Switch to liberal arts when science fails you

 

- Devendra Gautam

When science fails you, seek solace in the arts.

Yeah, that is what life taught me last Saturday.

My only regret is that it took me quite a while to learn the important lesson. This late dawning meant letting go of small pleasures that a weekly off occasionally offers to ordinary folks like yours truly.  

Now, without beating about the bush, let me tell you what exactly happened from early morning till mid-afternoon on that beautiful cum eventful day. By the way, whatever happened is nothing extraordinary, for minor snags are what lives of lesser mortals like yours truly are made of! Learning to live with it all without grumbling is also part of what they call the art of living, isn’t it Guruji? Or is it not? I dunno.      

While strolling on the rooftop that sunny morning, an idea struck me: How about making the most of this beautiful day by soaking in the sun, reading a bit and writing some creative stuff with a bit of music for brain power?

So, packing my bag with the laptop, some books and a mattress, I headed straight atop, unpacked the  bag and spread my wares around me at the usual, sunny spot. You see readers, great things in life come for free. Great things like the sun, the air, dreams, they all come for free. Ah, I almost forgot: Great things like ideas come for free.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when tap water also used to come for free, but those days are gone. Nowadays, even if you pay quite a sum, what you get from the service provider is just two-three pitchers-ful of water, that too once a week. Given the scarcity of freshwater around the globe and the near impossibility of desalinating sea water, pundits are already predicting that future wars will be over potable water.  

Don’t believe me? How about reading a bit about the Nile, the Mekong, the Brahmaputra and our simmering conflicts with India over the Koshi, the Gandaki, the Mahakali and the Rapti, to name just a few cases? What a relief for me that I don’t have to wad into the choppy waters this time around, for the topic is a bit different!                

For now, lemme not go deeper into the future war zone. Lemme tan a bit for free, while basking in the comfort that our competent authorities have no immediate plans to tax the hoi polloi for such leisurely pleasure. While thanking these authorities for sparing us the sunshine tax even when warm rays of the sun have become a luxury for many many Kathmanduites living in the urban sprawl, my idea is to make the most of whatever comes for free (sunshine included), for you never know when the state will know about these freebies and start imposing punitive taxes on them!

Let’s get back to the rooftop, the sunny morning and my plans to do a bit of reading/writing on the sunniest spot that, to my relief, did not fall within the wifi-shadow area. Of late, I have started wondering if ideas stream into your thick skull from high heavens. That’s why my neighbours often find me at the rooftop these days.

But when I sat in the sun for a bit of writing, things went horribly wrong. The sun was shining brighter still, but the wifi connection was gone in a jiffy! How could I scribble without a bit of cursory research, without updating myself on the topic of interest?

In search of the signal, I shifted from one coordinate to another then to another, but to no avail. Without the internet, I felt like a Neanderthal without his tools. Without the internet, a Homo Sapien perhaps feels like a Martian that crashlanded on Planet Earth.

With the struggle for wifi signal in vain, it was time to check if the whole system was down. It indeed was, as I would find out soon. The mobile phones, the laptop and the TV set were all lying ‘lifeless’ and abandoned, and sadness was writ large on family members’ faces. After a couple of frantic calls and hours-long, agonising wait, the internet service provider managed to restore the connection.

But the sunny day was effectively ruined and so was the plan to write a bit of creative stuff with a bit of web-based research.  

This experience also shows how the internet has become a lifeline for humanity. Think about the massive positive impact that the internet will have on imparting education and training to children and youth in particular. With proper safeguards and mechanisms to prevent its misuse in place, I feel that making the internet free and accessible throughout the world will bring about an unprecedented positive transformation in every walk of life.  

This does not mean that hooking up onto the internet 24/7 is a great idea. There’s a world outside the worldwide web too. But we forget that as I forgot on that day.

Looking back, I could surely have taken my time off after lodging a complaint with the ISP about the problem and chosen to visit a great art exhibition in progress. ‘Could have gone hiking or to meet friends or just sat cross-legged and meditated at home or the woods nearby instead of grumbling about poor wifi services and the apathy of regulatory government authorities.  

Instead of moving from one coordinate to another in search of the wifi signal, I could have done one of those things and written about it later on, with a bit of net-based research if need be.

I regret not doing any of it and making the sunny day quite foggy by forgetting to switch to the arts when ‘science’ failed me, forgetting that the intersection of liberal arts and technology is where great things happen.