Insubordination

The word insubordination always brings to my mind a memo issued to me and Remesh Sir by Mr. Mahadevan (when he was principal of GEC Bartonhill) a week after we had entered his office with some 35 other faculty members to register our protest against his vulturous preying on the week.

That you, Mr. R. Deepak had broken into the chamber of the undersigned on the ... Your act amounts to insubordination, gross disobedience, indisciplinary behavior, dereliction of duty and instigating other staff members to revolt against the principal ....

I had since then cherished that memo as a certificate of merit and throned "insubordination" as a virtue. But today, the word insubordination flashed in my mind for an entirely different reason.

For last few months I was feeling that I don't get time to think nothing [1]. Even today, when I had no classes to engage (thanks to Raagam 2008) , I was still frustrated about the lack of mental free time. Today in my office room, I started searching the Internet for that lost time; I began reading articles about time management for teachers. It was then that Devi Chechi came to to clean the room. So I left the room for her, fetched some water and went to the nearby PG classroom which was deserted (thanks again to Raagam 2008).

There I was thinking about why people spend so much time planning for what to do and so little time planning for what to think (and what not to). Is it not because of that lack of planning for what to think that the joy of thinking nothing has become so rare for me?

Then I looked out of the window on the left, right into the dense green leaves of trees flanging our building. Greenery always brings to my mind a glorified picture of my childhood vacations at my grandparents' place. This time, it also brought two questions along.

1. Does greenery bring the same class of feelings to everyone?
2. Does greenery (or the lack of it) around you during your childhood have any lasting impact on your value system?

I left the first question unanswered since the second one had more exciting prospects.

If you grow up in a pristine environment, you imbibe the value that humans are subordinate to nature and that they have to learn and adapt themselves to live in this nature. They get to know the joy of subordination to nature - the joy of falling from branches of the guava tree, the joy of getting bitten by ants living in mango trees, the joy of getting frightened by the mooing of a cow, the joy of running to shelter when rain strikes you by surprise, the joy of the pain of lemon thorns under your feet, ...

In a city you grow up seeing how man has conquered and reshaped nature to fit to his petty needs. You get to know the arrogance of insubordination to nature. You see water made to flow your way, you see wind made to blow your way, you see fire packaged in red cylinders arriving on cycles at your door step, you see earth shaped to hold your house, you see the skies scared off further high by the sky scrappers. You might end up believing that every thing can be done according to your plan.

You end up believing that you can even plan and find time to think nothing.

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[1] Thinking nothing is my favorite pass time. Most of my blog posts on en-route are nothing but an afterthought of thinking nothing.