Skip to main content

Role Model


The other day a student asked me who my role model was. It’s a dangerous question if it comes from an intelligent person and this student is indeed intelligent. Donkey years ago, when someone hurled this question at me – with a lot of malice – my answer was Mahatma Gandhi. The questioner laughed uproariously. He had reasons to. I was a clownish alcoholic at that time. The questioner was trying to be my well-wisher. Those were days when the entire town of Shillong became my collective well-wisher. One of the best things that people love is to see you as a patient etherized upon their counselling chair. Almost everyone I know in my life is a counsellor. They tell you what to do and what not to. They tell you what a catastrophe you are and how you can be much better with their help. They have all the answers to the rigmarole that you are to yourself.

I was not really joking when I foisted Mahatma Gandhi upon that well-wisher as my role model though I was an alcoholic and I ate all kinds of food including beef. Rice and beef was staple food in Shillong where I worked in those days. Gandhi wouldn’t have bothered about what people ate though he would have suggested the merits of eating potato instead of beef. Potato was the only edible thing that grew without too much fuss in the Khasi Hills. But potato won’t keep you healthy on the cold hills. Gandhi would realise that and let the people be healthy. People mattered to Gandhi as much as cows did, if not more.

When I raised Gandhi on my personal holy pedestal before my well-wisher, what I meant was that I loved Gandhi’s ideological non-violence, his concept of truth and integrity, his idea of tolerance which let people be, his attitude towards religion...  My well-wisher thought Gandhi was all about being a teetotaller. That’s not surprising. He is a good Christian. He thinks Christianity is all about singing Alleluia to Jesus and preaching morality to others.

Gandhi and my well-wisher are thesis and antithesis. Gandhi pursued truth unlike his killer’s fans who now rule India with the conviction that truth is a fabrication of a gang like those who wrote fabricated the caste system or fascism or Nazism or anything of that sort. My well-wisher is now a fan of Modi. He thinks Christianity in India can be saved from Islam today only through Modi.

When my student asked me who my role model was, Modi’s name came on my tongue instinctively. Modi should be everyone’s role model in the post-truth world. You create truths. There is no absolute truth. Everything is god’s leela. Maya is the only truth. Whatever. Go on. Don’t forget to look at the teleprompter. Otherwise your truth may be lost.

“So the teleprompter is your role model?” My student asked.

I smiled. There was no teleprompter to give me an answer. That’s why I don’t ever dare to give a press conference.

“Shouldn’t you be a role model to your students?” My student persisted.

“Can I be a better role model than our Prime Minister?” I asked.

The conversation died. One good thing about role models is that they kill honest conversations.

 

Comments

  1. ...there is a lot to digest here. In American politics, few role models come to mind. Absolute truth seems to be elusive.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hari Om
    Where are the Gandhi's and Mandela's when we need them...?! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since history makes heroes rather than vice versa, we may yet wait for the emergence of the new Gandhi.

      Delete
  3. There are modelic people, but every individual person, must to walk his own personal way.

    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...

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...

Books and Rebellions

Books become my ideal companions in times of political turmoil. Right now, as you’re reading these lines, there are dozens of active armed conflicts going on around the world. Besides, developed countries like America are asking foreign students as well as others to leave. The global economy is experiencing significant instability, characterised by weak growth projections, persistent inflation, high debt levels, and geopolitical conflicts. Even when a country like India advertises itself as becoming the third largest economy, the living conditions of the poor aren’t showing any improvement. Nay, the world isn’t becoming any better than it ever was. It's when such realisations hit you from all sides, you need the consolations of an abiding hobby. Reading is at the top of my list of such hobbies. First of all, books help us understand current events in a broader context . They can reveal patterns in history: how democracies falter, how propaganda spreads, how resistance movements...