Skip to main content

A peep into my pride



Humility is not in my DNA. I was hopelessly vain until some benevolent people in Shillong decided to hammer my ego on the anvil of humiliation. The Mastermind [the name I gave in my memoir, Autumn Shadows, to the person who masterminded the whole strategy] made me a personification of shame. I became so ashamed of myself, my ego was so much pulverised, that I had to leave the place just out of the survival instinct that keeps organisms keep going even when they know they are worthless in the larger picture that really matters. [Matters to whom? That’s a question I’ll take up in subsequent blogs.] I left Shillong with a fragmented soul.
Nearly two decades have passed after that flight and life has taught me a lot of lessons in those decades. Unfortunately humility has not been one of those lessons, it seems. Somebody in one of the many WhatsApp groups to which I belong more by necessity than choice was generous enough to tell me that in that group to which I never wanted to belong in the first place. That is the only one of two WhatsApp groups I quit because I couldn’t digest what was happening there. I’m still a member of about a dozen groups and nobody accuses me of pride or any other vice. On the contrary, people tell me that I make meaningful contributions to the groups. Nevertheless I took the member’s counsel seriously, as I always do with personal attacks, and spent a couple of days pondering it.
Why are you so proud? I asked myself. You’re an old man with grey hairs, stained teeth and a mended heart. You’ve seen life from a million angles. You’ve seen countless people who are far more gifted than you. You are insignificant, just another nonentity, on this planet of billions of creatures most of whom matter a lot more than you to someone or the other.
I know, I said. I never claimed to be anything significant at any time in the last two decades, did I? I questioned certain wrongs which I thought were serious matters. The way I express my indignation is rude sometimes, I know. Is rudeness a sign of pride?
Isn’t it?
My impatience with silliness and stupidity makes me rude. When people are not ready to listen to gentle expressions of dissent, my expressions become rude.
Ah, there you are. You think others are silly and stupid. Isn’t that just what pride is?
Well, aren’t they really that: stupid and silly? If you show them the naked truth, they’ll still cling to their silly beliefs and sentiments. Worse, their religious patrons commit heinous crimes like raping and killing and when I point that out, they call that pride! How silly!
Why do you want to meddle with people’s religious sentiments and beliefs? For most people those sentiments and beliefs are the only things that give meaning to their lives. When you nitpick with them, you are being very cruel. Only a cruel person can strangulate the very sense of life which people hold on to desperately in a sad existence.
I understand. It’s not about my pride really though I know that there is that horrible vice lingering within my soul in spite of all the fragmentation it went through. Some things are genetic. You can’t do much about them. How much more fragmentation will be required to heal me of my pride?
I’m cruel. I understand. I garrote the simple meanings that people discover in their lives. I am a murderer worse than the killers in religions and politics. They kill bodies. I kill meanings.
What is the meaning of life anyway? I decided to embark on a voyage into that question, into that ocean. September is dedicated to that voyage. Wait for much, much more, if you think it’s worthwhile.

Tomorrow: What is the meaning of life?
Yesterday: The Archangel’s Sword [What led me to all this]


Comments

  1. A Lady LawyerSeptember 11, 2019 at 12:40 PM

    This is an interesting series but I was most drawn to this post, as I felt it showed the most of you as a writer and a person.
    Noor Anand Chawla

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 11, 2019 at 1:38 PM

      The series began with this personal episode. Glad you liked it.

      Delete
  2. dysfunctionalmindSeptember 11, 2019 at 2:23 PM

    I love your style of writing :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. PratibhaSeptember 19, 2019 at 6:50 AM

    In some way I am battling the same question as I been accused of being rude and mean [ which i accepted coz i was lashing my anger ] but i can not figure out where this is stemming from for only a particular person and not rest. I liked your analytical approach to it. Should try same.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam a...
33 comments
Read more

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...
28 comments
Read more

AAP and I

Who defeated Arvind Kejriwal?  Himself or us? His party ruled for just 49 days.  They were momentous days.  He implemented his promise on setting up a number for reporting corruption; in two weeks instead of the promised two days.  He met people to discuss corruption issues, though the crowd was beyond his control.  He did what he could.  He would have done more if he could.  He put an end to the VVIP culture in politics.  The politician became aam aadmi.  Ministers started travelling in vehicles without the screaming red lights and horrifying screeches.  But the police had to go out of their way to provide protection to the chief minister.  Who defeated the chief minister’s vision that political leaders need no such protection from their own people? He revolutionised the admission procedures in schools.  Schools which charged hefty amounts from parents illegally stood to lose.  The aam aadmi would have g...
25 comments
Read more

Farewell to a Friend

This is a season of farewells for me.  I have lost count of the persons who have already left or are being hauled up before the firing line by the Orwellian Big Brother in the last quarter of the year.  The person, to whom we bid farewell today, however, had chosen to leave on his own.  He is going as the Principal of R K International School , Sarkaghat, Himachal Pradesh. Mr S K Sharma was a colleague and friend.  He belongs to the species of human beings whose company enriches you and whose departure creates a vacuum, notwithstanding the fact that Nature which abhors vacuum will fill it in its own unique ways.  Administration is an art for Mr Sharma, though he calls it a skill.  Management lessons, strategies and heuristics are only guidelines.  No one can manage people merely with the help of these guidelines.  People are not machines which can be controlled mechanically.  Machines work according to rules.  People do not d...
31 comments
Read more