By Paramjit Bakhshi
Ah, the weather is perfect. There is a nip in the air. The country side is always beautiful and lush and even in this winter a verdant blanket envelops us. The air too is invigorating. What is missing is a little magic – a little hope. The mystics tell us that our reality is a reflection of our state of minds. That there is something wrong with our thinking is obvious from the state of affairs in Meghalaya. There is a pall of gloom in the city and fear resides in the hearts of its residents. The locals are afraid of being overwhelmed by the outsiders and the “outsiders” are afraid of the locals. The city continues its march towards becoming a slum and everybody fears what tomorrow will bring. We have become a community of unbelievers – so much so that we are more comfortable looking at the past rather than our present. We are caught in a tangled web of rationale spun by our puny minds and today we do not hesitate to burn innocent people to feed our fears.
Nothing miraculous will ever happen to us as long as our minds are clouded by fear and we continue to see the world through the narrow tunnel of bigotry. The fallacy of what commonly appears to be logical thinking can be summed up through a story I read some days ago. It is about the first international urban planning conference held in New York in the year 1898.
The big environmental issue then was, believe it or not, shit. Yes horseshit. Both London and New York had so many horses that disposal of horse shit had become a major problem. “The Times” must have done some sensible calculations for it predicted that every street in London would be 9 ft deep in horse dung within 50 years. Meanwhile New York struggled to shift 2.5 million pounds of horse shit every day. Additionally horse crap also produced millions of flies which spread typhoid and other diseases resulting in an estimated 20,000 deaths in US cities. The nuisance did not end there for horse powered traffic caused other problems too: the noise from iron shoes on cobbles was so loud that conversation became impossible on busy streets. Horses were also difficult to manage whether alive or dead. Since horses do kick, bolt and bite the fatality rate was seven times higher per vehicle and 75 percent higher per capita than today. In the year 1880 New York also had to clear about 15,000 horse carcasses at an average of 41 per day.
The much awaited conference was scheduled to last ten days but was abandoned in three because nobody could find any solutions. Horse sense must have deserted them. [Doesn’t this lack of solution remind you of Shillong. We are better than the envied western world in this respect; we never find a solution to any of our problems. We are however experts at manufacturing problems.]
Within a few years the problem disappeared on its own when electric trams, followed by cars and buses replaced horses entirely. The motor car was even hailed as an environmental saviour then. How prophetic was that. The point to be made is that the future can never be accurately predicted. Could we have predicted the rise and decline of British imperialism, the advent and the effects of industrial revolution, the invention of the internet or any other major events? No, not at all. But we in Shillong are so fixated on our prophetic ability to accurately peer into the future that we are ready to destroy our present worrying about something which may never happen. It is very rare that future follows a linear pattern and fits into the mould of our predictions. Like life itself the future is organic and dependent on many varied narratives and diverse and unseen forces.
For decades we have been led by prophets of doom. People who love to tilt at windmills a la Don Quixote. Nobody attacks us but we are a city under siege. In every locality there are ‘Jingmaham ‘signs reminiscent of the German “Achtung’ from the war comics. Everything is scary for us, whether it is the railway line coming to Shillong or couples in cars parked on the roadside. There is a line in ‘a Course in Miracles” which says “Your attack thoughts are attacking you’. Truly it is the city’s negative mindset which is its greatest enemy. We bring about what we fear the most. We feared environmental degradation and resisted industrialisation only to have brought it about by mining and unregulated construction. People continue to fear influx but contribute to it by shying away from doing an honest day’s work. There is fear of outsiders marrying local women but many contribute to it by abandoning their families. We fear the police but ensure that they visit our homes by not teaching our children any values. Then there is the fear of ‘menshnohs’ and of ‘thlen’. Indeed people’s lives in this city are ruled by what they fear and what they hate rather than by what they love.
Till now this city has not produced a single person of international stature. Sixty five years since independence and forty years since the formation of the state we are still as dependent on central handouts as we were to begin with. Instead of contributing anything to the country or to the world we are being led to believe that the universe owes us everything. And if we don’t get it we can get belligerent. That is just fear talking. This is where we have reached listening to pied pipers who sing soulful dirges while leading us on destructive paths.
Since Meghalaya like most North Eastern hill states calls itself a Christian state (mind you in this predominantly Hindu country no state calls itself a Hindu state) it is perhaps apt that a Biblical injunction be quoted here. For me there is no better passage in the New Testament and it goes like this:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” I Corinthians 13:1-3.
Though some versions have substituted charity for love the passage acquires true meaning when love is used. Indeed it is said that “where there is great love there are great miracles” (from Willa Cather’s book “Death comes for the Archbishop”).
We badly need a few miracles in Meghalaya. And we need a few wizards who will show us magical paths. We also need an atmosphere free from fear. It is only then that people will explore their potential. It is only then we will become a community of confident fearless people. Let us hope that we live to see those days. Till then let us at least find inspiration in Rabindranath Tagore’s lines:
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high /Where knowledge is free /Where the world has not been broken up into fragments/ By narrow domestic walls/ Where words come out from the depth of truth/Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection/ Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way/ Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit/ Where the mind is led forward by thee/Into ever-widening thought and action/Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
(The writer is a life skills trainer and can be contacted at [email protected])