1985

The collective consciousness of the world is degrading, and how.
The dream I dreamt before reading the English novelist, George Orwell's literary masterpiece '1984' now haunts me afresh.  The dream that found meaning in Orwell's dystopia.

It was a lonely room, spacious and austere in an intelligent way, wherein an old man with a cheery, bespectacled face welcomed me.There was a large window opposite to the door, with no artificial light source traceable in the room.
I was invited to sit on a wooden stool facing a wall which had a wooden shelf run horizontally from end to end at a height proportionate to that of the stool.
It was ominously silent in that room, a large, worn out desk made of dark wood and a chair similar in make were placed on my right with the chair resting against the corner of the shelf. A huge, ugly metal almirah towered next to the table on the adjacent wall.
At the far right corner of the shelf, right behind the chair lay a stream of unorganised papers and a few odd looking machines. One resembled an ECG, with reams of graphs stacked neatly beside it.
For some odd reason, I saw in the face of my friendly old host features of the most celebrated physicist of the 20th century, Dr. Albert Einstein.
The optimism of his aura was in stark contrast to his demeanour of worry. He cautiously closed the door behind me and pulled out the chair and rotated it to face me.
Sunlight flooded our part of the room.
With a grave expression on his face and evident horror in his eyes, he began.

" We are spiralling downwards. At what exact rate I am not certain of, but this I can say, the number is unprecedentedly high. "

He shuffled in his chair, and then continued in a heavy voice.

" The human race has called upon its own doom and I am not sure if we can avert the catastrophe even if we were to mend our ways right this second. "

I looked at him incredulously. He seemed to take into consideration my state of mind and went on.

" I take it that you are familiar with the principle of Evolution? ", he didn't wait for a reply.
"Turns out that evolution didn't just favour the ones that were biologically better equipped at surviving, it also favoured the ones with more mindfulness. The evolutionary path that our species moved along was one that enhanced our self awareness, emotional intelligence and above all our consciousness. All things necessary to form the fabric of society that sustains us today.
As a species we have been successful not because we are the strongest, or the fastest, or the tallest, for we are neither of those things. It is not even in fact because we are the smartest. Evidence suggests that Neanderthals had bigger brains than us.
We survived through the development of our collective consciousness. That which enables us to perform acts of love, friendship, empathy and protection; even counter intuitive acts which seem to have no biological explanation, such as practising celibacy or fasting.
A true patriot would lay down his life before betraying his motherland, lovers would willingly give away their comfort for the other's happiness. Despite these deeds being contradictory to one's survival.
We had begun to ascend the stairway of morality. We were riding the growing curve of collective consciousness.
Even when individual or group morality fluctuated, as a species we moved forward - towards civilisation.
Our wars also stemmed from the building of our consciousness as more and more people formed believes and opinions and fought to safeguard them, the process of believing in itself being continuously refined. Our constant strive for development and our struggle to get better, to better our standards of living, our technology, our reach, all of our circumstances - all of this emanated from what I like to call ' Positive Evolution'.
We kept on evolving as a species continuously and therefore took it for granted that it shall remain the natural order of the world. Just like the arrow of time, we figured that the arrow of evolution would too always face forward.
This is where we became complacent."

His speech had completely enraptured me. The clarity of his words was clearing a mist in my mind and I was lost in the process, almost enjoying the revelations of my own mind when I realised the meaning of his final sentence and couldn't help but emit a gasp of terror.

" We probably are beyond the inflexion point already. The curve will now move in reverse. The terrible things we have allowed to happen, negating all of our progress. The violations of human rights and dignity, the genocides, the oppression of people.
Every atrocity of the scale where it wasn't isolated has now hindered our growth, threatening to send it in reverse. "

I was perplexed.

" We have had terrible things happen in the past. Slavery, civil war, religious crusades, extremism and what not. What has happened now of a magnitude so high that .... "

My voice trailed off.

" Yes, the powerful have inflicted the powerless with suffering throughout history but never has this effort been so coordinated, so global and ruthless as it is now.
The modern era with its interconnectedness has made it impossible for isolated acts to exist, thereby affecting our collective conscience. We are now closer than ever, and never before has annihilation so absolute and of such magnitude been possible.
Nature defends itself.
It sees that man has acquired enough brains to invent an atomic bomb but not enough mindfulness to realise the gravity of his deed, nor the intellect to control the repercussions of his own invention.

And now we tread on a path to oblivion and I am afraid, hastily so. Within a few generation we will start degrading. We will become worse off than single celled beings with no self awareness, no knowledge of a greater world. Our faculties will begin to diminish and go on to a point where survival would be meaningless, only an instinct biologically hardwired into whatever would be left of our brains.

This is the reality of our situation as of now, and I am not sure if we have time and resources to change it.  "

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I recall waking up with a start, not quite remembering what it was that forced me out of my sleep. Gradually it came to me as I went on with my day and its enormity struck me.

Then it came to me again as I flipped past the pages of 1984.

1984 is a gruelling story of how the control of language enables a strict surveillance of thought in a totalitarian government and how these actions are successful in eradicating the consciousness of the people of the fictional nation called Oceania.
The propaganda of Oceania's ruling 'Party' runs deep within people's minds and leads them to digest absurd claims and justify strict measures all the while benefiting the powerful.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

The party's slogans embody the subversive use of language to undermine the meaning of words.
The vocabulary is reduced to an official language by the name of 'Newspeak' which contains only straightforward words with all nuances and shades of meaning being robbed, rendering the act of critical thought and evaluation impossible.

In its core, the novel is a warning against the dangers of routine of thought.

To think critically and to seek knowledge of the truth, in order to empower critical thought - is as much a right as it is our duty - as a free, self aware people.
Lest we fall into the traps of cunning propagandists, waiting for us to fall into the flaw of routine.

Lest you wake up to dream like mine, the only thing different being that its not a dream. 

The Summer Of The Blossomless Jacaranda

As a young child, I met at the doorstep of my new house, a tiny little sapling. It was green and fresh and dwarfed even by my little presence. I held my father's hand as he bent to take a closer look and both of us decided to care for the plant, which we hoped would become a tree someday. Never did we have to go out of our way with the care, we watered it in the beginning but nature soon took to nurturing it all by herself. She must be proud of just how much that tiny sapling has grown now, and how full.

When summer came by, I saw for the first time the purple bloom of the Jacaranda tree everywhere around. A cluster of bees would perpetually hover around the sweet smelling flowers, and birds of so many kinds would inhabit it's branches which swayed to the merry tune of the summer zephyr. Soon our dear tree matured and showed definition, we realised we had a Jacaranda of our own.

Years rolled by as quick as spilt marbles on a road downhill, as happy years of childhood often do and our friend grew tall and magnificent, much to my pleasure and my mother's dismay. She loved that tree, which provided shade to our home and a home to countless birds who woke her up in the morning with their happy chirrups, but she loathed the purple stains of the fallen leaves which were all over her expensive flooring and were mushed under the feet of people coming in and going by. Soon, the tall one became an absolute beast and it's branches threatened to push themselves through the tin roof and into the glass windows.

"What do we do with this thing? Look at how huge it is." ; my mum would say in utter dismay. It grew taller everyday, bushier and harder to not do something about.
My parents began to discuss their options, they began by planning to trim the branches and once I heard them mention a more permanent possibility of cutting it out entirely. They proceeded to quickly cast that one aside, their are strict rules protecting trees, nevertheless I was aghast at them being able to fathom a solution so cruel for the tree that had grown up with me. None of us could have thought how large it would grow out to be, all these years back when we had met the young sapling right next to our doorstep.

My young self couldn't help but ask, wasn't pride the right response rather than disappointment?
We're curious beings, we hope for things and people to grow but the moment their growth reaches beyond our expectations, we panic. We try to tame growth, lest it not cause us inconvenience and give us only the results we expected. Nothing more, nothing less.
What we often forget, or choose to forget is that growth isn't always defined or convenient, it isn't meant to be. There are always branches that go in unprecedented directions, which we mistakenly believe will hamper the efforts of reaching a predefined, ultimate destination. The more branches that grow, in unexplored directions, charting their own way, the better we will understand the journey, and perhaps the destination that we had prematurely fixed.

To me, the Jacaranda was and continues to be a symbol of growth, of blissful summer evenings and of a strong bond that I share with nature. To me, having cared for the tree was my little contribution to the sprawling sea of purple, purple that elevated moods and uplifted spirits, an offering to the greenery that surrounded the hill that I call home.

A row of Jacaranda Trees near my home.

The winters were just around the corner when a few people from the Municipality knocked at our door with the orders to trim our tree. It was a necessary precaution being made ahead of the time, for whenever it would snow, the electricity wires- not too high for the tree, could pose a hazard with snow all over them and our Jacaranda.

I peeped out of the balcony to see all trees in the neighbourhood being given a trim, I realised it was finally time to make peace with the idea.

Soon after the chopping begun, the leafiest branch of the tree was completely severed, which was not exactly according to plan. The branch fell from the roof with a thud, and children came running to play its leaves. My father assured the tree cuter that what happened was for the best, that they wouldn't have to worry about the tree overgrowing anytime soon. The neighbours too insisted that they trim it some more, and as everyone agreed they went ahead to do so.

The following summer, our Jacaranda didn't bloom .Not a single speck of purple made an appearance.  Around me, the other tress did flower but with a glory that seemed diminished.
The summer of the blossomless Jacaranda was indeed a gloomy one.

The purple came back the following summer, much to my delight and that of my folks. It came with a fantastic blossom, the likes of which we hadn't seen before.

Maybe then, a setback can realise its own beauty through the promise of accomplishment that lies ahead.