THE REAL AND THE VIRTUAL

THE REAL AND THE VIRTUAL

Khaliqur Rahman

I am now an old kid of 70. And, I love kidding, seriously. I go kidding around, seriously, on twitter, on the facebook, in the www.englishclub.com, on www.speakingtree.in, on www.audioboo.com, on the LEARN ENGLISH | BRITISH COUNCIL|BBC facebook page, on www.linkedin.com, on my own www. khaliquesblog.blogspot.com, on yahoo mail, on gmail, on rediffmail and many other places in the virtual world.

But what is real and what is virtual? Very early in my childhood, when they started disciplining me in my religion, that is Islam, they told me that the only REAL is GOD. The rest is virtual. Later, I learnt that all religions say the same thing about GOD and the world.

At school, they taught me Physics. I learnt about mirrors, the plain, the concave and the convex mirrors. If I remember right, they told me all about real image and the virtual image. It was really wonderful for me as a child to understand that in front of a plain mirror I was REAL but not so before GOD!

Disciplined and graduated thus in Science, I became a student of Arts, to be precise, of English Literature. In the classes, I was told that Literature is a mirror of Life but it imitates life not as it is but as it should be. Literature, thus, is an imitation of an imitation, twice removed from reality. Then, the Bible said and Milton reiterated: God created Man in his own image. Physics lessons taught me that images can be real and virtual. My Ego just could not swallow all of this at the same time!

I am 70 now. That is a reality. I weigh 65 kg is a reality. I am all of five feet seven and half inches tall is a reality. I am a kid, 70 year old kid, is half real half unreal, perhaps figurative, perhaps because the bard talked of the second childhood.

With these realities that define and identify my being at the present juncture of my life, I have no quarrels. In fact, I am at perfect peace with my image in the mirror, I mean my plain mirror.

But I am scared of the mirrors all around. Some mirrors in these mirror houses show me bigger than I really am. I don’t like it. Most others show me much smaller than I really am. I hate it. I, therefore, chose to remain surrounded, if at all, by plain mirrors. I confine myself to my sweet little home and avoid public places and public functions that normally have convex mirrors all around you.

But the other day, I was unusually enthusiastic, to go to Raj Bhavan, of course, on an invitation, because one of my very senior friends, who I have always found, in real life, much taller than I actually am, was going to be recognized, in a way, for his illustrious 60 years in journalism. His Excellency, the Governor, was going to launch his book published by KBT University of Journalism.

I reached RB 20 minutes before the scheduled programme and 5 minutes before the recommended reporting time. As I made my nervous entry, after being thoroughly frisked and scanned, into the grandest premise of the State, I felt extremely diminished. I spent another virtual, and perhaps real, torrid time, of three quarters of an hour, before His Excellency appeared and we all stood up. I thought I stood 5cms7.5mms instead of 5’7.5’’!

Back home, my wife wore a proud look. What is real? And, what is virtual?

CONCEPT AND REALITY

CONCEPT  AND  REALITY

Khaliqur Rahman

We have to live with concepts and we have to live in realities. Some concepts are obligatory owing to our birth and certain others are a matter of choice. The concept of one’s religion is obligatory. The concept of culture can be both obligatory and socially optional. It is possible for a Muslim, born in India, to grow in Indian culture and go to Britain and adopt some features of British culture also.

If the main objective of religion is to turn a follower into a good human being, then this person is the product of a certain religion and culture or cultures. The end product is thus the realization, in other words, a reality that has evolved itself out of certain concept or concepts.

A female conceives, gestates and delivers. A child born, male or female, is a reality. Between conception and reality is gestation which is a process.

Let me take another example from language and linguistics. A phoneme of a language is defined as the smallest unit of distinctive and meaningful speech sound. It is also identified as a bundle of phonetic features. A phoneme of a language is also looked at as a concept, realization of which is a phone. Therefore, phoneme is a concept and phone (speech sound), a reality. And, we’ve seen, between concept and reality is process.

Now let’s try to look at the in-between process closely and see how the phoneme /p/ is realised in English. In the word PAPER /p/ is realised as p^haper. This means that in English one concept /p/ has two realities: |p^h| and |p|.

In Hindi, however, |p^h| and |p| are two different phonemes (concepts) because they are meaningfully distinctive: p^hal means one thing and pal another.

In other words, in English, one concept has two realities but these two realities are two concepts in Hindi. The process between concept and reality is the same but perceptions are different.

Now we have one more word – perception – along with other words, concept, process and reality.

Let’s look at two more words: faith and belief. One has faith in God. We know, the existence of God cannot and need not be proved. What is belief? If seeing is believing, we can say it is, broadly speaking, verifiable. We say believers of Islam because you can see the believers. But can you measure their levels of belief? Yes, you can; and, no, you can’t. The shariat wallahs will say: yes. The haqueeqat wallahs may say yes or no or even both in respect of a believer in question. This will take the discussion into empiricism vs rationalism argument.

All arguments in modern times are, in fact, a battle between verifiable evidence, that is empiricism and rationalisable evidence, which is rationalism.

This eventually leads us to form and substance and the labels they carry. Very recently, we’ve started discussing democracy, parliament and members of parliament. The argumentative Indians, the intellectuals (including out-ellectuals) in the civil (including un-civil) societies are trying their best to weave a web like venomous spiders or construct, if only they can, a quagmire like crafty architects, so that in one’s life-time there is no way out.

Let’s come back to form and substance and let’s assume I represent all the Members of Parliament who in turn represent the People of India. Assume I take a bottle of champagne and distribute champagne amongst the people till the bottle is half. Then, I fill it with shampoo and distribute the contents till it is empty. Then, I go on filling it with shampoo and distributing. Those who got their share the first time from the first half of the bottle are elated; from the second half, confused. In the last 65 years People have taken shampoo for champagne because they had tasted neither champagne nor shampoo before.

Replace the bottle of champagne by Parliament, champagne by democracy, I by MPs and start arguing with the help of the big words I’ve talked about.

That is what is going on!