If we want to live a happy life, we must change our life-style. I know it well that I’m writing in vain as there’s no authority in this world to compel us to live in an alternative world. But first we must know how we are living and what for. Actually there there is no ‘what for’ in our life because we do not care to know what this life has been created for. So let us concentrate on our living system. But it will be convenient for me to discuss my point if I compare our life with that of our life, say, four hundred years ago.
At that time we did not have craze for cars, cell-phones, dinner or lunch in five-star hotels, no airplane to carry us in any place of this world in miraculously little time. There are so many comforts and conveniences now which we could not think of at that time.
But at the same time we have lost some-if not many, vitally valuable things. The most important of them are pure air, vast soothing nature, less populous places and noiseless world. Cities were always noisy and populous in comparison with villages, but not to that horrible extent as we experience in New York or Tokyo and in many other places of our world.
But we had not antibiotics, steroids, telephones and swift conveyances. These things we can not do away with in exchange of calm world and pure air. So let the the fruits of science, that are life saving, may be separated out as an indispensible modernity.
But why there are so much noises and pollutions in this world? It’s because of population explosion. The increase in population has affected everything in this world and life. We need more land to live, more food to eat and more of everything than that we needed four hundred years ago. But this situation with more population and the more of everyday needs has consequently created the needs and necessities of more other things which we did not have, require or ever dreamt of many years ago.
We did not have cell-phones, colas, videos, air conditioners, ATM or Credit cards, five star hotels, airplanes and hundreds of things and facilities-which it is difficult to write with the help of memory. The world has not only bulged with plenty but it has been metamorphosed into another world. It is another world-not because of more and many but because of more different needs and demands created by mores themselves. We now require a factory of small cars in West Bengal because it will save the unemployment problem to some extent-as per the Chief Minister. We have to turn agricultural land for industry. We require more fertilizers as we have to grow more crops in less land to feed more people. China needs to oust all the old people from Beijing for her requirement of space as felt needed for Olympic-2008. We require more diesel and petrol for increasing numbers of vehicles everyday. And so George Bush required invading Iraq. This is to cite a few examples.
So, it is like cell-divisions. The more require more to be sustained.
But now this abnormally growing of mores like the abnormally growing cells makes life not so much happy as it should be with more. We have cleaned Germany and England of tuberculosis bacteria. But we have attracted AIDS. There was a phenomenal increase in diabetic patients in the world. We have to periodically check our cholesterol and triglyceride level as we are afraid of heart attacks-that are frequent in the developed countries. We have disturbed ecological balances and push thousands of people to suffer from death and diseases. The wild life now lives in showcases. Hundreds of people die or become crippled everyday in road or sky accidents. As there are more of everything, –so more appear there to snatch a portion as their shares. One is inclined to have more boyfriends and girlfriends and so stand the risk of being unfortunate getting a happy conjugal life. The cell- phones help us to contact persons in any place of this world instantaneously. These instantaneous connections help also the criminals to commit crimes successfully.
So what is the way out? I think we must detect the root of this cancerous life first. It is not difficult to detect but it will be difficult to accept. We must restrict our physical demands and comforts to the minimum. For this we must be aware of exactly what is more or excess. And we must check the population growth.
There is no room for excess in this world.
