‘Are we living in a maze?’ - We have missed stopping at a point where our basic comforts and needs didn’t require more comfort and needs, perhaps.

On the train journey, when I pass through the dense forest and the serene village hamlets, I feel elated seeing those picturesque sceneries from my fast-moving train window.

But, when I visit those forests and the villages and meet the natives there, I learn that what I see through my train window is an illusion.

Natives of many of those villages and the forests have lost their homes and farmland or they have been displaced permanently from their home where they were living for centuries. Many of the wage labours you see who work in your cities are the natives of these villages and the forests.

Some people say if we would be concerned about every person then our development model will fail. Displacements of the natives are minuscule seeing the larger population of cities get the benefit from the development projects.

They ask, ‘Don’t you enjoy the comfort of a train journey or electricity or communication?’

Some people say, ‘These natives get good compensation anyway’.

I enquired further into it. I learn many villagers or the natives who were living in these villages and the forest for centuries didn’t have the papers of their land to be compensated or they were compensated only for their small piece of land, not the entire.

Then I visited the forests and the villages which have been deforested and displaced due to coal mining.

People say ‘Coal gives us electricity; the comfort of AC, electricity moves your train etc’.

I ask myself ‘Was it important or necessary for me to have electricity or such a mode of transport? Who created these needs? Is it the innovative or always seeker mind of humans?’

What if I always remain in my village or the forest? If I’ve too much curiosity to travel I may travel through to the other villages or cities or islands by walk.

Our inventions have brought us so far in the quest for comfort and security, right? Or some people had invented technologies just for the sake of their curiosity?

Our curiosity, insecurity, quest for comfort, ego and then the industrial revolution and globalization brought us so far from where we can’t turn back to a state where we can’t choose to be stopped anymore. The need for our basic comfort in life is unending now.

Then some people say our inventions have made our communications easy with mobile, computer etc.

Did we need it at all?

What if we lived in close-knit communities and explored our inner self to live a peaceful and equanimous way of life instead of conquering other tribes, communities, cities and countries? All of this wouldn’t need a modern mode of communication.

Then someone says ‘Our inventions in the medical science relieved us from the pain and early death’.

It is true but what if our lives weren’t as precious as we have made or perceived now?

Isn’t that precious life made us more miserable? To fulfil the needs of this precious life made us think that we can conquest everything.

I met some villagers, and they said ‘Earlier life was tough physically but now it is mentally. We continuously live in debt which is too taxing.

On the other side if we introspect we may realize we are falling into the treacherous currents. We think we have the solution for everything but our one solution asks for more solutions. It’s never stopping.

Can’t we just live??

Just living may be joyful but for that, we have to live not quest.

We are continuously in conflict with ourselves and our development model. We all are in the maze desperately striving hard to come out from it and searching for an absolute space of secure life but can we ever achieve it? Our development model and capitalism show us such illusory dreams and thrive on them.

We are displacing those who are living in the forest, mountains and nearby water bodies. They migrate to cities in search of work.

We are striving hard to make ends meet and to guard our children and family but from whom?

Mentally, we have become more precarious than ever, perhaps. We have missed stopping at a point where our basic comforts and needs didn’t require more comfort and needs.?

We are living in a maze.