Boxing the ego

 Box your own as well as other’s egos because it’s the same entity. And defend the ‘faith’ because it again is the same. Ego: one common darkness. Faith: one common light. Strictly prescribed as per the guru-shishya parampara.

Our gurus at the village school tweaked our ears, pulled hair, smartly took us to the cane, made us murgas, shouted, fretted and fumed. They broke our budding egos just like their own had been broken by their gurus and so on and so forth. Well that was past. And now when I come across one of those gurus, coming slowly bent with old age, my only impulse is to touch his feet and give him a gentle hug. Because all that was to make us, even though it meant breaking some canes in the process.

It’s not that I’m a promoter of fist-work by the gurus. All I want to say is that it was a far tolerant world, a simpler world where people carried their heads a bit lighter, where the students were forgiving enough to forget the beatings and get a clue to the harsh realities of life that kick at us, a world when the parents didn’t explode with rage when they saw their kid’s cheek redder and understood that making of something is always a bit painful.

All in all, it was a gentler world even with the gurus’ beatings, a world having human pliability, a melting fluidity, not like the present time’s rigid temperaments and rude bloom. Despite all the beatings and shouts, the school still carried subtle shades of some courteous pageantry. I can only say that dry branches just fretfully shake to the wind’s playful shove. Leafy green branches gyrate and sway even to the pulls of stormy winds. The juice of life. It’s playful, mischievous, swaying.