Amidst all the hullabaloo of economic “boom to bust” on a global scale, and closer to home of revelations related to the fraudulent undertakings of an IT honcho, the logical mind is perturbed and pestered. While analysts are working overtime to analyze the cause and effect scenario of all that’s happening around us, the common man is flabbergasted beyond recovery and is clinging to every single word of hope for better times ahead. And it is here that the problem lies - the desire for “better times ahead!”

The human evolution has advanced in the wake of innovations, inventions and ideas for betterment. From cave dwelling hunters and pastoral tribes, to agriculturists, we moved on to become industrialists, and when we produced more than we actually needed, we became consumers and philosophers. While consumerism reached its peak, so did human philosophy and soon we had myriad philosophies for all our facets of our life - political, social, intellectual, economic, and even scientific. The “schools of thought” expanded and diversified, and we were enmeshed by more ideas and professed more ways of life than we could actually live! Minimalism gave way to lofty ideals and higher ambitions. More and better was demanded and at grandiose scales. The intellectual was churning out ideas for execution, and the social, political, economic, and industrial setup was working overtime to crystallize these ideas. While the human mind was at work, life was improving at a fast pace, but at what cost!

Let’s take a small example, from a life most of us would recall (probably, with a sweet nostalgia). While the grandchildren slept, the grandmother swatted flies and kept a wisp of cool air blowing with an indigenous hand-held cane fan, sipping water freshly poured from a mud-jar. Decades later, a more progressive government in the country paved way for basic amenities like a regular electric connection and advancement in small and medium scale industries. The father, who was comfortably placed in a government job, gifted the family with a room cooler and the family enjoyed its comfort in the drowsy Indian summers. The next addition was a fridge, and the indigenous hand-held fan and mud-jar were relegated into the farthest recesses of the middle-class household. Another two decades later, the son of the family was placed in a highly paid job in a multi-national company, and the rickety room cooler was replaced with an air-conditioner, rather air-conditioners, as each room was fitted with one. The old-Godrej fridge was replaced with a new double-door frost-free refrigerator, which also had the washing machine and the microwave, for company in the house.

Life was fast, and packed with responsibilities and a race against the clock. The gadgets were necessary and time-saving, but then the electricity bills were escalating, allergies and joint pains were troubling the family members and everywhere there was a lot of discussion about global warming. The emissions from electronics like air-conditioners and refrigerators were supposed to cause the depletion of the O-zone layer. While we got accustomed to the electronic buzz of gadgets in our house, and believed that these were essential for our comfort, in reality we were in discomfort with aches, pains, bills, peer pressures to maintain standards of living, and on goes the list. The next thing that our doctors and financial advisors was telling us was to resort to natural remedies and to plan our income-expenditures. By some quirk of fate, we are being led towards a life of minimalism - spend less, save more, take a walk, eat fruits and vegetables, sleep on the floor, keep the windows open, let the light in, drink fresh spring water, and spend less time at work and more time with your family!

Apparently, the human intellectual revolution has failed. All these years, we spent in imagining, planning and executing, gave an artificial stimulus to a growth, which was against the basic tenets of natural life. But, the law of Survival of the Fittest, almost always takes over. When human beings started moving against the laws of nature, the stronger, vaster cosmic forces took charge. We were shown our feebleness and our diminutive size as compared to the larger principles of natural existence. While plague, deprived living conditions and lower mortality rates, were nature’s way of maintaining the delicate biological balance of life on Earth in the medieval ages, the modern day plague has taken the form of economic bust, new diseases and global warming. We are constantly being pushed back into limits and boundaries that we dared not have crossed had we kept the broader perspective in mind. While many may foresee global doom and the end of the world, in all that is happening around is, the less cynical would still believe that it’s a warning sign, and not yet the Apocalypse. Our war cry for survival and victory, then needs to be “Back to Basics!” For the whole Universe is conspiring to lead us in that direction.

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