The survivor November 18, 2005

We live in difficult times. As people who are born of tradition, we are more comfortable when someone is always there to show us the path. It makes us comfortable because there is the power of wisdom and sage counsel. Sometimes, it also deflects our burden of responsibility to make our own decisions. Whatever the reason, we learn to look up to people. We look up to parents, we look up to teachers at school, the boss at work, role models in the society, we look up to the government itself and, finally, to people who are intermediaries between us and God. Sometimes, some of them fail us. We have learnt to take that in our stride. What makes ours a particularly difficult time is that we are seeing many of them failing at the same time.Government after government has shown its soft underbelly from personal conduct of people in power to its inability to protect the innocent citizen in times of distress. A serving president of the US misused the Oval Office, lied under oath and was allowed to stay in office. That became a lesser issue and we all moved on from it the day 9/11 happened. The world’s most powerful government stood helpless while the lives of ordinary people were buried under crumbling concrete.So the next time another terrorist group bombs a crowded railway platform, will you still believe that there is a government that it can protect you? Chances are, if someone really wants to get you, he will. GoogleEarth will show where you are right this moment even as the stewardess on a plane says, “Aerial photography is not permitted as per government regulations.’’ So, why on earth should I pay my taxes honestly to a government that cannot stand by me when I need it most? We want to seek solace from our religious faith. We want to be healed by the keepers of the faith the Father, the Imam, the Guru. There, we hear about the stories of child molestation in the Roman Catholic Church to stories of greed and murder in the shadow of a Shankaracharya.Not enough. Sometimes, a role model in the family, often an admired parent, crosses marital lines, or is discovered by a child to be taking bribes, or has became an alcoholic, or has changed beyond recognition after raising you on a staple diet of idealism. It leaves us at crossroads. Some of us feel devastated. Some take it as the signal and the justification to match the conduct or the failing."If the whole world is this way, why not I?'' Sometimes, we are fortunate enough to be able to make sense of what is going on to make our own choices. Each one of us is an intelligent, independent being. What the environment around us does is mostly beyond our control. What we decide to deduce and act upon is a function of the choices we make. When I do not exercise that choice, I abandon my right to assert myself. Let me paint you two scenarios. Both real.One of the nicest persons I have known in my professional life was sexually abused by a parent. It is probably the greatest humiliation one can carry on one’s shoulders through life. Yet, that abused individual is a great co-worker, a very giving spouse and a loving parent in real life. The past and the present may be overwhelmingly difficult; the future is what that individual has chosen to be all about.In New Delhi, a serving General has been asked to leave after selling regulation alcohol in the black market. I am sure he did not really need that extra money. Basic needs could not have driven him to do such things. In any case, his basic needs cannot have been greater than that of the 19-year-old boy from the heartland who stands in Siachen snow for months on end, under the shadow of a glacier, gun in hand and only fire in his belly. What if that soldier decided to take a nap? After all, if the General can be a bootlegger, what is wrong with a short nap in the line of control?The choices made by a sexually abused co-worker and the one sentinel in the line of fire makes our world go around. The Upanishad says: “You are what your deep driving desire is As is your desire, so is your will As is your will, so is your act As is your act, so is your Destiny.’’ In the turbulent world around us when role models fail, we have to make our own choices. When we do so, we realise it is not as difficult as we sometimes think it to be. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html