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

      Delete
  2. 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 Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

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...

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The...

To an Old Friend

Image by Copilot Designer Dear S, I don’t know if you’d even remember me after all these decades, but I find myself writing to you as if it were only yesterday that we parted ways. You were one of the few friends I had at school. You may be amused to know that a drawing of yours that you gifted me stayed with me until I left Kerala after school. Half a century later, I still remember that beautiful pencil drawing, the picture of a vallam (Kerala’s canoe) resting on a shore beneath a coconut tree that slanted over a serene river on whose other bank was an undulating hilly landscape. A few birds flew happily in the sky. Though it was all done in pencil, absolutely black and white, my memories of it carry countless colours. I wonder where you are now. A few years later, when I returned to Kerala on holiday, I did visit your village to enquire about you. But the village had changed much and your hut on the hill wasn’t seen anymore. Maybe, you moved on. Maybe, you took up your father’s...

I'll Take These With Me

  Annanya Gulia Annanya Gulia is a grade 12 student of Army Public School, Noida. A former colleague of mine in Delhi, who is now Annanya’s English teacher, drew my attention to the remarkable poetic gift of the young girl. I would like to present one of the poems here. Coming from a teenager who lives in the heartless National Capital Region of India, this poem deserves a deep look. The central theme is the value of lived experience over conventional success. The young poet emphasises that marks and certificates, often seen as measures of achievement, are not what endure. Instead, intangible qualities such as kindness, resilience, curiosity, patience, courage, and the lessons from scars, form the true wealth that she will carry forward. Superficial recognition is not what she hankers after but a celebration of inner growth. What struck me particularly is the rich and vivid imagery employed in the poem. “No rolled-up mark sheets like battle flags” underscores the exaggerated im...