“I love those who can smile in trouble, who
can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. It is the
business of little minds to shriek, but they whose heart is firm, and whose
conscience approves their conduct will pursue their principles unto death”-
Leonardo da Vinci
It is my routine to
open the centre page of the newspaper every morning and look for the Sacred Space, a small rectangular box on the right corner beneath the Editorial.
Though this is more by habit than by any reasoned thought, I have derived a
sense of security and salubrity from the wise quotes in the Sacred Space. It
has always fortified me to face the challenges of the day with an inspired
certainty that all will be well with the world. Today’s quote from Leonardo Da
Vinci, the Renaissance Italian painter and the creator of the famous Mona
Lisa was timely to infuse additional
strength to brace up to the ordeal of starting early without breakfast and
standing for hours in the long queue to draw my piddling savings for my
immediate daily needs such as bread, salt, sugar and milk.
But this time around,
Leonardo’s infusion of hope did not work any magic as the demands of the day
outweighed it. Two days of standing in the queue for hours that seemed endless
had sapped both my physical energy and
my resoluteness to be the new Casabianca, old and not young. Earlier I had
listened to the PM’s address which showed him to be the Knight in the shining
armour on a white charger to rid the nation of the black demons exhorting us to
stand by him-which metaphorically meant that we the people of India should stand
in the serpentine queues and withdraw our own piddling savings. As I listened
to the rasping rhetoric of our strong PM, I imagined people feting me, a frail
77 year old woman for standing up for the cause of whitewashing black notes and
composing a poem in my honour: The Indian Casabianca
The woman stood on the uneven road
Whence all but she had fled;
The lights that lit the streets
Shone round her dim and dark .
Yet old and frail she stood
To get her paltry money for her daily bread
A woman of heroic blood,
Proud, though bent double with age.
The bank shutters rolled down
But she stood
and would not move
To honour her PM’s word
She would bear the day’s heat
As also the dark, chilly night
Bravely she put up with her hunger pains
Her parched tongue sealed her lips
She dreamt she saw streaks of white
Amidst the
blackening night
She closed
her eyes and faintly heard
A voice
that whispered:
The noblest thing which perished here
Was this poor,
old, faithful heart.
But as luck would have it ,two days back, I had seen on the TV, hon’ble PM’s 94 year old mother among the queue-ists ,
thereof crumbling my dream of becoming
the Indian Casbianca. That honour was
not for me. That poem would not be sung for me. I woke up from my daydream to
the nightmarish reality of a good fifty people ahead of me as the wintry
evening gave way to the wintry night with its harsh, cold darkness.
Two days of incessant waiting
to take my own hard earned money despite all the government announcements about
separate queues for senior citizen and women. I sympathized with the banks’
problem- all bank branches in the colonies are housed in small buildings on
small lanes where there is no space for even making a single line queue-what to
speak of multiple queues. I knew that if I were somewhere in the top order of the
queue, I would get my cash otherwise by the time my turn came I will be one of
the cas(h)ualties of the day. Like the old Ancient mariner, I looked at the
people and the bank and despaired: Banks, banks everywhere/ Not a note to
receive.
I muttered Leonardo da Vinci’s lines to
fortify myself and smile despite the veins on my legs turning blue. I slowly
made my way back home as the queue behind me was also thinning. I switched on
the TV and listened to the usual verbal fisticuffs with both the opposition and
ruling party leaders raising the decibel intensity. Well, those on the TV were
lucky people; they did not have to stand in the queue to get their money. Well
ensconced in the TV studios( or on their sofas in their comfortable homes) they
had all the energy to unleash a barrage of
meaningless words and innuendos. Their acrimony made it difficult for me to
keep smiling. The ex PM, a great and well respected economist was abused of
having his intellect demonetized and willingly allowed an intellectual descent
to meet the level of his brainless party leaders in order to curry their
favour. This verbal onslaught sounded bizarre
and outlandish. All those who likened the Government’s ill planned and ill
managed scheme to catch the black dons as Quixotic scheme were mercilessly
flayed as anti national, pro black money etc. I had stood five days with
physical strain at the bank but I could not stand the total lack of civility,
culture and sophistication I witnessed in
my drawing room. The common man and woman with whom I stood for eight hours
never once muttered a curse. Their restlessness was not once marred by
un-civility.
We all smiled in
trouble, we had gathered r strength from the ordeal of standing and grew
brave by reflection on what made us Indians so accommodating. Well, it was the little minds that shrieked,
abused, quarreled using un-civil language. I took comfort that I belonged to
the aam admi/ aam aurath whose heart is
firm, whose conscience approves their
conduct and who will pursue their principles unto death as Vinci had said.
Well, I smiled as Mona Lisa smiled. I am not the only one. I am with billions
of Indians with the Mona Lisa smile.
