Paramjit Bakhshi
A few mornings ago I had an unusual awakening! I woke up with two words and two corresponding images, clear in my head. The first word was “drive”, and it came, with an image of a sparkling stream, gurgling down a gentle hill; a rarity in our immediate surroundings. The second word was “driven”, and came with the picture of a galvanised water pipe; the kind we see so much of, around town.
When a stream moves downstream, it does so, dancing gently to the internal bidding of gravity without any business like seriousness to drown itself in the sea in a short straight line. Instead it meanders lazily around the land, in an almost whimsical manner. It seems to enjoy its quirkiness and sings lyrically, hypnotising us by its music and its motion. It is not constant either, but changes its speed to suit the terrain, and the volume of water in it. If the slope is steep it speeds up, and on a gentler incline, it slows down. When the monsoon comes and fills its belly, it hastens along its course, and even inundates new areas. It is calm when it encounters an obstacle, never clenching its teeth or flexing its muscles to overcome it. If the obstacle yields easily, it flows over it; otherwise, it finds an easier way around it. At no time does the stream go against its nature, and fight gravity by attempting to climb to a higher ground. When the monsoon gets over and winter comes, the river does not mourn its loss of power and abundance, but runs silently, even when reduced to a thin trickle during years of drought. Patiently it awaits the return of happier times, and when they come, it rises once again like the phoenix.
The story of the water pipe and the water in it is different. By its very design the pipe confines the water to a narrow bore, so that it can be made to go against its own nature and defy gravity, when a pump is introduced into the system. At the flick of a switch, the water rushes furiously through the pipe. It does not sing, but seems too growl, as it runs business like towards its destination. By being made obligingly obedient, it becomes miserable and loses its zest. Without oxygenation it becomes stale, in contrast to the water from the river, which gets a flavour by interacting freely with air and varied minerals. The piped system turns the water safe but insipid, and though it can longer harm us like the flood waters of the river, it loses romance for us. Thus though we may go and sit idly on the riverbank and enjoy a picnic there, none of us, educated or otherwise, ever show such fascination for a water pipe. Instead we use its water only for utilitarian purposes like drinking, bathing and washing.
Something similar has happened to people. Rarely does one encounter an individual with a diverse drive, or an authentic impulse. There are very few mavericks in our midst, no larger than life rebels, and few bards soulfully playing their own tunes. There is hardly anybody who can steer our common Titanic with foresight, or even somebody who can roar with genuine conviction. Rather like mass produced clones, most of us strive to be socially correct, and move like piped water, pushed along the tube of capitalistic modernity. Forever in a hurry to reach some misplaced goal, we learn to hide our angst and our real feelings, behind fake smiles. Somewhere deep inside us we know, that the prevalent economic structure has disfigured our freewheeling spirit, and turned us into one-dimensional productive economic robots. But being driven we are powerless on our own, ill at ease and prone to a life of dis-ease. As somebody once said, from human beings we have become human doings. With no occasions to pause, to just stand and stare, to dream our individual dreams, to know ourselves or to be deeply inspired by beauty, song, dance, art, literature or poetry. Out of a mistaken belief that life offers us so many paths we confuse making a living with our life. We lack the leisure to look at things closely, and hardly ever realise, that though the paths might be different, the end goal is always productivity. In every walk of life we are rewarded for the volume of our output and punished for the lack of it. And the reward of being productive is merely being thrust into a bazaar of tinsel plated goodies which bring mere momentary gratification. We get to choose the meats we eat, nay even the cut we want, we can wear suits of Armani or Levis jeans, drive a Ferrari or an Audi but the “just do it” must remain confined to what the capitalistic juggernaut dictates. Just as juggernaut is a much mutilated version of Jaganath, the Hindu God, so are our lives today about nurturing the body and maiming our spirit. Without consciousness most of us end up driven into the arms of colourless and soulless universalism. The trap is set wide and well camouflaged. If consumerism does not drive us in, then some moral or political ideology definitely does. We believe without much insight, in the virtues of globalisation and democracy even though, the former leads to conflict by widening the income divide and the latter: a willing concubine to well heeled lobbies. Somehow if we avoid such thinking, then we still end up kneeling at the altar of some pervasive religion which breeds in us a disdain, over other forms of spiritual thought. Or we get carried away by ideas of racial superiority, fancy ourselves in plumes of other civilisations, or pay token tributes to tribalism. Just as we elect our popular representatives by maximum vote, we accept ideas by the yardstick of their popular acceptance, rather than their inherent virtue. Both often fail us in the end.
It takes both insight and strength of character to live free – to remain a peaceful singing river rather than become an anonymous angry jet of pumped water. Rudyard Kipling put it aptly when he said, “To be your own man is hard business, if you try it you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself.” It is hard business because, it involves believing in yourself, your vision and your own creativity, often against common sense and well meaning advice. This the young find more difficult today, because it is often their own parents, who against the natural inclinations of the child, push them to become joyless ‘brick(s) in the wall”. All convenience is costly and compromise fatal for the spirit, yet this is what every generation unknowingly teaches and does.
However it is not the young alone, who are driven down mindless channels. Old societies with hundreds of years of culture deviate from their course, when they start being driven by a civilisation, seemingly more successful than their own. As Pavan Verma, a distinguished diplomat, in his book, “Being Indian”, points out such amalgamation breeds a “duality which requires people to become practiced schizophrenics.” People get torn between their inherited way of life and what seems fashionable now, between the old religion and the new, and as he correctly points out “between the two is an entire world of aspiration, shame, denial, camouflage, resentment and emulation”. If the generation previous to ours produced the “brown sahibs’, it should not surprise us to see our children, becoming partial clones of American teenagers, with their lives swaying between the extremes of foreign influence and isolationism, between ethnicity and desire to ape, between wanting ILP and migration to foreign shores, between 18 degrees and NH7. To quote Pavan Verma once again, “There is no contradiction between being culturally rooted and being a global citizen. On the contrary, only those who are culturally rooted win genuine respect. Photocopies are a not respected, they are merely a convenience.”
Water in a pipe or a photocopy, is there any difference? On the contrary a stream and a genuine human being are so refreshingly different. While running a home stay in Barapani I had come up with a concept of giving what I termed an “interesting discount”. Dependent on our guests for social interaction, we gave good discounts to people whom we found interesting, and none to exacting and boring guests. That morning’s epiphany reinforced my belief that the Innkeeper of the Universe too, looks favourably on exuberant originality rather than on cultivated correctness. It is why the Prophets are worshipped and the priests often derided, why Bob Dylan with an unmelodious voice wins accolades and the Nobel Prize, and highly trained singers make a meagre living singing covers. Why less educated people like Steve Jobs become successful entrepreneurs and people with prestigious MBA’s their employees, and folks without Ph D’s become bestselling authors while those seeking such degrees while away their lives researching them.
Everything worthy including instinct, intellect, intuition or inspiration has the prefix “in” and driven, mind you, a totally different end.
PS: In Meghalaya sadly, literally and metaphorically, we have been for decades. disregarding and polluting our rivers and trying to fix our pipes.
(The writer is a life skills trainer and can be contacted at [email protected])