Today’s pseudo world makes one live a life of make-believe, so much so that one wonders where reality ends and the farce begins. We start believing in the reality of the farceness, so much so that we fail to even recognize the reality when it stares at us in the face.
Being natural, spontaneous and child-like goes with being part of the real world. Yet, right from the time a child understands the workings of the world, he is made to create a fictional world, where he is taught to say and do things he does not believe in. He is made to fit in a round hole, and the corners are rounded off, so that the square no longer remains a square. We all know it is wrong, we are doing something that is against nature, yet each one of us does it.
This world of make-believe becomes more real as one grows older and enters the corporate world. And God alone help you, if by sheer chance, you have managed to retain the corners, they have not been rounded-off, by well-meaning education systems, by concerned parents and the media. For then, what is left is a person unsullied by the system, but one who is left defenceless to face thriving politics, sycophancy, nepotism, hitching wagons to rising stars, and to understand the concept of ‘you scratch my back, I may scratch yours if it suits me’…
I know one such person. She talks first, thinks later. She does not put her foot in her mouth: she just never takes it out. She is not intimidated by authority; she respects it but would stand no nonsense from them. Result? Because she has got the temerity to say what she thinks is right, because she has got the grit to face up to truth and say it out aloud, without a false sense of respect for authority which keeps most of us silent. Becaue of this, she has got this very authority chasing her, wanting to cow her down. If it were not so serious, it would amuse me to see her taking people down to size. Unfortunately, I would not like her to be bundled out unceremoniously. So I set about doing what our systems do to our next generation: they bind them up in ropes of conformity, teach them the concept of white lie (A lie is a lie: when did it start being colourful?), tell her to stop being spontaneous, tell her not to laugh at jokes, which might strike her as funny, but the others might not, admonish her when she insists on proving the right is there for all to see, even for those who choose not to. The ways that I kill bits of her daily makes me feel like a slow murderer; but I need to: I need to teach her that life is going to thrash her black and blue, if she does not learn the tricks of the trade. And better that I disillusion her slowly, than that she learns the lessons the hard way. I know there are right ways and wrong ways to live in the world. I am not saying my way is right. But I have lived this way, and survived. So, I hope she learns.
Mohana Narayanan
22/12, Roshni Apartments
1st Cross, Shastri Nagar
Adyar, Chennai- 600 020
bhagvati8@yahoo.com
Being natural, spontaneous and child-like goes with being part of the real world. Yet, right from the time a child understands the workings of the world, he is made to create a fictional world, where he is taught to say and do things he does not believe in. He is made to fit in a round hole, and the corners are rounded off, so that the square no longer remains a square. We all know it is wrong, we are doing something that is against nature, yet each one of us does it.
This world of make-believe becomes more real as one grows older and enters the corporate world. And God alone help you, if by sheer chance, you have managed to retain the corners, they have not been rounded-off, by well-meaning education systems, by concerned parents and the media. For then, what is left is a person unsullied by the system, but one who is left defenceless to face thriving politics, sycophancy, nepotism, hitching wagons to rising stars, and to understand the concept of ‘you scratch my back, I may scratch yours if it suits me’…
I know one such person. She talks first, thinks later. She does not put her foot in her mouth: she just never takes it out. She is not intimidated by authority; she respects it but would stand no nonsense from them. Result? Because she has got the temerity to say what she thinks is right, because she has got the grit to face up to truth and say it out aloud, without a false sense of respect for authority which keeps most of us silent. Becaue of this, she has got this very authority chasing her, wanting to cow her down. If it were not so serious, it would amuse me to see her taking people down to size. Unfortunately, I would not like her to be bundled out unceremoniously. So I set about doing what our systems do to our next generation: they bind them up in ropes of conformity, teach them the concept of white lie (A lie is a lie: when did it start being colourful?), tell her to stop being spontaneous, tell her not to laugh at jokes, which might strike her as funny, but the others might not, admonish her when she insists on proving the right is there for all to see, even for those who choose not to. The ways that I kill bits of her daily makes me feel like a slow murderer; but I need to: I need to teach her that life is going to thrash her black and blue, if she does not learn the tricks of the trade. And better that I disillusion her slowly, than that she learns the lessons the hard way. I know there are right ways and wrong ways to live in the world. I am not saying my way is right. But I have lived this way, and survived. So, I hope she learns.
Mohana Narayanan
22/12, Roshni Apartments
1st Cross, Shastri Nagar
Adyar, Chennai- 600 020
bhagvati8@yahoo.com
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