Originally written in Feb 2002 for Infosys Bulletin Board
I remember a story by Dr. Christian Barnard in my school textbook called "In celebration of being alive". It was a CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education, the education body in India) book, so I am sure a lot of Indians amongst you would have read it. It is about Dr. Barnard visiting a children's hospital where lot of kids having terminal diseases are admitted and he being surprised by the way those kids find ways of enjoying life, amidst all the pain and sufferings. It was a beautiful story, for sure, but what struck me most was the title of the story, "In celebration of being alive".
It's actually a simple fact of life. We, as a species, want to live. And in wanting to live, we want to forget our problems and enjoy life as much as we can.
Most of us are aware of all the pain and sufferings around us, at least to some degree. The point is, what do we choose to do with it? Do we leave our home, like Siddharth did, leaving Vasundhara and Rahul behind, to become Buddha? Or do all of us become Medha Patkar, taking up one side of an issue, the side which we believe will lessen the sufferings around us, and go and fight everybody on earth? Well, these are great people, I know, but the whole humanity is not great. I am not even sure if it is a good idea for everyone to become great. But the point is, the natural reaction of people against pain, against sufferings is to shy away from it.
We, the so-called common mass, are very happy to see social workers work for upliftment of the society, we are ready to appreciate them and their work with all our heart. We are very proud of those soldiers who are protecting us from the aggressive tendencies of our neighbors, we are ready to sing patriotic songs and celebrate their victories and mourn their losses. But we, in all honesty, want to do all this appreciation from a distance. Because we realize it, consciously or unconsciously, that what these people are dealing with are not the "celebration of life" part of the scheme of things, so we instinctively shy away from these.
We am told, "You are indifferent to soldiers dying in Kargil while you are supporting their favorite cricketers". We agree. We would not remember today name of five soldiers who dies in the Kargil war, but we do remember the names of players in the Indian cricket team and the names of actors in that wonderful movie we saw a week ago. Yes. Are we supposed to feel ashamed about it? OK, we are ashamed at our callous attitude. Thanks for giving us the option of feeling guilty about this and getting on with our lives.
We enjoy cricket because it is trivial in the larger scheme of things. We watch movies because it is trivial, significance-less thing to do. Who do we respect more, a soldier in Kargil or Sachin Tendulkar - from the bottom of our hearts, most of us respect that soldier any day. We will thank him for the sacrifice he is making for us. At the same time, who do we think about more, discuss more with our colleagues - very honestly, Sachin Tendulkar. Because Sachin helps us make our moments light, he helps us take ourselves out of the drudgeries of live, he helps us give our lives those trivial, meaningless moments.
Come to think of it, Sachin helps us make out lives trivial. Most of us, in spite of all out ambitions and our grand plans, are small people. We just want to get through with this life enjoying it as much as possible. When told on our face that we are insensitive, we feel guilty. But in all honesty, whether we realize it consciously or not, we believe that life is more about calling strangers on the road, "Kaise ho Murari Laal?" (How are you, my friend?) than thinking about our own or somebody else's lympho-sarcoma of the Intestine (That's from the Bollywood movie Anand).
So closing down in celebration of triviality.....
No comments:
Post a Comment