cause and effect

There’s a chapter called “Rebellion” in book five of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in which Ivan, one of the title characters, explains to his brother Alyosha why he cannot accept God’s world. It’s a masterfully written chapter in a brilliant novel, one I have spent countless nights contemplating and arguing with friends over. If you haven’t already, I urge you to read both the chapter and the novel, since any attempt I make to paraphrase it could never do it justice; but for the sake of discussion, here goes anyway.

Ivan, a tortured, rational intellectual, is talking to his compassionate, deeply religious brother, Alyosha, a novice monk, about reconciling the suffering of innocents with the existence of God. He recounts a recent story he read in the newspaper about a child of five who was beaten, thrashed, and kicked by her parents for no reason, then locked up at night outside in the cold and frost. Moreover, when she didn’t ask to be taken out to go to the bathroom, her own mother smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement. Evoking an image that has stayed with me since the first time I read it, Ivan asks his brother:

"Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?"

In his next story, Ivan recalls a tale of an aristocratic retired general in the days of the feudal system in Russia. He owned property with roughly two thousand serfs and had kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys, all mounted, and in uniform. As Ivan explains:

“One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general's favorite hound. 'Why is my favorite dog lame?' He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog's paw. 'So you did it.' The general looked the child up and down. 'Take him.' He was taken -- taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It's a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... 'Make him run,' commands the general. 'Run! Run!' shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... 'At him!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's eyes!”

What could the boy ever have done to deserve such a fate? Ivan uses the stories to illustrate his point; he simply cannot reconcile the existence of suffering among innocents with the existence of a just God. He rejects the notion that there is some higher truth, some eternal, unknowable harmony in the universe at work that justifies everything.

“If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up; he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures.”

While he is on earth, he makes haste to take his own measures. Ivan’s argument in The Brothers Karamazov resonated with me when I first read the novel, and continues to today. While Dostoevsky writes about Christian beliefs, the ideas discussed are relevant to Jainism as well, and particularly to karma theory, which I admittedly have not studied in detail and do not understand well. While I do think I have a likely oversimplified understanding of the gist of karmic philosophy, I hope I will be called out if I make any inappropriate assumptions.

Karma theory, as I understand it, basically says that all effects can be traced to a particular cause. Our intentions, thoughts, and actions stay with us and impact our future situation, circumstance, and happiness. To quote a similar concept from the Bible, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” We are thus required to take responsibility for our actions, and those who do right are rewarded, those who do wrong are punished. Sounds fair enough, right?

The catch, of course, is that karma transcends our lives and stays with us. As such, karma and reincarnation are companion doctrines. According to a literal interpretation of Jainism, karmas are invisible, fine particles of matter that surround us, like molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the air we breathe, and our souls attract these karmas. Since our soul (atma) is our spiritual essence, its transmigration, complete with its accumulated karmas (both “bad” and “good”), into another, worldly life signals our rebirth.

But this is where I run into some philosophical problems. Karma theory, as I understand it, purportedly offers reconciliation between inequality, injustice, and suffering in our mundane lives with some larger sense of justice in the universal order. On the grand scale, all is just.

But I can’t help wondering: are the millions of slum dwellers in Mumbai—living in poverty, without toilets, running water, or electricity, without enough money to feed themselves or their children, and without access to any kind of health care—emblematic of the higher justice inherent in the universal order that governs our lives?

I’ve always been taught that the Jain response to these realities is to show compassion, which I have always strived to do. But what about the beliefs of our religion that seemingly validate these realities as somehow “justified”? Is a starving, destitute child in rural Botswana, orphaned by an AIDS epidemic that has infected a full third of her nation’s population, somehow responsible for having been born in such a situation? Karma theory, like Christianity here, requires faith in the greater, unfathomable harmony. Either everything is justified, all will be revealed, or both. At least at this point in my life, though, I find that explanation hard to accept.

With karma theory, there’s an implicit blame assigned for one’s misfortune. Ivan’s argument always comes to mind for me at this point. What does the innocent child have to do with any of that? How can she be made out to be guilty? How can she be made to suffer for the deeds of a past life to which she has no conscious connection?

I believe that I have a soul that is in fact transcendent, but I also know that I am ignorant of the deeds attached to it from previous lives. I don’t have dreams of past lives, and I’ve only ever been conscious of myself as myself in this life. Fundamentally, we are all “this-worldly,” and while on this earth, I feel compelled, like Ivan, to take my own measures. And by my “this-worldly” measure, a starving infant, dying an insufferable death from dehydration at the hands of cholera-induced diarrhea, while his mother cradles him helplessly, could never have deserved his fate.

Yes, I am distorting the question some with my examples by playing on emotions; how can you possibly say that a poor, dying child had it coming? But these scenarios are realities, and I cannot reconcile them by simply subscribing to karma theory. I don’t necessarily expect a good answer, but I certainly can’t accept what thus far seems a bad one.

I also feel like it’s particularly easy for us to accept karma theory without protest, since we have it so good. We are by and large well off, born into circumstances that don’t leave us in want of basic necessities like food, shelter, or health care. In many cases we are indeed blessed—with intelligence, wealth, education, and opportunities. So on the flip side of the implicit blame that I reject (assigned to those who are suffering), is the implicit sense of entitlement that we could conceivably feel for being in such a good situation. We must have done something right to be here. Well, I reject that, too. Most of us were born on third base; let’s not act like we hit a triple.

To both my mundane, rational mind and my spiritual, intuitive sense, there is only a seemingly arbitrary disparity between my privilege and so many others’ poverty. I can’t just chalk it up to karma and walk away whistling merrily. It’s troubling.

Faith is a fine line for me. I rely heavily on my spiritual convictions in my daily life, but they must make intuitive sense to me. I can always take responsibility for my own intentions, thoughts, and actions; it’s those that I’ve never been conscious of or associated with in any tangible way that I can’t. To expect others to bear that responsibility as a means of explaining their misfortune and suffering seems to me a rather facile and unfair way of justifying an otherwise frighteningly irrational phenomenon.

Originally written in February 2002 & published in "Young Minds," a magazine published by Young Jains of America (YJA) and the Federation of Jain Associations in North America (JAINA). Vol. 10, #1, Spring 2002.

bollywood review: k3g

There is clearly a different set of standards I use when watching Bollywood movies than for almost any other type of film. Bollywood movies, especially for ABCDs like myself, often seem ridiculously melodramatic, idealistic, and unbelievable, particularly when compared with most above average Hollywood films. Still, I watch them and generally enjoy them, even if I don’t always like to admit it. There’s a lyric in “Hey Jealousy,” by the Gin Blossoms that goes: “If you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down.” I guess that sums up my approach to these movies—as long as I don’t go in expecting a brilliantly innovative storyline, a suspenseful climax, or a compelling, thought-provoking cinematic masterpiece (and as long as I go to the bathroom beforehand), I can usually enjoy myself. And sometimes, I’m even pleasantly surprised (e.g. Dil Chahta Hai).

Cast-wise, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (aka K3G, in the wonderful desi tradition of seizing upon every possible opportunity to create a new acronym) is Bollywood’s answer to Ocean’s Eleven. It boasts 6 of Hindi cinema’s biggest stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithick Roshan, Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee, and the return to the screen of Amitabh Bachchan’s real life wife, Jaya, in only their second ever film together.

As even the most diehard fan will tell you, originality, especially of plot, is not Bollywood cinema’s forte, and K3G (which, translated, means “sometimes happy, sometimes sad”) is no exception. This movie has all the usual plotlines: forbidden love, the constraints of family tradition and arranged marriage, and hidden identities, and weaves them together into a story that takes a Bollywood-standard three and a half hours to tell.

Yashovardhan Raichand (Amitabh Bachchan), as many Bollywood father characters are, is a successful Indian businessman who simply falls into the generic category of “globally important captain of industry,” which I suppose is all the detail necessary for explaining his character’s motivations. It’s a strong, patriarchal role that Amitabh plays often (Mohabbatein, Ek Rishtaa), and well, though I’m still not liking the gray beard with the black hair, it spooks me out. He and his wife Nandini (Jaya Bachchan) have raised their sons Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) and Rohan (Hrithik Roshan) in privilege, but while always showering them with love and affection; in short, theirs is a storybook, “perfect” family, complete with mansion, helicopter, and private boarding school educations.

The Bollywood vision of contemporary Indian families seems to increasingly focus on the elite, multi-millionaires with their glorious mansions and Western-educated children, the latter of which often provide the convenient plot segue that enables the film to move to a London where most people speak Hindi.

A great early scene in the movie has Yash getting ready to leave for work, the picture of a high-powered businessman, dressed in his suit, barking orders and in a hurry. Before he goes, however, he calls his wife into the room, because he needs her to tie his tie. In a delightful sequence, she approaches him, and without breaking stride, steps onto a chair in order to ascend to the proper height to be face to face with her husband and complete her daily ritual. The scene illustrates well the dynamic between the two, and works because of their chemistry.

Rahul’s discovery at age 8 that he was adopted (a convenient way to solve the problem that Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithick Roshan bear absolutely no resemblance to one another) is the source of his especially deep devotion and gratitude to his parents. Yash has always stressed the importance of family tradition to his sons, and as a respected “captain of industry,” image and status are everything. Nandini, a strong, silent, doting mother, shares a special bond with her eldest son (Rahul always teases his younger brother Rohan that their mother loves him more), but Yash’s wishes are the ones that Rahul always follows, for he reveres his father.

Then comes the forbidden love part that tears the family apart and drives the plot forward. Rahul, the son of an extremely successful and wealthy (not to mention globally important) entrepreneur, falls in love with the beautiful, charming daughter of an equally successful, wealthy, and globally important entrepreneur and they get married, making everyone involved happy and perpetuating the wealth and status among a small, aristocratically exclusive circle of social elites. Ok, that’s not true. There’s not enough for a three and a half hour movie in that storyline. Although the socioeconomically equal girl does exist (played by Rani Mukherjee in a cameo), and is the one Yash wants his son to marry, Rahul instead falls in love with the spirited Anjali (Kajol), from the poor Delhi neighborhood of Chandni Chowk. That’s more like it.

Kajol’s performance as Anjali stands out among the star-studded cast as the highlight of the movie. She is feisty, passionate, and beautiful. Everything from her dialogue delivery to her facial expressions embodies her character, and the audience sees immediately why Rahul falls so desperately in love with her and risks estrangement from a family he cherishes so deeply for her (not an easy task). Using the tried and true combination of Shah Rukh and Kajol (the same duo that propelled the enormous success of DDLJ and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), and even the names Rahul and Anjali for their characters, the main love story works quite well. The two have a great, convincing chemistry on screen, and the scenes in which they banter with each other were my favorites.

Yash, however, reacts predictably by forbidding their marriage, and then disowns his eldest son when Rahul disobeys him and marries Anjali anyway. Mother and wife Nandini is devastated, torn between her eldest son and her husband, while little brother Roshan, played by a chubby child actor in the early part of the movie (i.e., the first hour) is too young to understand (and considering his size, probably too preoccupied with ladoos to catch on). Rahul and Anjali move to England, taking Anjali’s younger sister Pooja (Kareena Kapoor) with them, and Rahul is forced to establish himself on his own in a new country. Not surprisingly, he does so immediately, and that consequently allows filming to proceed in another gorgeous home, this time in London.

Roshan, having grown into Hrithick Roshan in a highly abrupt and suspect transformation from boy to man (think “Chunk” from The Goonies growing into Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiator), and having become aware of Rahul’s estrangement from their father, makes it his mission to reunite his broken family. He travels to England, enlists the support of childhood friend Pooja, and manages to move in unrecognized as a guest into Rahul and Anjali’s house (this is the part that most requires the obligatory Bollywood suspension of disbelief in the interests of enjoying the movie).

A note about Kareena Kapoor. She seems right now to be the most popular, coveted Bollywood actress, landing all the top roles and adored by Indians, NRIs, and ABCDs alike. From her debut in Refugee back in the summer of 2000 until now, her popularity has shot up. I’d just like to go on record as saying that I think she’s awful, and I understand the praise she gets for being a great actress about as much as I understand the praise George W. Bush gets for being a great president—it makes absolutely no sense to me, and when I hear it, I feel like I must be missing something. Her role in this movie is absolutely obnoxious, and the presence of her character single-handedly lowered my opinion of this movie by a full Thum Up out of four. She plays an insufferable, spoiled, superficial lush, wearing too much makeup and micro miniskirts in what is perhaps some ridiculously misguided portrayal of what Indians in India perceive of Indian girls in the West. To top it off, I just think she’s a horrible actress. It’s one thing to play an obnoxious character well, but she succeeds in playing an obnoxious character obnoxiously. She’s the antithesis of Kajol in the movie, which, as it turns out, is probably the highest compliment I can pay Kajol’s performance.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, the plan works, and the waterworks, continuing sporadically until the end of the movie, begin: Roshan reveals his identity to his brother, and after a tearful embrace convinces Rahul to come home to try to make amends with their father. Several emotional scenes ensue, and there is a glorious, teary-eyed reconciliation…and they lived happily ever after.

Overall, Kareena Kapoor’s abhorrent character aside, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Though I often write about them sarcastically, many of the emotional scenes in the movie are well done, and the chemistry between both Rahul and Anjali and Yash and Nandini is wonderful (sorry, Hrithick didn’t have much to work with, though they should’ve known better, since the previous attempt at a Kareena Kapoor-Hrithick Roshan pairing, Yaadein, was one of the worst Bollywood movies I’ve ever seen). Kajol is outstanding as Anjali, there are some great dance sequences, several references to recent Bollywood movies (Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in particular) that enthusiasts will enjoy, and a cast that does not end up disappointing, which is quite an accomplishment when considering its star-studded composition. Three Thums Up out of four.
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Originally written in February 2002 & published on thesala.com.
http://thesala.com/episode05/10.html