I felt that in many ways the success of the World Economic Forum was also a consequence of the failure of traditional channels of formal consultation and discussion, which international organizations like the United Nations, and various regional and bilateral political alliances, were expected to facilitate. Instead, the informal systems created by the World Economic Forum had attracted influential stakeholders and ensured that serious issues could be dealt with head-on during spontaneous and uninhibited conversations in confidential surroundings. These conversations brought to the table many new ideas. More often than not, these ideas then self-organized themselves into the mental schematics of the participants, who would return from these meetings, go back to their local ecosystems, and apply what they had learnt there.
Such was the power of conversations that I had experienced and learnt to appreciate.
After leaving the World Economic Forum, when I moved to Delhi, I was therefore excited about the noisy enthusiasm to express views and opinions here. One of the first things that I noticed was that everyone I met in Delhi had something to say about the state of affairs in the country, their own lives . . . and even my life. The people here, both rich and poor, laughed unrestrainedly. They were quick to fight as well, and brawls were not uncommon. Tears of joy and sorrow fell easily. People were not shy about calling out to each other loudly in public, neither were they embarrassed if their child bawled and screamed in public spaces.
Travelling in and out of Delhi, it also seemed to me that India’s diversity needed no eyes. Climb a terrace in any neighbourhood, and you hear a unique medley of sounds, each exposing the locality’s distinctive features. We are presented with a mix of dialects, languages, religious calls, cowbells and factory sirens which together tell us the state of affairs in the area. The music—impromptu creations, improvisations on the spot, not sets of Western-style rigid symphonies —can reveal the heritage of the land. The voices of the people, their different intonations, and what they laugh about, offer a glimpse of the region’s character.
India is a unique case in auditory prowess. At 1.3 billion,1 there are so many of us that our voices cross over each other’s. Yet, we love to talk, argue, express our opinions, anger and joy in varying degrees across regions. We are not an intrinsically mellow society, nor disciplined and well-behaved in matters of expression. There is no other country in the world that has twenty-two constitutionally recognized languages! Besides, Census 2011 counted 122 major languages spoken in the country. Many of these belong to different language families—Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai and others—each distinct in its sound. We are the chaos.
We thrive on this multiplicity of voices. Our celebrations are joyous and cacophonic. Even in some of our most popular religions, such as Hinduism, Sikhism and the Sufi strand within Islam,2 the celebration of God is noisy. Our entertainment—be it traditional forms from the Natya Shastra and puppetry or contemporary Bollywood—is designed to induce a grand stimulation of several senses at once. We often make the effort to verbally describe what we want others to believe we are—we are typically not ones to reveal ourselves slowly. Our voices are matched with sounds symbolic of our emotions, which we physically and deliberately create with material objects. We express our faith with the strength we invest in ringing temple bells, while on the roads, the amount and type of our frustration are duly conveyed in the manner and frequency of our car horns. The sounds of India are just as revealing of us as our words. So the ability to meditate—even though very much part of our heritage—is today considered awe-inspiring and viewed as an exceptional activity meant for spiritual people, because living amidst noise is accepted as the comfort zone.
Even in the past, Eastern philosophies have embraced chaos—or abstraction, diversity, illusion, noise, unpredictability, even conflict—in the environment better than the ancient Greek philosophies.3 Let us take a few examples.
First, the Hindu concept of maya: Hindu philosophies from the Rig Veda, dating back to around 1500 BC—therefore being the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language—believe the world to be an illusion, or maya. Maya means magic in Sanskrit—that the world does not exist and yet does, that reality is amoebic and ever-shifting according to context. The Rig Veda does not describe maya as good or always bad, but recommends technique and means to separate what can be perceived from that which cannot be perceived. It tells us that there will always be illusion and abstraction around us, not everything will be laid out in black and white for us to perceive immaculately, and that instead of being afraid of illusion, we must learn how to deal with it. Maya does not denigrate chaos and illusion, or try to bring order.
Another example is yoga, which helps develop our physical, mental and spiritual capabilities so that we can cope with the abstraction surrounding us. The origin of yoga can be traced back to the pre-Vedic age. It was originally a meditative means of raising and expanding the consciousness from one’s self to being coextensive with everyone and everything around us. It has also been discussed in Vedic literature, the Mahabharata, the Prasamaratiprakarana of the Jains, and the Buddhist Nikaya texts. It was suggested as a path to enlightened consciousness that enabled one to comprehend the impermanent, illusive and delusive, and separate them from the reality that is true and transcendent. Yoga is a way to be grounded despite the chaos in our external surroundings or in the inner self.
The Rig Veda, in its samgachchhadhvam and saṃvadadhvam verses, calls for people to come together and exchange their views and
