Trimming the Hedge to Maintain the Power Center

 

Political extremists (both left and right) and religious fundamentalists try to change the masses for the worse. They play cards to cut down the people to a fraction of their potential and you have nice governable puny-heads. They serve meow meow for instant gratification. Hate, phobias, pseudo-greatness, anger and jealousy are very convenient tools to rob someone of sanity and get cast as a hallucinated pawn in the power game.

The power hungry—individuals, groups, political parties, governments and institutions—try to disempower the masses. It cannot be otherwise. The power pyramid has few strong characters at the apex and weak masses at the base. It can never be a square, having people of the same realized potential from top to the bottom. Those ambitious for power can never think of empowering the masses. In that case the pyramid loses its standing.

With pseudoism and populist rhetoric, they rob the masses of the balance of their judgment. Hate does it. It tilts you off the balance. You fall prey to a peculiar weakness. You become lesser of a human being. The power monger’s ambition draws on the peoples’ weakness of judgment. They try their best to keep the people nearsighted to tame them in a narrow sphere, with unrealized potential, from where the launch-pad of wisdom is too far. The biggest loss is when people tend to lose faith in love, peace and harmony as the mass-managed dark cloud of hate, anger and distrust builds up.

It draws votes for the power hungry. In the day to day life, however, it is paid in terms of racial attacks in America, brutal killings by Islamic extremists, attacks on Africans in India, and scores of incidences when people pick up hate and run after each other.

Quite ironically, power politics is just the butter churned out of the milk of social disharmony.

Corridors of Organized Hate where Love Suffers

 

Jimi Hendrix  says: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”

Well, it may appear too much to ask for. But aren’t the evil effects of love of power too evident to at least reconsider Jimi’s advice? More so because the corridors of power almost unerringly become the corridors of hate. The urge for power bears a directly proportional relation with breeding hate. Sadly, when hate becomes the mantra at the top, it is hardly possible to stop its cascade effect from creeping into the normal functioning of day to day life of the citizenry.

Deepak Chopra nails it completely: “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.”

Absolutely correct! Spiritually suffused leadership becomes a tool to work in the garden full of flowers for a fragrant humanity instead of stinking muck.

Cal Thomas maintains: “One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective, election and power are.”

Your humble brother thinks that is where the problem starts. By being power-centric you surrender a large portion of your compassionate self to feed the rapacious bug of ambition. The bigger problem is that you are able to let loose the waves of hate because you are in a position to influence.

Friedrich Nietzsche captures the grey shades of reality when he says: “All things are subject to interpretation and whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

So brothers and sisters, the functionaries of power end up suffering from a natural helplessness to fall in the trap of lies, conceit, falsification and what not.

Your humble brother is not inimically ill-willed against the agents of power-seeking brigade. You know there is a very thin line between one’s skill set and its honestly hardworked rewards on the one hand and the endeavor to use the same set of skills by using the disability and ignorance of the fellow human beings. The latter sadly turns an ambition into a profession called politics, which entitles the power hungry to climb the ladder for more and more glories. It’s never enough in the palace of power and politics. The misdirected self is ever dying to control the destinies of millions.

The leadership is churned out from a sleazy concoction of mudslinging, aspersion and whole lot of bull-shit. They have huffing and burning souls behind the smiling expression. It carries its momentum to the larger set of policies because more than what you are doing to make, you are focusing on breaking the opposition. You may think that by such broad generalization I am almost leaving the solution impossible. No. My only point of raising the issue of this typical political malady is to highlight the importance of more compassionate beings in leadership positions.

All we see in political systems world over is literally war-mongering among hateful brigades. Does violence and hate come so naturally to us? No, it doesn’t. It’s simply darkness in the absence of the lamp of love and compassion, which is facing furious winds as we raise storms with our stampede. In any case, I reserve my right to call a spade a spade and nurture my utopian dreams of an all-loving system because that is what we are destined for. So kindly allow me to crib over the spools of darkness formed due to the absence of the light of love!

Winning more than the Trophy

 

The Cricket world cup of 2019 will be known for many reasons that go beyond the prowess on the field. Real victories jump over the trophy, and there are many, just that one should have a humane heart to feel. My only congratulatory note to England cannot come out without this refrain: “How does it feel to be crowned champion when you actually know you haven't won?”

Well, even though New Zealand destroyed Indian march to the trophy, and thus earning the ire of millions of cricket-crazy fans, most of us supported New Zealand. The reason is simple: supporting the underdog comes instinctively to we humans. One more proof of our essentially loving self! Isn't it?

Destiny, silly cricketing rules and some umpiring goof-ups robbed New Zealand of a well deserved win. However, the heart’s domain is endless and here comes my verdict about the game: England wins trophy; New Zealand—more importantly—wins hearts!

Now the biggest take-away from the tournament! You need not be a rampaging bull, huffing and puffing with arrogance, to win at any cost. Nice guys can also win. The Kiwis played like gentleman. No hyperboles. Such composure is possible only if you take yourself to be a human first and a sports star later. They won the semifinals against one of the best teams in the world and went for a peaceful celebration with the people who matter to them. They are a product of a system that does not promote stardom over the basics of being good sportsperson. I salute their graceful walks and humble gestures as they moved back to the pavilion as the finalists. Imagine the rowdy show in case some other team had won the match!

Kane Williamson looks like a saint on hiatus from the hills, who has taken to sports for some time for the reasons best known to him only. A pleasant diversion, possibly. Whatever the reasons, it's but a treat to come across such graceful persona among hordes of mean machines designed to win at all costs. Grace in both winning and losing is what defines the basic framework of being a good sportsman, or being a good human, more importantly.

The New Zealand skipper is a saintly cricketer whose balanced demeanor teaches more than his terrific exploits both as a leader and player. His calm, bearded muse underplays the grit and dedication he brings in his boys. Winning is holistic. Apart from the trophy, we cannot ignore such gentlemanly gems. They are winsome trophies in their own regard. To me victory doesn't stop abruptly at the trophy. It's a big zone of marvelous takeaways, one such is Kane Williamson and his behavior on and off the field.

After the tragedy in the final, which will be retold time and again till cricketing eternity, the Kiwi skipper didn't try to garner laurels as a martyr, even though he had every right and most of us would have taken his bitter outpours with big bear-hugs of sympathy. The pinching tragedy could not produce even a single phrase of acrimony in him. Imagine how Indians, including our cricketing stars, would have reacted in a similar situation.

Dear Kane, you are the biggest star to all those whose eyes just don't look at the trophy only. Believe me, there are millions of such eyes that appreciate gentlemanly combat within the boundaries of grace and dignity. Better luck next time—if people can't still forget about the trophy. However, I am sure you are already past the temporary storm and walking on some lonely beach carrying that stoic, meditative muse.

So guys, Kane shows it's possible to win without flashy temper, angry tattoos, throwing abuses at the opponent even after hitting century and taking wickets, proud prowls like an extra terrestrial super-species, glitz, glamour, bla bla bla. His delicate smile pacifies many a storm.

Some ladoos for our team’s effort also. Don’t hate our cricketing team. If they go off the line sometimes, we should never forget that they are the product of the social system created by us. We make them starry-eyed Gods. So, of course, the poor guys slip sometimes, like the idiotic proclamations of womanizing exploits by two of them on a silly show hosted by a terribly chatty person.

Most importantly, give them the credit they deserve. Topping the table in a round robin league format, where each team plays against the rest of the participants, proves the meticulous level of performance. The knockout stage is basically dicey. You get some bad 45 minutes on the field and you are out. It doesn't tell anything about the team's ability. Just that New Zealand clicked at the right time. It was a great game of cricket. Well done India and congrats New Zealand! Oh, yea, well done England also!

Mining Gold from the Well-beaten Dust

 

Like he is looking for pomegranate seeds in a dung cake, he looks deep into the well of nostalgic memories. “What does August 15 mean to us? It only means that rains are almost over. A mark of change of seasons. Similarly, January 26 means the end of the real cold,” he gives his innocent, but immensely practical, interpretation of the Independence Day and the Republic Day.

And the anecdotes follow. His dim eyes are looking back to enliven some memories buried deep in the layers of his brain. Well, don’t most of the citizens of India feel that way, I wonder.

Nobody grew vegetables as a cash crop during those days. It was called dum kheti, named so after a caste legendarily popular for their leisure ways, who cringed away from physical labor and survived on singing folk ditties and smashing drums, and that too on rare occasions like when a son was born. In 1952, it was the old man’s family that sowed peas, and not just sowed the seeds but chartered a new path also.

They had a huge dung disposal pit, where they would dump basketfuls of dung taken out in the morning, as the buffaloes, bulls and cows defecated freely through the night, a faculty with the domesticated cattle in that they can continue eating through the night, letting out the waste from behind. And this faculty served as a manure factory during those simple times.

In the dung pit, they would pour bucketfuls of cattle urine. Over months and years, it turned into most fertile manure. There was hardly any artificial fertilizer during those days. As the pioneers of a new trend, they sowed peas. And not only introduced a new vegetable, they sowed the prospects of a new farming way.

“The pods grew this long!” he is indicating from the top of his middle finger to the lower half of the palm. It even comes as some crude gesture. Some peasants laugh. Even he himself gets conscious and makes it more polished. “The pods had 22 grains, can you believe it? I myself counted these! In fact, I learnt counting with those pod grains.”

“Sugarcane was as thick as this much,” he has sprawled his fingers and thumb in opposite directions to accommodate maximum girth. “And what did you need to grow the sweetest wonder? It was just human effort, manure from the dung pit, and sprinkling alkaline soil from the waste land outside the village. You just chew one sugarcane stick, drink water on the village well, take a bath in its cool water, and mind you, you had to run to your house to avoid dying of hunger.”        

He is then telling about the legendary wells in the farms. Their water was so sweet that you never missed sugar during those days. Then he is telling how everybody was so healthy, so healthy in fact, the healthiest of today would still fall short of the weakest of those times. He is telling of legendary strong bulls that pulled carts, which even a tractor would struggle with. He tells of buffaloes whose bursting udders would compete with a whole dairy’s output. He tells of mighty farmers who could pull a whole cartload by themselves, in case the bull went on its knees, and still pat the animal on its back as if it was their son who needed some help.

It seems the best is long past. Gone with the wind. Well, does it mean that we are on the path of regression? If not, why would every old man in each age die with such sweet, pining nostalgia?

The Times when almost everything was Pardoned

 

Old times had their own sweet sour charms. All it proves is that the world wasn’t too serious. Seriousness is the modern-day malady. Looking at the way things happened in the past, you just can’t afford to be judgmental. There might have been grossest wrongs. No justification for that of course. Nonetheless, the small takeaway was a casualness, a sort of relaxed attitude, which dispelled the clouds of seriousness. And mass hatred, the modern-day evil, institutionally instigated to reap benefits at a big scale, hardly found a place in such relaxed environments defined by the loose strands of casualness.

In the region where my parent state stands presently, there was this Nawab of Daulta near the present town of Beri. Well, the man was a religious enthusiast. He released even the murderers if they converted to Islam. So what do you say? Any lessons for the democratically crowned kings of the nationalist party? 

Then there was this communist chap, Prakash Singh Dujana. Even politics was simple during those bucolic days. He won’t think too much before proclaiming at the rally, “I need to convince only the Jat voters. The lower castes will come along by default like a street dogs comes with ticks on its ears.” Someone said, “You don’t have a single vote.” Our politician was one-eyed. Expertly and confidently, he pointed out someone in the audience similarly placed on the vision front, “There is my brother in half vision. He at least can’t ignore me through his single eye!” Then he realized another advantage and quipped, “Ten girls from my village have been married here. And they are very social and pleasing personalities. I have faith in them. They must be in a position to influence hundreds of men around!” Well, even with its sins, this politician appears less lethal than the modern-day avatars who rouse the rabble and fury of Knights on rampage. Is old always affable, almost to the extent of appearing gold, for every succeeding age?

There was then this old man. Travelling in his bullock cart at night, he would take long detours away from any type of light visible on the horizon. “This light attracts thugs, robbers and ruffians. This is not light. This is the path of sin,” he used to say. Well, he would have preferred to keep the whole world in darkness at nights. So cutely innocent! Isn’t it?

So those were the days, when the best to the worst were put in the same basket and weighed in the scale and valued at the same price. And nobody got unduly jittery. Those were the times of acceptance I suppose!

Not that I overlook the flaws lurking behind these crudely simplistic statements. There are hard, serrated edges of injustice as well. In hate and mockery it never was better or worse. It is the same world, just that older times appear more tolerant and forgiving than the present one in the simple fact that people then didn’t carry malice too deep in their hearts and quickly moved on with life. There were hardly any storms in tea cups over non-issues like present when minor things go out of control and shake our foundations. Well, in a forgiving society the risks are still less than a well-ordered, law-abiding, cynical, non-accepting and judgmental society. Old has always its lessons.