THE FUTILE PURSUIT OF ORIGINAL THOUGHT

Anoosha Iram Javed - Class XII

Oscar Wilde once famously said, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”. He was basically telling all of us, lowlifes, how we are inferior because our ideas aren’t “original”. This rhetoric of “original thought” being superior has been repeated over and over again, with phrases like “be unique, think for yourself, be creative, think out of the box” becoming a constant buzz in our ears. This rhetoric has penetrated deep and is omnipresent. As a result, for most of our lives, we are on a mission to produce thoughts that are just ours – pure and unadulterated. But the truth is, the originality of thought is just a mirage that remains ever so distant. An “original” thing is one “arising or proceeding independently of anything else”. This means that for something to be truly original, it cannot stem from the thoughts or ideas of anyone else. Considering this definition, can a thought ever be produced independent of any influence? Let alone produce original thoughts, even our way of thinking isn’t ours. We are social beings and our thoughts are products of our socialization. It is the society that provides us with the basis for our thoughts; it teaches us everything down to the very language we express our thoughts in but most importantly, it teaches us ‘how to think’. So, even if we do not directly adopt someone else’s, we are hardwired to produce thoughts based on our pre-existing knowledge and a thought process that has been “taught” to us. To whatever lengths we may go to separate our thoughts from those of “others”, our efforts will be futile because it is impossible to identify and get rid of every thought you have inherited and internalized. Thus, trying to produce “original thoughts” free from all adulteration is just the endless pursuit of a mirage of possible liberation from the bounds of societal con formity. Our thoughts are just mo saics that we constantly build throughout our livestheir pieces, inherited from generations of people, alive or dead and their trajectory determined by the pieces that are already a part of them. The originality of thought is, thus, a myth far from reality. So, do not go about wasting your days trying to turn this myth into reality. Instead, just accept your mosaic in all its borrowed glory and be its art ist with pride.

METONYMY FOR EMPATHY: LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

Ayesha Ahmed - Class XII

In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?

- Pablo Neruda

A fervent proponent of the link between cognition and language, linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf postulates, “different languages impose different conceptions of reality”. Language as a primeval medium of communication aids us to fathom and construct our reality conjointly. It helps articulate our experiences and organise our perceptions. Therefore language and the fluid multiplicity of consciousness are intertwined. It is exigent to come up with and express a particular thought or emotion when words that define it are completely missing from a language. If the world and our hearts lack empathy today, it might have something to accomplish with the consumption pattern of language and literature. Thus, the expansion of language is the expansion of thought and elevation of emotional vulnerability and intelligence, while limiting language is equivalent to limiting one’s capacity for the same. As illustrated in Orwell’s 1984, the destruction of language results in the destruction of social ties and cultural identity while also putting an end to imagination and individualism. With the rise in linguistic imperialism, linguistic stereotyping, lack of gender sensitivity in communication, and the massive use of political euphemisms in today’s age, indifference is skyrocketing. We live in a world that tends to be organised by binaries and where sameness is seen as safe. The world today is divided into various in-groups and out-groups that are confined to the echo chambers of thoughts and emotions of a similar kind, where the seeds of xenophobia, prejudice and stereotypes thrive in hostility. Digital media has reduced our attention span drastically, making us impatient and belligerent about the diversity of opinions. The algorithm works in a way where the kind of beliefs and opinions we hold are showcased to us in various ways to get maximum engagement on the platforms. Stepping outside dualisms is challenging as we are not exposed to conflicting opinions and ideologies that clash with our worldview and therefore, we see multiplicity as a threat. The irony is that these multi-media companies prefer employees that are multilingual and from different ethnic backgrounds to appear inclusive. The only weapon to fight indifference is empathy and narrative empathy — the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition— is the age-old solution for this desolation and the best enhancer of emotional intelligence. The reason why you need to read literary fiction is not just to increase linguistic flow, enhance vocabulary or gain knowledge about different subjects. You read and travel beyond yourself, dock self-centric narratives, delve into the unfamiliar, and pass through canopies, aisles, centuries of universes, ideas, thoughts, clouds, emotions, times, situations and landscapes in the shoes of characters that aren’t pertinent to your moral reasoning of right and wrong. You read, bond and the profound realization that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as yours takes over your being. The moment you read without bias, you unjudge someone.

Reading makes you learn acceptance, and question stereotypes and prejudice. Reading makes you perceive and listen; yes, listen — listen to the way a character’s microcosm interacts with the macrocosm of their universe, listen and understand the subtlety of their emotions and complexity of their outbursts, listen and laugh at their lamest jokes, listen to the intricate details of a character’s day with whom you may not necessarily resonate, listen to their insecurities and vulnerabilities that make you see them as a human so that you no longer see diversity as a threat. Art fails to serve and its meaning gets severed if the very fabric of its existence is torn by hate. Literature and language exist after all to augment empathy. Language shapes our worldview, it plays an important role here. Before everything, humans are emotional beings and language as a medium of communication holds empathy— the ability to understand and share the feelings of another— as central because it forms the basis of its origin. Apathy defies the very purpose of language and literature which form an intimate part of our lives. As Susana Arundhati Roy puts it, “language is the most private and yet the most public of things”. While some intricacies of what ought to be conveyed are lost in translation, translation of thought and emotion is the motive of language and when language distorts the intended meaning, it turns amiss. Writers spend a lifetime trying to close the gap between language and thought and what novels do is turn the tide and restore our individuality in such a way that we can reconnect with our fellow human beings. Language translates our thoughts into words and literature transforms us. We translate ourselves through literature. In this excerpt from one of her essays, Roy writes about the characters in her book, ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ and defines how perceptions, emotions, languages and life are a daedalian translation of each other, “For them, translation is not a high-end literary art performed by sophisticated polyglots. The translation is daily life, it is street activity, and it’s increasingly a necessary part of ordinary folks’ survival kit. And so, in this novel of many languages, it is not only the author, but the characters themselves who swim around in an ocean of exquisite imperfection, who constantly translate for and to each other, who constantly speak across languages, and who constantly realize that people who speak the same language are not necessarily the ones who understand each other best.”

The piercing aphorism from Neruda cited at the beginning of this essay, captures the universality of human suffering and how it is translated in language as a way of expression, which in turn celebrates the universality of the phenomenon of language. So Roy’s answer to Pablo Neruda’s question, “In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?” is,