THE PRICE OF INTEGRITY

My friend once told me “Every person has a selling point”. What he actually meant to say was that every individual will reach a point where he succumbs to the very forces that he had been resisting. The fact that the individual had survived so long is a pointer to the level of integrity that he had been able to muster up in the course of his living. He succumbs when he is unable to bear the burden of the cross anymore. That Jesus did it till the ultimate end was what made him a God. We have such extraordinary people come from time to time and make a difference to humanity. We are not such extraordinary people but there are still amongst us those silent but strong individuals who have stuck on to what they believed in and tried to make a difference despite all the suffering they had undergone. They are those who ultimately lead an authentic life. But at what price is the question here.

We read with admiration about those honest officials in the administration who had refused to toe the line and gone about doing their job quietly and efficiently. The system does not allow it for in the next few days the same newspapers report about the transfer of these officials to places from where they will not be a threat to them. What is the price these officials pay? Destabilization of their family life and being put on the non- favoured list. Some may succumb to such destabilizations when they can no longer take it, for that is their selling point. A person’s weakest point is the family and he would like to keep them insulated from the dangers that may rise from the discharge of his duties. This is the plight of the honest official. There is also a lurking danger of a loss of self esteem.

At the other end of the spectrum we have those who have no qualms in pandering to the demands of the powers that be and in the process sell themselves. They are easily bought for their only motive is to promote themselves with whatever means available to them. How much exhibition of sycophancy we see with the sole purpose of moving up the organization! What immediately comes to mind is the play by Christopher Marlowe ‘Doctor Faustus’ in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge.

I shall tell you the story of a girl who has being pursuing her Phd and it has taken her longer than expected because she refused to compromise on her integrity by extrapolating the results without conducting enough trials to ensure the stability of her findings even though there were suggestions to this effect. But at the end of it all she is now happy that she has the satisfaction of having stuck on despite the trauma she had undergone in the process. At one point in time she even thought of dropping from the programme.  I have been witness to the happenings through the entire period. We need not blame anybody except the system that makes you succumb. You fight the system, you make a difference. During our conversations I had told her that I was happy that she has been honest and gone by the dictates of her conscience but that there is always a price one has to pay for this. I know what price she had to pay.

The distractions are many and the desires are endless and as long as these remain and we run after them, we can never be honest and will be prepared to do anything to satisfy ourselves and in the process like Faust sell our soul to the devil.

The level of integrity is therefore directly proportional to the price one has to pay. How much are we prepared to endure and what do we really get out of it? Integrity brings with it a sense of self esteem, a confidence and a happiness that you have been able to ward away the temptations that you confront frequently on your path. A satisfaction that you have lived your life in an authentic manner and there in lies the key to the meaning of life. At that ultimate level of integrity you become priceless.

THE TRIAL

THE TRIAL

If you think that this is going to be a review of Kafka’s book then you will be disappointed. That of course would depend on whether you want it done or just plain happy that I am not going to go into one of my inane reflections. The truth lies some where in between. In my last two posts I  have been talking of finding myself in Kafkaesque situations and you must be really irritated at hearing that word again. I can’t help it for this guy seems to be popping into my head every now and then after so many years, may be because I have become more sensitive to the happenings around me over the years. Earlier I had been a satisfied banker having people around me to take care of small things like Aadhar card, ration card etc. I must have been a pretty useless banker for I could not get a proper ration card done during my tenure.

Now I find myself running around to have a motor pump fixed, paying electricity bills, telephone bills (thankfully I pay them online now) and generally lazing around the house in the pretext of helping my wife out. She knows the truth. Thankfully there is a washing machine and a dishwasher at home. My wife listens to everything I say but I end up doing everything she says. I hope she does not read this but my daughter would, but we have a secret pact that we do not spill the beans about each other. You may ask what’s so strange about it, for it happens in very household. The men may agree but the women may take umbrage. So I am sorry. My wife is worried for I get in to small arguments with the auto rickshaw drivers and vegetable vendors (over here they are pretty notorious) and let loose a string of expletives while driving the car at every infringement on my rights to the road. Of course the other party cannot hear as the windows are closed. Nevertheless I find my release.

Of course at this ripe young old age I have become self reliant, if that is how you call it. You see I have to fight my own battles now whether on the road or in the court. Well at last I have come to the point of a battle in a court, may be that is why am calling this post as ‘The Trial’. Now you at least know what motivated me to write all this. Let me make it clear that I am not the accused for I am worried that you may take me to be one after reading all that I have so far said. I am the petitioner here. This is a cheque bounce case. A cheque issued to me as return of the advance I had paid was returned unpaid. Details are not necessary as we are not conducting the case here. Being the banker that I had been with some basic knowledge still remaining, I filed a complaint under section 138 of the NI act. For my non banker friends Google will help you out. Though I had the occasion to attend some court hearings while in service it was always on behalf of the organisation and had the luxury of being called only when absolutely required. Adjournments used to be usual and I could pull up the advocates if things were not being speeded up. But now…well that’s another case!

After filing the application, given a hearing after three months only to go there and being told that the case had been transferred to the Fast Track court and given a date for a hearing twenty days later, I went today to attend it. I stood outside the court room waiting for my name to be called. I stood for a good three hours for there were no benches or any seating arrangements, for we had come only to be heard. Thankfully the Magistrate’s court is one of those old buildings with a lot of trees in the compound and they were kind enough to afford shade. The buildings are relics and so will the people who come their seeking deliverance become in course of time. Every time a name was called out on the speaker I would attentively and expectantly await my turn. And it did come after a hundred odd names and I was ultimately told by my advocate that the cases transferred to the Fast Track Court after a cut off date will be heard on a date six months later. I was relieved not because of the postponement but because I could stand no longer and that is literally, not like in the ration office when I wanted to go the loo, now I wanted to go back home have lunch and go to sleep.

The entire scenario there in the court was funereal what with all the black coats with black robes draped over them floatingaround. As I stood outside looking inside it was all surreal. To top it all the way people looked at each other you could ultimately end up believing you are the criminal.

So you see why I called it ‘The Trial’. The book relates the perplexing experiences of a man who is arrested on a charge which is never specified. I find myself in situations which are exasperating and at such times one feels helpless in a system that has taken charge of the conduct of your life.

THE SERIOUS ISSUE

THE SERIOUS ISSUE

In my last post it was a light hearted look at a serious problem. That’s what I wrote while introducing it. I had ended it saying that it all appears Kafkaesque, a word derived form Franz Kafka’s look at the plight of the individual in an indifferent world. In his various works he tries to elucidate the fundamental dilemmas of human life. Of course his writings are dark and create in you a stifling effect and I guess that’s how he meant it to be whether it is the ‘The Trial’ or ‘The Castle’ or ‘Metamorphosis’.

My post was not meant to be a criticism of the state of affairs of the administration in the country. The opinions are divided. Some said they had similar experiences while others have had a more pleasant experience and even suggested I find my identity in another place. Leaving aside all this, let me tackle the issue of the ‘serious problem’. My post was purely metaphorical but I loved to narrate those incidents in my life as way of getting across to my friends and telling them that the humour in our lives is also a serious matter.

I have found in my interactions with my friends and readers that any issue finds its way into the realms of their comprehension when said in a light hearted or a humorous way. All of us will always prefer to have a good laugh rather than be morose and contemplative. I am not deriding contemplation. It is what we resort to when faced with the serious issues in our life. In contemplation we are revealed the realities of our existence and most of us avoid it for fear of what we may find.

I avoid preaching nor would I subject myself to one. Each one of us has his path charted out for him. No two individuals are similar and as such their paths also differ, for each one experiences life in his own way. The one thing that we can do is share experiences as travellers in this journey of life for we may meet some place when our paths cross. We may travel some distance and part ways or choose to stay together and travel along the same path till the end. In any case it is an individual’s choice.

When we look back, we always find those small happenings which at that point in time had driven us to exasperation. Such incidents continue to happen but we have grown to accept them with reduced reaction. When we develop the ability to laugh at these happenings life becomes that much easy. The lessons learnt never cease to enrich our understanding of the world around us. Thus an inane discussion on a beard or a motor bike, or for that matter my experiences in the ration office have interested my readers.  

When faced with an insurmountable problem we seek different ways of releasing ourselves from the predicament. In my experience at the ration shop while the man next to me found his release in sleeping it away, I went to the loo. A humorous situation alright when narrated now but a harrowing experience when it did happen. My Aadhaar card experience is more a search for an identity in the face of a system that refuses to recognise it. It is in the end that I state “What is there in identity as long as you know that you belong here”. I did want to carry forward the point that once you know yourself and recognise the person in you what is the need for an external acceptance.

A reality laced with imagination and humour is more acceptable than confronting the stark face of reality itself.

AADHAAR – A CRISIS OF IDENTITY

AADHAAR – A CRISIS OF IDENTITY

Can you believe it? I still do not have an identity in this blessed land. Yes it is a serious crisis that I face now. I do not have even a ration card and my application for a voter’s id is still pending, all because I had chosen to live in different parts of this country. I did have a ration card when I was serving in a different state of this great land, but the only problem was they had changed my name from a south Indian name to a sindhi name. They had even shown my age as being ten years younger to which of course I had no have objection. Rather than undergo the trials and tribulations and the rigours of asking for changes to be incorporated I let it stay as long as they recognised me at the ration shop as being the one mentioned in the card and gave me my share of the rations. I was also afraid that if I had opted for the difficult exercise of incorporating the changes they would have made me into Subbusingh in which case I would have to start wearing a turban. I realized my folly only when I came back to my blessed dammed state after retirement. A senior citizen, with no identity. Have you seen the movie ‘No Country for Old Men’? When the Aadhaar card was announced I thought that at last I had the opportunity of becoming a citizen with an identity in my blessed country before I called it a day. But it was not to be for when I reached the counter window the man there looked up the list in the computer and said “sorry but your name is not listed in the last census”. I protested and said “how can that be? I distinctly remember that the person had visited my place when the census was being taken and as proof put a sticker on my door”. But of course he admitted that sometimes they just put the sticker and go away. I protested again saying it could not have happened like that since the sticker was on the door and he could not have come in without me opening the grille door which is always kept locked. He was all politeness and said “sorry sir, but you please fill up the form which is being distributed in another counter and submit it after filling up all the details”.

When I went there I was asked to come back after a week as the forms were exhausted (of course by that time I was also in the same condition). On further enquiries I was told that two three months after submission of the form they will come for validating the same. I managed to get a Xerox copy of the form from one those kindly souls, who were lucky enough to get a one. Ever since, I have been sitting with that form trying to decipher and fill up all those fifty odd God dammed columns, also whether to fill it up in English or in the vernacular. The only redeeming feature of this entire exercise was that I was not alone in all this for I found that there were quite a number of senior citizens even senior to me, who were undergoing the harrowing experience of standing in a line for about two hours with the same result.

Decades have passed, we have moved away from being manhandled by men to being manhandled by men with computers to aid them. I am reminded of my experience in a government ration office perhaps three decades ago. I still remember the scenario, the smell of paper- old papers, brown papers, stacked up folders, too much paper. The hall was filled with people, all waiting to be called by the official they had been asked to meet. The air was filled with cacophony and at the end of the hall was a cabin inside which I presumed the official was sitting. Every time a person was called in he disappeared or so it seemed, may be there was an exit at the back. I had been waiting for about half an hour when I heard the man next to me snoring, he had gone to sleep. We had been asked to sit on benches provided with the kind courtesy of the (mal) administration to await our turn to be called in. Whenever the peon sitting outside the cabin used to get up, my hopes would arise and when he sat down so did my hopes. By now an hour had elapsed and I felt the urgent calling to relieve myself. But I did not know where the loo was. I stuck to where I was for fear of losing my place in the queue. The person next to me got up surveyed the entire scene and went back to sleep, blessed man. Another hour had passed and I couldn’t bear all this waiting any longer. So I summoned up all my courage and stood up and walked out of the hall. I found the loo.

Looking back and in my present state it all appears Kafkaesque or simply Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. I had only read them then, now I find myself as part of the play. So ultimately I console myself saying “How does it matter whether you have an identity or not, as long as you know that you belong here?”

CONVERSATION WITH MY BEARD - CONTINUED

CONVERSATION WITH MY BEARD - CONTINUED

I was upset and irritated over the last week for having been conned into a discussion on a topic in which I have no interest nor have any knowledge. My naivete was exposed. All because of this guy, my beard, he got me into it. I had made the mistake of letting his feelings known to everyone as per his own wish and now see what it has got me into. Last time after I had narrated the events leading to his existence he cribbed, cringed and protested that his side of the story was not heard. So under the threat of his continued irritation and making my life miserable I went ahead with making public his views. Ever since he has been amiable, in fact certain smoothness has been evinced in his existence. But tonight I was irritated and scratched him awake.

“What’s the problem, you seem annoyed?” he asked

“Boss, I have had enough. You be where you are and I shall remain where I am, no more conversations.”

“Now, now don’t take any drastic steps. You know we have to co-exist and there is no way you can stop talking to me. You will acknowledge that I have been behind all your inspirations. At times when you have got stuck in the middle of a sentence, you have gently nudged me and I have responded. Tell me why you are so desperate today.”

“See ever since I told them how you feel they seem to be more obsessed with your existence and in the process I am slowly fading into obscurity. There is this guy, whom someone has termed a beard maniac, I am frightened for his obsession with you is so deep that he seems to talk only about you. Of course you have been called all kind of names something like Namo, which I have been told by some is a sort of bad word, while others feel that it is an endearing term. They have even insinuated that you have great aspirations and are trying to outgrow and dominate the scenery. A number of people like you and an equal number do not, for they are jealous that they do not have your looks or traits. These people say that you hide a number of things for example my face. But I know otherwise, you have given me a new look by hiding my insignificant chin. The only solution I see is that you should start sprouting on their chins faster than they can shave.”

“Still I do not see why you should be so upset. See it is a choice that they are free to make, whether to have me or not. You remember you were reading something which was sent to you by one of your friends. Didn’t it say that the beard is a man’s follicular armour and provides a visual display of physical strength and stature. So it is for them to decide whether to have me or one of those smooth, and slippery faced guys. But strangely I find that they have also started to acknowledge my existence. But you can still see through to their baby face, they try to have me on their face to hide their vulnerability. Anyway I think that the people are smart enough to judge which is the more original and a beard with deeper roots. Let them choose the best beard that they want to have.”

“All well said. You seem to be basking in your own glory. But I am all confused when people say different things. Only the other day I told you that I let you grow for a period of seven days only after which I trimmed you because I read somewhere that it turns on the opposite sex. Even so I did not have any luck on this count. Today I read that even though all those famous personalities have started growing beards and longer ones, that ‘while 92 per cent of women preferred men without beards, 95 per cent of women found men with a stubble a turn-off’. Now what do I do? I cannot afford to have you of my face for you have always been there at least for a major part of my life. Of course in the same article it was written that Freud’s personality was accentuated by his beard which was a ‘hallmark of phallic power’. I am comforted by the fact that Freud must have with his knowledge of the workings of the human mind decided to grow his beard. But what really galled me was this statement from the same article that ‘Men with beards may be having more fun but its not with women’. Doesn’t it bother you?” You see in all these, a person should be in a position to choose what he thinks is best for him, whether they want a beard or not. To hell with what you hide or not, after all it is my face.”

 He was silent for sometime and then said “well I understand your dilemma. You feel that it is going to be a battle of the beards but you can wait and see who gets shaved first.”

“I am sure that the beardless will be relentless in their attacks on the bearded ones and vice versa. But that’s all politics isn’t it?”

He said “I can only say hold your ground, I mean your face” and went to sleep.

ME AND MY SLEEP

ME AND MY SLEEP                                  

Tonight I was staring into the darkness surrounding me, sitting at my desk with the table lamp on, lost in thought, yes you can be sure of that, for my eyes were open and the drowsiness had still not set in. Of course some people have the capacity to sleep with their eyes open but I had failed to learn the art of sleeping with my eyes open. It would have stood me in good stead back in college for I was invariably caught while sleeping in class, especially during the periods after lunch. But I remember that there was one subject when I never got pulled up for this offence and that was during the ‘Magnetic Fields and Tensor Analysis’ class, not because the professor taking the subject was a very liberal minded person. You see that when he started talking about magnetic fields, electromagnetic waves and the applications of tensor analysis (pardon me these are the only words I remember from what I learned back then) I used to experience fields and waves around my head and a buzzing sound very conducive to inducing one into a trance, try it some times it works. The next best thing for experiencing such spiritually elevated states I found was during the period of probation in the Bank when I was asked to read the Book of Instructions and the Exchange Control Manual. I never went beyond the first page. In fact I found that next to lifting the accounts ledgers, handling the Book of Instructions did in fact contribute to whatever muscular structure (believe me it was not great but adequate) I developed, though the same cannot be said about my job knowledge. I am sure a lot of my colleagues in the bank would also be grateful to these manuals for their physical well being.

Well coming back to the professor like I said it was not because he was a very considerate man that he allowed me to sleep in class, it was because he was so immersed in the fields that he wove on the board and around him and the class, that he never really noticed whether anyone was paying attention or not. But all this had a problem which I realised only when I sat down to study for the periodical class tests, for when I opened my book I could never make head or tail of what I had written in my note book. You see I used to take only one thick notebook to class, a sort of master book in which I used to take down the notes (this was to save the trouble of lugging around a pile of books subject wise). One had to just open the notebook to find out which classes I had slept and the duration of my sleep. Only the first word in each line would be visible as slowly the writing would taper of into a scribble as sleep overtook me. At the end of the line when the pen struck rough surface on the desk, I would wake up and the process would be repeated over again. The pen acted as control mechanism to wake me up at the end of the line. It was may be because of this that I became a night bird, an owl (anyway not a wise one as all owls are supposed to be).  

The art of sleeping with your eyes open was perfected by one of my colleagues. I realised this when talking to him one day and getting no response shook him up and he awoke with a start and started where he had left off earlier and now here I mean the conversation and not the sleep. Then there was another one who would dose off in the middle of a sentence leaving it unfinished, not only that for before long he would be snoring.

In the good old days when we were used to travelling by buses, my wife used to complain that as soon as we were seated I would fall asleep. Of course since she was there next to me we could get off at the right place. But it did happen to me when I was travelling by the suburban train back from VT to Chembur, I kept awake till Kurla one station before my destination. But I do not know what happened for I when I woke up I had passed beyond and had to catch another train to come back. Luckily this time I did not fall asleep and got down at Chembur.

Like the good old pen which I talked about as a control mechanism I have found that the wall and the bars on the window of a bus are equally effective. I cannot remember the number of time I have banged my head against the window bars on the bus, though painful it was effective to make sure I got down at the proper place. Banging against the wall is something that I have developed over the last few years (don’t mistake that I have resorted to this to overcome my frustrations or set things right in my head) especially while watching the television. It has woken me up in the course of watching a movie or a serial so that I could pick up the trend of what was happening on the screen. Of course whenever I ask my wife as to what had happened in the interim she would glare suggesting that I should go back to sleep.

But all this sleep, when others are awake vanishes when others go to sleep. That’s why I am still awake writing all this. I have tried understand the genesis of all this and I have found that all this dates back to the time when I was in school and Macbeth was one of the books on our English curriculum. I had the whole book by heart and was even nick named as Macbeth though I did not commit any foul deed. But may be this soliloquy of Macbeth was what did me in –

“Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” – from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’

A CONVERSATION WITH MYSELF

 A CONVERSATION WITH MYSELF

“You have been conversing with your beard (imagine, no wonder people find that weird), with your Destiny (please I think they have had enough of that stuff about everything being destined) and only God knows (sometimes I also wonder who or where he is and what he knows) to who else. But you have never really sat down to talk to me. I wonder why? I do have a faint idea that it is because you are frightened to do so. Seriously, I feel abandoned.”

This happened when I sat down for my meditation this morning. Though for a moment I was upset, I recovered and said “honestly, I never really thought you would be so offended. I always considered that you and I are inseparable, that you have always been with me through whatever has happened or is happening. So let me set things straight and for a start we shall have a conversation tonight and I promise to clarify whatever you believe that I have kept away from you”. I felt a slight vibration and I knew that he had receded back to his abode within and would resurface again tonight to put his questions to me.

‘At the stroke of the midnight hour’ he came and sat before me on a pile of books near my computer. Bald, bearded, bespectacled and the size of the glass of water on my table, that for a moment I thought that I was looking into a miniature mirror. He smiled as he looked at me and said “well here I am, and shall we talk?” I said yes and settled down for a long chat.

“I am not in the habit of asking too many questions. I always let you do the talking, to me of course. I can always make out when you are truthful and when you are being dishonest with ‘yourself’, that is me. So I am here to hear you. For a long time I have been intrigued watching you performing things which you never seriously believed in. Why so?”

“Seriously can you be more specific? I am unable to comprehend what you are saying. I always thought I am doing what I believe in.”

“Well, for instance I watch you as you sit before that cupboard of yours containing some idols and pictures of various Gods and performing certain rituals before you close your eyes and start your meditation. You have always maintained that you do not believe in rituals then why?”

“Oh that! If you say that cleaning the idols, decorating with flowers, burning an incense stick and making an offering of food as a ritual, you are right. I do those things. Have you ever wondered why I remain silent at those times, so silent that I do not even wake you up? Of course you must have been awake, for how else could you have observed that I do these things. But you will agree that I never did disturb you at such times.

When I am in the process of performing these things I have found that even my mind becomes silent. There is no thought as to the futility of the entire exercise. I do it because one fine day it just happened and I asked myself why not, as long as I do not have an agenda. You are right when you pointed out that I do not believe in ritualistic prayers. But let me clarify that I do not believe when there is an agenda attached to the exercise. It has become a part of my daily routine like my daily long walks and it keeps me focussed. Now in the recent past I even visit the temple next door daily after coming back from my walk and having my bath. You had noticed that though my wife goes to the temple daily, I used to go there only occasionally. One fine day I asked myself, why not? Not because I believed that the God over there was going to help me tide over crises or grant me boons. I found that it was a sort of commitment that I made for you, myself. I recovered a sense of purpose and discipline creeping into my daily activities. I would call it ‘Zen and the Art of Praying’

Long ago I read Herrigel’s ‘Zen and the Art of Archery’ where he says

“The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art”.

You will ask me what bearing this has on what I am doing. Well though you pretend, I know that you are aware what I am trying to explain. The key operating sentence here is ‘This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self …..’. This entire process has aided me in the process of my daily meditation.

It is through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if the body executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from the mind. Zen emphasises the suspension of all judgemental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without getting involved in them. I would call that one hour in the morning my Zen time. I believe that each one of us has his own Zen time whether it is gardening, cooking, making tea or maintenance of your motor cycle (refer ‘Zen and the art of Motor Cycle Maintenance’, Robert Pirzig’s classic novel). One sentence from the book still keeps ringing in my head “Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value”

So you see that I am still doing what I believe in and I also believe that each one has his own way of expressing his commitment to a cause he believes in and through which he hopes to attain a freedom from the bonds that tie him down and realise his entire potential.”

As I finished I found my Self sitting on his perch in front of me with his eyes closed. For a moment I thought that he had gone to sleep with all this long winded speech of mine. So I cleared my throat in a bid to wake him up. He slowly opened his eyes and said “so you thought I was asleep? I heard every word you said, I always knew it but I wanted it to come out from you. You will see there is more clarity now.”

“So what next?” I asked.

“For now, that is enough, I can see your eyelids drooping. Isn’t it late now? We shall keep the rest for some other day. I am watching.”

He vanished and I stopped.