Few weeks back during the dinner table, my kid asked a very pertinent question. "Appa, you started working on the ICE engines when I was in Kindergarten. Then you moved to Telematics & Connected cars. Today you are working in EV. Is there an end to this journey?" As any parent, I wanted to answer this as "development is a journey to an unknown destination". Then I took a step back and wanted to understand myself what is development? I went back a little and saw that the Industrial revolution in Britan killed the Chennapatna Toys in South Inda. Many of the policy makers then said it was an inevitable trade-off for development. I wasn't convinced and then went a little back in time, 60 million years back. We were just apes jumping from one branch to another. Then without warning one day we suddenly decided to take to the grounds. We then started to walk uprightly. It was development but in that due course we lost some of our monkey abilities. The trade-off exisited then too. Move forward a little in time, we found the wheel - slowly transportation wanted only one quality to improve "SPEED". We went from walking to chariots to steam engine. The journey did not stop there, from steam engine to supersonic flights to a space shuttle.
Jumping to another domain - communication. From Kalidasa's Meghadhootham to sending messages via pigeons to inland letter to telegram to 56K copper line modem to WLL to Fiber optics. Does it stop somewhere? What has this connected development done, nothing but loss of privacy and individual hobbies. To calm my mind, I turned towards our scriptures. What I found was the same trend existed there too. The thunderbolt or Vajrayudam of Indra is built from the bones of Dadichi Rishi who sacrificed them. When the Pandavas had to build Indraprastha, the entire Khandava forest needed to be annihilated. Further investigation into Gita I found that - Nature has a constant struggle between development and extinction. The bottom line is that one needs to understand and acknowledge that in this nature, one is both the eater and the eaten. It is a fundamental condition which cannot be avoided. After all this I asked my kid back "Do you think that if Oppenheimer was blocked from discovering his idea of a nuclear device would the world be safe? No another Weiner Shuterberz would have found it." "So, what is the end then Appa?" "The end is in self-realisation - destruction and construction always go in parallel but the entirety of this world is conserved."
1 Comment
Arvind Seshadri
7/6/2023 12:54:45
Good One Vasu... Enjoyed reading it.
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AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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