessly merely to take in the fragrances of the agarbattis(incense sticks) wafting from out of the shops . Now anywhere in the country when I re-experience fragrance from similar incense sticks I experience an intensity of pleasure which is fleeting no doubt but wonderful while it lasts.