By Paramjit Bakhshi
A friend of mine coming in from Australia gifted me, amongst other things, a small torch, which he said could light up things a kilometre away. I am not sure whether the light went all that far, because my vision certainly didn’t. However it surely lit up everything in my line of sight and was many times brighter than the large torch I previously owned. This little piece of technology also set me thinking.
Possibly the visionary torch owned by the common man is, occupied as he is with focussing on his daily needs, not as strong as it should be. For a long term vision he has always depended on his leaders. In ancient society the shaman and the village chief were such leaders. As societies grew larger the chief’s powers were largely taken over by a more powerful king and even the shaman’s visionary powers had to be exercised in concordance with the wishes of the ruler. When the king became selfish and despotic the priests chose to be helpless and meekly opted to look after their own interests rather than provide leadership to the masses.
It is at these times that a prophet sometimes appeared. His attempts to light up the moral (and in the long run the only practical and sustainable) path ahead always met with resistance. The established religion and authority were threatened by him because they feared loss of prestige and power. Often even ordinary people were reluctant to follow him. This is perhaps because the disparity in knowledge between them and the prophet was too large; maybe as large as the gap between a student of physics at school and Einstein. Just as it is difficult for school students brought up on a classical Newtonian model of the world to suddenly grasp relativity theory it is equally difficult for a normal person to see that morality and idealism are not irrelevant but very practical values. So society crucified, killed or banished the prophet and carried on with business as usual. Sometimes it took centuries for human intelligence to catch up and understand the message of the prophets. But at most times the message even if understood was still considered impractical and idealistic not just by the society but even by its very own messengers: the priests.
Today we live in a so called democratic society. We are supposed to be our own rulers. However this is purely an illusion. Just because we vote sporadically once every five years or so, does not mean that we actually have the power to make decisions. The rulers are still mostly unenlightened, visionless and uncaring, their advisors – the bureaucrats either out of self interest or fear still do not give progressive counsel. The representatives of the prophets also wash their hands of social responsibility and go about pretending to be busy with some mysterious godly business.
As a result we have become a crowd of faith less people-we have no faith in our rulers or bureaucrats, during periods of social turmoil our priests desert us and no prophet seems to be appearing on the horizon. There is no new star of hope on the firmament and there aren’t any three wise men either.
The so called civil society attempts to fill this vacuum without having a visionary torch. Their old lamps can hardly light the way forward and it mostly creates ghostly shadows around us which fill us with fear rather than hope. We are going to perish, we are told, unless we can learn to discriminate, assert and to hate. Humanity is literally torched on the streets in broad daylight.
It is under these circumstances that Christmas has arrived. The frenzy of ILP is replaced by the joys of shopping, festival, events, bonfires and parties. It is a welcome change and one which cheers us up a bit. But at the back of our minds the question still lingers: will normal times return to Shillong and will we be able to look forward to better times? I am no prophet but hopefully the coming of Christmas has brought in a change in the air.
This is evident from the number of people who have started expressing themselves very clearly and boldly. Whether it is F Meshuwa Diengdoh, through his satirical piece, “The Secret Diary Of Mr. Chairman” (ST 14th Dec), or Obadiah Lamshwa Lamare’s touching write up titled “The human pup”, (ST 21st Dec) or Gordon Bruce and Jennifer Dkhar’s letters to the editor (ST 21st Dec and 23rd Dec) or HH Mohrmen’s and Janet Moore Hujon’s pieces and Ashley Erasmus Lyngdoh’s posts on social media, people are today are thinking individually and expressing themselves with maturity. It is indeed good to see that the minuscule tribe of people like Patricia Mukhim and Bah Toki Blah has increased manifold with many balanced people joining the party.
A recent Facebook post which impressed me said “Life has no remote, get up and change it yourself”. We have to exercise the power to transform our lives and our state. As we head into Christmas it would be nice to begin our festivities knowing the true essence of Christmas. This was brought home to me, at a secular function, just a few days ago through a most inspiring sermon, by a pastor from a village called Khlieh Tyrshi in Jaintia Hills. He is Reverend M Shylla and his message delivered without any biblical quotations was short, brief and touching. In essence he said that Christmas is not about shopping, celebrating or partying but about three things: love, sharing and transformation.
There certainly seem to be some signs of a transformation happening. A political party in opposition has now decried the culture of bandhs, agitations, arrests and confrontation and the government has opened the door for talks. Many people have realised the futility of political shenanigans within the society.
I hope more people will start using the torch of their illumined minds next year and we will truly have a more promising 2014.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
The writer is a life skills trainer and can be contacted at bakhshi03@ rediffmail.com