I attended a book club in Delhi which provided a breath of air amid this experiential economy’s often bigoted Delhi literary community. Once seated, the host specified that we are not there to foster yet another artificial “safe space”, the kind that has intimidated people out of engaging with literature just as much as the faceted standards imposed by academia. This is a bigger issue I look forward to talk of soon, but right now my thoughts are captured by the lively discussion on the book ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Milan Kundera on weight and weightlessness of freedom.
This was the first of the five sessions dedicated to dissecting this book, so we did not engage in a lot of literary thought, but our first impressions of the idea the book focuses on. The question which kept making the rounds was: what is freedom? Is it freedom of choice or freedom from choice? I believe there cannot be a one-definition-fits-all, universal answer. Well, if there is, we certainly can’t arrive at it in the first meeting.
I think a major problem is that the world runs on binary. You either choose a partner for life or live feeling hollow, with lovers across states and continents. You either choose a cold land to settle or a warm one, perhaps altering your upcoming generations’ endurance of the other. You are either a poet or a physicist. Every decision you make seems so permanent because we are so used to being defined by hollow words; words whose definitions are too narrow to contain a human being.
For now, I believe freedom lies in the fluidity of moving between the freedom to choose and the freedom from choice, in believing each choice I make does not have to be my identity.
I might change my stance; for now, I am free to believe and trust my instincts.
Bought the softest silk shrug from a quaint shop in McLeodganj, run by a wonderful Tibetan lady selling authentic Tibetan artefacts.
AVNI JAIN 