Lessons from 2016

When you are on the wrong side of fifties you don’t learn anything anymore.  Whatever happens comes with a feeling of déjà vu.  Even PM Modi’s demonetisation did not excite me though I did gloat a little over the predicament it would bring to some of our political leaders and other traders who stashed away hoards of black money.  I knew it would serve little to curb the black money menace in India or corruption in the country’s politics.  We are by and large a dishonest people.  Expediency is our only solid guideline.  The aftermath of the demonetisation has shown that even the PM’s own party men were quick to amass the new 2000-rupee notes.  That’s how India is: incredible indeed!

There’s a lot of hardship that people are undergoing especially in the rural areas (where I now live) where cash is the only means of transactions.  Yet very few seem to be complaining because people seem to believe that their hardships are going to reap rich dividends soon.  That’s another joke that the year 2016 brought me.  People always put their hope and trust in some pie in the sky.  Illusions soothe us to a great extent. 

As a blogger I witnessed a sea change in blogging during 2016.  Many good bloggers left blogging.  Some of them took to writing books.  I don’t know what happened to the others.  Spurred by the copiousness of literary output by bloggers, I too gathered my short stories into a slim volume titled The Nomad Learns Morality.  Its abominable crash at the sales counter too failed to surprise me. 

I achieved something much more significant at the same time.  I built a house of my own.  I ceased to be a nomad.  Building the house was perhaps the only relatively new lesson that 2016 brought me: you can build anything within a short time provided you have money in your bank account.  Money is the only miracle worker in my country.  Even our godmen and sadhvis will fall prostrate before the god of wealth provided no devotee is watching.

2016 is ending on a good note for me.  I sit at home with a fractured foot which underwent a surgery.  I had a fall from my two-wheeler.  As soon as I fell a lot of people ran to help me.  I was rushed to hospital after being given the necessary first aid.  There is still a lot of goodness in the world.  But even that is not a new lesson.

We are supposed to be learners from cradle to grave.  If you are interested in astrophysics or some such thing, there will always be something new waiting for you every morning like the discovery of some planet many light years away.  If your interests are more mundane and plebeian, you will find the same old lessons repeating in new shapes and designs.  Human behaviour has undergone little change in the last many centuries.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 147 #lessonslearnt