Senses and SenseAbility

Remigius de Souza writes:

Senses and SenseAbility

WE GENERALLY recognize five senses: touch, hearing, smell and vision. Intuition is considered the Sixth Sense. There may be more than Five Senses. The five senses help us to perceive the world, and learn. Intuition is developed through perception. Dr. Deepak Chopra said, intuition is heightened perception, which I had heard in is recorded lecture.

Indeed, our perceptions need to be heightened, widened, deepened – developed – constantly, thereby our intuition; it’s a lifelong process which is important for survival. It also helps our creative ability in whatever we take up – occupation, profession or vocation.

In the process of developing our perceptions there is no age bar, no gender bar, no caste bar, no class bar, no race bar or no place bar; there is no need of officially recognized qualifications. It is possible for anyone, inside or outside the portals of academia – varsities, libraries, Internet… or any school of thought or dogma, or a workplace. It is beyond and above all of them on the necked ground of reality – down to earth. It is possible wherever we are, here and now. Such a perception is a many-faceted gem – holistic.

Otherwise a perception based on impressions remains shallow at a cursory level, and invariably produces knee jerk actions (as sometimes by the governments), or impulsive reactions (as in the riots and murders), which may be most hazardous in extreme cases.

The present pace of fast life in urban areas is also spreading / affecting rural regions around. Hence the development of perception through the critical use of all the senses becomes our critical need, just as food, shelter and clothing are.

There are many issues that crop up in urban and rural areas, now and then, that involve and affect us, directly or indirectly, by design and default, in our individual and collective living, where we have no say , or we don’t exercise our right to say. Aren’t we sufficiently informed in this age of Information and Communication Technology?

Yet, we naively or faithfully or in blind belief look up to governments, experts, specialists, planners, god persons… who work in their respective compartments with their departmental/ ideological/ dogmatic blinkers on. What could they offer us, with their poor perceptions of the ground reality – your reality and my reality and our collective reality? Their solutions are just knee jerk actions, which create more problems to create further solutions to create further problems to create…

Take any issue that are dear to our individual and collective living (I avoid to use the word – ‘life’ – that is much abused.) broadly: Work, Leisure, learning and Health, or in particular: children, gender, the aged, the displaced, hunger and sickness, terrorist acts and riots, inflation and safety to life, rampant corruption and extortion… There is a long, long list.

I, in my various avatars, as a politician, bureaucrat, law-maker, law-keeper, industrialist, industrialist, specialists in various fields, or a part of the rioting mob, may forget, while in the chair, that I am also a citizen of the civil society. Occasionally though I may shout popular slogans: ‘Bharat Mataki Jai’ – ‘ Hail Mother India’, ‘Hindustanki Kassam’ – ‘In the Name of Hindustan’ etc. Patriotic, that I may be, as if politics and profit and power matter not the people and the posterity.

Invariably though I, as a citizen, may push the issues aside, to enjoy this ‘one life’, by getting intoxicated in an IPL frenzy, canned music, or in weekend partying in food and booze, or in how to make (loose) money on the stock exchanges, or how to make a small car for my poor developing country, or get intoxicated in our glorious past, or in the speculation of a rosy future… hapless, helpless or apathetic.

Don’t we all belong to the same stock?

‘What are the different tastes?’ I ask my students (when teaching architecture, the discipline that mainly, and scandalously, concerns visual aesthetics, which has its roots in the feudal past).
‘Namkeen – Teekha – Khatta – Meetha (Salty – Pungent – Sour – Sweet)’ Prompt come the answers.
‘How do you judge my talks?’
‘Bitter.’ They add one more taste.
‘Do you know or remember the taste of Amala?’
‘Ah, yes. Yes. It’s astringent that you talk, not relay bitter. Sorry Sir.’

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Remigius de Souza
20-05-2008
Mumbai

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.