Introducing Kurukshetra

Reading, watching, thinking, observing – the internal processes of the brain are the most exhilarating and addictive of habits to those who open their eyes to their pleasures. I have been fortunate in this respect – being in the company of knowledgeable and enlightened people, and having access to books and other media, I have found myself learning every day. But I am also realising that although learning is exciting and intoxicating, and knowledge heady, it comes with strings attached. Every byte of new knowledge questions, modifies and sometimes even challenges existing knowledge. While some new knowledge folds in smoothly into the brain, others by definition have to dislodge an existing byte in order to settle in. That’s where all the problems start. When existing information is deeply creased in the brain, when it is the product of the conditioning, when it seems vital to your very life breath – they don’t give up without a royal battle.

And it is quite a battle – the battle between faith and reason, religion and science, culture and nature. It questions your notions of time, space and existence, your identity, and indeed your very self. How can one dispute or contend with the evidential knowledge that science presents us with? How does one deal with this ever-growing scientific evidence when it directly clashes with long-held beliefs based on faith? And when I say long-held, I don't mean held as long as one's years of existence. I mean really long-held - held as long as your community has held it , I mean race-memory, after all aren't those the beliefs that are most difficult to give up, because their roots are not just in the folds of the brain but in the very cells of the material of our being?

The battle started long ago, ostensibly with Galileo, who couldn't take the pressure put on him by the Church for declaring that the earth went around the sun. But so do we every day – at least those of us who are ready to face science. But here there is no church to harass or threaten us – here the church is within and it is in our minds that the Kurukshetra wages.

There are those of us who have given up their beliefs and gone on. Good for them. There are those of us who are so rooted in their beliefs that nothing can shake them. The battle hasn’t begun for them. They can rest in peace for some more time. And then there are some of us – like me – in whom the battlefield is ready. The armies face each other, the conch has blown, and the weapons drawn, the soldiers are ready, fierce and cruel. And already the race memory of what such hurt can do is a frightening thought.

And as I face myself, pore over history books and scriptural translations and wade through science journals and movies in an effort to be critical and objective, to reconcile the two, or throw out the one, and renew myself in the light of my new findings, I invite all my readers to join me in my battle by helping me re-define my identity and also by facing their own ready battlefields. It was my husband who pointed out to me that this was a battle raging within, and called upon me to blog on the ‘eternal battle’. Hence the name Kurukshetra.

I again request my readers to participate in this blog with serious comments, thoughts and perspectives that can help all of us define for ourselves what we want ourselves to be and stand for. For those of us who are totally confident that they know what they stand for, I often think the conviction is because we have not recognised that there are two armies within, all armed to the teeth, in battle readiness waiting to launch the offensive, or that we are so much a part of one side that we do not see the other side at all – but it is there, it is there alright, within all of us, manifesting every now and then in feelings, thoughts, words and deeds that contradict our usual ways of being and doing – contradictions that can frustrate and confuse our family and friends even if they are not yet obvious to us.

So let us begin this apocalyptic year by launching this battle to clarify our understanding, trim vestigial baggage and determine our identities. Let’s blow the conch and fire the first salvo, in good faith and conviction that truth alone will triumph.