Lonely at the Bottom

                                                           Lonely at the Bottom

We are familiar with the phrase “Lonely at the Top’. This is one of the poignant lines from the Oscar winning movie The King’s Speech. The King referred to is King George VI known as Bertie who in his youth was a stuttering, stammering sovereign and had to engage the services of Lionel, an Australian speech therapist to help him get over his debilitating nervous ailment.

In the film, Bertie tells Lionel that he’s (Lionel) the first “ordinary” person he’s ever really spoken to. He then reveals the loneliness and isolation he has had to endure as a part of the Royal Family:

Bertie : Sometimes when I ride through the streets and see, you know, the common man staring at me, I am struck by how little I know of his life, and how little he knows of mine.

Lionel: What are friends for?

Bertie: I wouldn’t know

Bertie’s painful acknowledgement of his ignorance about friends is a classic example of being lonely at the top. This is one of the paradoxes that men and women at the top live with. Though always surrounded by a crowd of people who fawn upon them, follow them, and are forever at their service, they remain lonely. As Francis Bacon said: “ A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” Persons at the top find it difficult to connect with others because they are either put on a pedestal and therefore experience the pressure of living up to that image of larger than life or they feel isolated as everyone is compelled to be respectful and look up to them to the extent that they are neither known nor seen beyond what their title has made them to be.

But today many of us experience the reverse as we endure loneliness being at the bottom. True, being at the bottom, hardly anyone wastes his/her time courting us. There is none to fawn upon us as we have nothing to bestow on them. There is none to look up to us as we are at the bottom. Only we can be looked down. We are a small number, a minuscule minority whose presence hardly matters and whose absence is hardly missed and whose future is oblivion.

Who comprise this lonely club of minorities cadging for some kind of recognition, some kind of attention that is denied to them? Mainly intellectuals, thinkers, and all those who seek Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram(Truth,Goodness/Welfare and Beauty ) in their  daily discourses and activities are the loners today. Today’s world adores brash, loud and opinionated people who have no hesitation to climb up the roof and loudly express themselves even if there is “nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express." TV news shows are all about expressing nothing under the pretext of expressing something. A volley of words from the TV studios creating a verbal pandemonium is boastfully claimed as the best watched show with high TRP ratings. The lonely pipsqueaks who try to get a word in edgewise are shouted down and remain severely left alone. They try to cash on the five second silence while the shouters catch their breath for a fresh onslaught, but they realize like Eliot’s Prufrock, they cannot get their words out. Adapting lines from Prufrock, this is the pathetic lament of those at the bottom:

    And we have heard the voices already, heard  them all—

    The voices that fix us in a formulated phrase, (fossilized fool)

    And when thus formulated, sprawling on a pin,

    When we are  pinned and wriggling on the wall,

    Then how should we begin?

… … … … … … … … …

    And how should we presume?

 Even if they speak, they will not be heard- and worse, they will not be understood. They have no strength to push the moment to a crisis and win the debate. They know they are at the bottom and realize their moment of greatness flicker before the rasping lung power of the majority.

Civilized discourse is today antediluvian, confined to those that dawdle at the bottom; crass and crude jibes pass off as wit. Elegant and courteous talks are passé; arrogance and insolence mark the winner. Genteel manners are mocked at as effeminacy and cowardliness; rude and impoliteness stands for manliness and intrepidity. This has encouraged uneducated and semi-literate dregs of society to indulge in heinous crimes against women. Daily we come across stories of violence against women as these brutish men no longer walk but only stalk. It is frightening to think of the day when chivalry will lose its allotted place in a dictionary. Rape erasing it will signify the assertion of machismo. The vaunting vulgarity of the moneyed class, the acquisitive aspirations of the consumerist middle class and the anger and frustration of the deprived poor class have drained the society of all its refinement, sophistication, culture, civility and gentility. Those who yearn for finesse, nicety, taste, polish and grace are the lonely ones relegated to the bottom. The weight of crassness, insensitivity, boorishness and grossness in the rest of the society wears them down. The world has turned upside down when those at the top today make a chorus of  noise and stamp their approval of a loud, screechy society that has come to resemble the Tower of Babel.

This has affected all forms of activity that include music and dance, art and literature, fashion   and design. Shakespeare wrote: “If music is the food of love, play on”.This has been turned on its head today by transposing music and love. If love is the food of music, let passion flow on.  Our Bollywood is full of loud songs set to loud beats that appeal to sensuous excitement and carnal desire. The present era, greatly influenced by the 20^th century has seen the rise of popular music in contrast to art music that lays emphasis on lyricism, harmony, rhythm and soulfulness.  Popular music as the name defines it, is music for pleasure, music for group enjoyment, music that is noisy, music that gives a temporary ‘ high’ with its release of pseudo excitement.  The new age popular music appeals to the vast majority and does not demand knowledge and refined ears to groove to its loud sounds that go by the name music. The distinction between popular music and the classical kind is one focuses on the autonomy of the artist, who feels free to rap without a concern for beauty, lyricism and harmony while the other focuses on the autonomy of the art itself(music). A very small minority remains the custodian of the aesthetics of music, its canonical frame and structure, its self-sufficient autonomy that provides soulful enjoyment. The loud big bang music of the popular kind drowns the lonely voices that look to music the fusion of ideas, images, emotions and beauty. In a similar way, dance that is poetry in motion is an aesthetic blend of song, rhythm, movement and drama. The dancers of today are more like perfect acrobats or gymnastics whose ability to contrive the body into myriad forms is breathtaking though it assaults the aesthetic sensibility we associate with pure dance which a unique fusion of Nritta(rhythmic dance movements), Nritya(depicting a story through facial expressions  and physical movements and Natya( a combination of Nritta and Nritya.)

The lonely group at the bottom sits and ruminates over the aesthetics of dance that has been replaced by gyration without the need for words, music and expression. The sound of music is no longer heard as the sound of movements rent the air. This is the new age phenomenon. The only people who feel lonely are at the bottom.  All others are above them and no one is lonely on the top.

We who belong to the minuscule minority experience this loneliness at the bottom. We speak, no one hears. We write, no one reads. We sing, no one listens. I recall the words of Prufrock that I read five decades back:

                                       I grow old ... I grow old ...

                                           I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

                                           Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

                                           I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

                                           I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

                                           I do not think that they will sing to me.

Creative Truth: Scripting a new Narrative for India

                                        Creative Truth: Scripting a new Narrative for India

In advance of Modiversary, two articles appeared in the Hindu(one of them comprises  five short pieces under the overarching caption “Year 1: Still waiting for Acche Din?”) and one in the Times of India, all three of which are intellectually stimulating, thought provoking with a balanced and objective analysis of Modi and his style of governance. These are articles that demand penetrative reading to enable us  see India both in the present and in the future tense instead of yielding up to the reams of words and images  that flow through the different media channels, spin doctored by the Modi(and the BJP) brigades. These articles are in canonical frames of good and sound journalism with malice towards none and resonance towards all. They beckon us to think objectively and wisely without being hamstrung by political affiliations and biases. Though the TOI article appeared last( Monday, the 25^th), it proved to be the catalyst to activate the ideas contained in the Hindu articles that appeared earlier on the 23^rd ad the 24^th respectively.

The TOI weekly column “City City Bang Bang” by Santosh Desai is an appeal to the thinking class, though it is addressed to Rahul and the Congress to conceive an idea for India and not remain smug repeating the hackneyed idea of India. This is a pertinent advice as the hackneyed idea of India has lost its meaning with overuse by divergent political parties to win over the simple and gullible people who form the majority of the Indian electorate. It  now sounds an empty rhetoric as the idea of India has by now outlived its central purpose of coalescing different ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious groups of the pre-independence days into a single united India (now more chauvinistically referred to as Bharat). Can the idea of India today represent our inherited tradition from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Manusmriti etc or is it a new concept that looks forward to a new 21^st Century India? Does it blind us to a make-believe concept that all wisdom originated from India(from genetic engineering to head transplant to aero sciences) or does it take us to a futuristic heady mix of modernism that leaves behind the inherited legacy of many centuries and apishly follows all that is sourced from the West? If the right-wingers fall back upon cultural reversion, the opposing group seeks to chart a new course that is antithetical to cultures, customs and praxis of the traditional past. The cacophony let loose by these two groups has resulted in the blurring of the concept of the idea of India.  Santosh Desai has rightly argued for an idea for India in place of the outdated and cacophonic idea of India.  This is the central thrust of his article titled “Rahul Gandhi and the Political landscape”. Crediting Modi with a rare sheen of magic that has catapulted him to the PM’s chair, he argues that unless a new narrative for India is written, it will be difficult to dislodge Modi from his exalted position as a game changer. He wistfully wonders whether Rahul can ever rise up as a challenger if he continues with the hackneyed idea of India, romanticizing poverty like Don Quixote who employed a simple farmer Sancho Panza as his squire and lived like the knights errant of the old, out of sync with contemporary times.  In a slightly stretched manner even the current PM is similar to Don Quixote, with his love of Selfie, his obsession with himself, his wardrobe and his theatrics. This narcissistic streak of Modi is affirmed by Shiv Viswanathan, the eminent Sociologist in his short article “A Victory of Propaganda” in The Hindu. He warns about the growth of a new cult  around Modi, which when  combined with Modi’s love of himself and his trumping of dissent and criticism against him, signals the rise of a new Goebbels, wholly at odds with democracy and democratic institutions. It is not just his wearing a bandhgala suit priced at nearly one million rupees, but the fact that the suit was decorated with his name all along the pin stripes has earned him the sobriquet “megalomaniac”. Shiv Viswanathan says that the only significant achievement of the first year of Modi regime has been the institutionalizing of Modi image making him out to be a cult figure. To the NRIs in the developed West( but not those in the struggling Gulf countries that Modi has till now ignored), Modi  presented himself as a Rock star who covertly applauded their exodus from India as the country had offered nothing to them till he took over the reins of the nation. Modi’s idea of India all these years seems to have been one of deep shame and embarrassment which he promises to undo in his new scheme of things. This is narcissism at its heightened worst and signals his idea for a new India- an India for him, by him and of him.  Taking off from Sagarika Ghose’s recent article about NRI’s long-distance Nationalism, that talks about the frenzy of NRI nationalists in the Western hemisphere  to put “I” before India, I would say that this trait suits the present PM whose idea of India is I+ nd(I)a where “I” alone  with concession to the coalition partners of ‘nda’ is the only visible and ubiquitous alphabet shining in the Modi firmament.

With no big bang reforms in the first year, Modi’s government has disappointed the business community, says Sriram Srinivasan in the second of the five pieces. This is largely because of the excess promises made before the election without either finding the means to fulfill them or understanding the inherent problems of execution.   The third speaks of the ecological suicide not only seen in the budget cuts for the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change(MOEFCC) but also in blocking the funds of  leading NGOs like the Greenpeace India which basically address the problems of  people affected mainly by a government that favours the corporate over public interest. The fourth talks about the lack of promised good governance and sees Modi’s inability to push through reforms as a sign of timorousness in the context of post-Delhi elections where his party was routed. The last by Prof. Krishna Kumar talks about the pathetic state of education- primary, secondary and higher education which is an index of the government’s apathy and lack of understanding of this vital area that is a singular contributor to the progress, development and welfare of the society. This piece is to be read alongside the one that appeared in the Hindu a day earlier by Anjali Modi that encapsulates the government’s indifference to Mass Public education as it is not a priority in the government’s agenda for development. The quality of education is of no concern either to the Ministry or the bureaucracy that runs educational bodies like the UGC, RUSA, NAAC etc. Simply coining new acronyms like MOOC(Massive Open Online Courses), SWAYAM(Study Webs of Active learning for Young Aspiring Minds),CBCS(Choice based Credit System) seems to be a fetish with the present Ministry of HRD without wondering who will deliver MOOC( as even the regular institutions have a woeful lack of quality faculty),who will provide the study webs and what those studies will include or how to work out CBCS without improving the needed infrastructure and making fundamental changes in the teaching learning processes. Previously we were used to words and words-an empty, verbose dilation on “What ails Indian education”. Now words have been replaced by alphabets that satisfy the creative genius of the coiners of acronyms.

Who will now rise up to write a new narrative? What shall be the content of that narrative? The BJP and the Congress spend all their time in and out of Parliament, sparring at each other. They have made an art of “tu tu, mein mein” and their shrill shouting passes off as intellectual discourses.  For both the national parties, coming to power is the only goal. And towards achievement of that goal, they are averse to taking risks of introducing new and dynamic changes that may seem unpopular at the beginning though they may prove beneficial in the long run.  The best they can do is to change the names of schemes and change the names of the leaders after whom the schemes had been conceived. Old wine in old bottles is what they would choose rather than seek fresh wine and shape new bottles.

I am neither an IAS bureaucrat nor a politician. So without fear I can lay down my narrative that will be purely a new narrative for India, by India and of India. In this narrative the dramatis personae are We, the people of India whose modern aspirations form the pivot of the narrative. Hence the contribution to satisfy those aspirations has to come from the people themselves. The essential components of a narrative are the characters, the setting, the plot (action), the conflict and the resolution.

The characters are the individuals that the narrative is about and they are the ones who act and whose action leads to the unfolding of the story. Indians have enormous strength and potential for braving the hardships of life. We may grumble and groan but we will be able to put up with long hours of power outage and scarcity of water unlike our Western counterparts from well developed nations who cannot be without these bare essentials of modern life. This is a genetically inherited strength and we are hardwired to physical hardships. We should recognize this inner strength and turn it to our advantage by sheer hard work. We can certainly draw upon our past tradition where starting with Surya namaskar(homage to the early rising sun) ,we gear up for the daily chores. All talk about education must begin with helping young boys and girls to understand that there is nothing impossible to achieve if they recognize their inherent strength and apply it to the work on hand. Graded physical training should be given to boys and girls from primary school till they finish their higher secondary. They have to be trained to gain confidence in their physical strength so that they can take the load of any kind of work. What is gained in the early years does stand us in our adult years. It is time that we, the people of India learn to work tirelessly and not baulk at physical work.  This is one of the lessons we can learn from the West, from China and Japan. If our young students( I include the fairer sex also) are made to work physically in the construction of roads and buildings, in cutting canals  for water to flow to the fields and rural households,  working in agricultural lands and in building schools and hospitals in rural areas,  installing pipes, drains and electrical posts to bring water, sanitation and power to the rural areas, we can raise smart villages  and not wait for the government to chug-chug its plans for creating smart cities with the help of foreign investments. Why should educated boys and girls, men and women fight shy of physical jobs and only prefer soft jobs in air-conditioned offices? Hence the need to make compulsory physical labour a part of high school and university education should be a new daring policy to be introduced and followed by us.

According to the statistics available for 2012, India has a work force of 487 millions of which the organized sector has 27.5 millions only. The unorganized and unincorporated enterprises from push cart vendors to migrant workers constitute 94% of the 487 million work force. It is time to elect a government that can boldly take steps to increase the work force in the country and engage them productively and profitably. This will be the beginning of a classless society where physical hard work is not regarded as low and inferior, where the high and the low, the rich and the poor all mingle to work for the construction of a new India and a new mind-set. PM’s Swacch Bharat is a good scheme that has to be implemented by all organizations by involving all people to bring cleanliness and hygiene in the country. This is not a one day photo-op activity. Rosters are to be drawn in schools, colleges, universities, in offices and markets for everyone to compulsorily participate in cleaning the premises and the environment. In Delhi we have planned residential colonies that are administered by the RWAs(Residential Welfare Associations).RWAs should engage every member of the residential colonies to work at least once a week towards Swacch colonies. This participatory effort can bring a new clean India, even as it removes the cobwebs in our minds with regard to physical work. A sparklingly clean and shining India is in our hands as much as in our minds.

The second component, the setting is ready. India is at the crossroads between emerging capitalist economy and earlier socialist economy, between private and public enterprise, between the wealthy class and the poor class (and sandwiched between them is the aspiring middle class), between the educated and the illiterate, between corporate and field workers, between the traditionally backward groups and the creamy forward groups, between tradition and modernity. The characters have to come to terms with the present setting branded by  contradictions and play a vital role in the development of the new narrative.

The action, the third component of the narrative, is to find a middle path between these two extremes that divide the society. Overarching this action is to bring together the heterogeneous forces pulling in different directions to some form of homogeneity. This is the idea for a new India.  For the last seven decades there has been a consistent attempt to raise the deprived backward classes and the government’s affirmative action centred on reservations for them in education and employment.

             Time has come to take bold steps to gradually withdraw reservations and treat them as equal members of the society. This constitutes the last two elements of the narrative- the Conflict and the Resolution. It is easy to stay with crutches, but it requires remarkable courage to do away with crutches and walk aright. In place of reservations, let there be equal opportunities to one and all, commensurate with their individual talent and temperament. Not all the scions of rich families are good at study nor all the descendants from a poor or backward family are poor at study. The tamil proverb says “Pathiram arindu pichai idu” –i.e., whenever we donate, we should donate to the deserving. Identify the talent and the strength and provide opportunities that satisfy every individual’s capability potential. Those good at sports, in music, dance or drama, should be provided with learning and employable opportunities in these fields. Reservation as it is enforced today is just the opening of the doors of universities and professional colleges to all and sundry who may not have the aptitude and the interest in pursuing studies. People should not demand more than they can chew. They should be given opportunities that they can explore in keeping with their talent. In the bargain ,universities and academic institutions will have only dedicated students to pursue research and generate new ideas for the growth and development of society. Education is not to be limited to academic knowledge, it also includes knowledge about fine arts and performing arts and developing sensitivity to art and aesthetics. It is the refinement of feeling and thoughts that will promote the holistic growth of an individual and enable him/her to cultivate humanity.

             The most important attention has to be given to high quality universal education. At present the focus is on numbers enrolled in schools without bestowing a thought about who teaches them and how well trained they are to be teachers. It is no secret that the quality of education in a large majority of schools set up both by the government and the private commercial minded educational entrepreneurs is appalling. The present government has also cut the budget for the midday meals scheme, which is the most important aspect of school education. Nutritional food in India is a luxury enjoyed by the moneyed class. The Middle class finds it difficult to provide two decent meals and that rules out the possibility of their children getting high calorie meals. As for the lower classes, the staple fare of chapatti twice a day is itself a luxury. The strength of a nation is dependent on the strength of its youth and therefore mid- day meals of good nutritional value is the best way to get children to the schools. Eating together without class consciousness, observing table manners, washing one’s plate and spoon after the meals are lessons they learn and which will stand them good in their later years.

             Re-building character, inspiring a passion for work, sensitizing people to the emotional and physical needs of fellow citizens, encouraging a spirit of friendliness and  compassion, exalting one’s thoughts and feelings to apprehend the best and the noblest ideas and instilling refinement in thoughts, actions and words are the possible means to overcome the current apathy, unconcern, insensitivity, crassness and selfishness that have become synonymous with Indianness. This shall be the new narrative for to be enacted by We, the people of India.

            To the simple question who shall script this new narrative, the answer is simple and direct. This is a unique narrative where the characters are in search of the author and discover that they alone can script and re-script the new narrative as and when required. The coalescing of the author and the players will make the new India narrative a riveting and absorbing one.

             To those who read this article may come with a parting question that cannot be ignored. Does this narrative belong to the fictional genre or does it belong to our world of reality? The answer is straight and simple.  It is a new script, introducing a new genre that transposes fiction into reality. This script is open-ended to accommodate revision of required. It is to be scripted and performed by us, the people of India.  Till now, we have allowed others to script our narrative as Creative falsehood. We now have the chance to re-write our own narrative as Creative Truth. Fact or fiction, it is for you, the doubting Thomas to find the answer.

All that is Gold do not forever glitter

 

                                              All that is Gold do not forever glitter

A tamil proverb says “Koodu katta theriyathu, kattina kopotai pirithuduven”(I don’t know to build a nest, but I can undo a built nest). This proverb struck me while I was going through an interview with Seymour Hersh, the American investigative journalist and author. The same proverb once again resurfaced in my mind when I read the daily Health capsule in today’s edition of TOI that speaks about the nullification of the benefits of pills that are prescribed to lower blood pressure and cholesterol if taken continuously for a two year period. Here I have been popping the same pill for the last forty years and my BP reading continues to be 110/70 and cholesterol well within permissible limits.

The reader may wonder what  the connection is between these two news items! It is simply that both Seymour Hersh and the Health capsule editor exhibit the human tendency to bring down the reputation and estimation of a person or a pill to shock the world from its puerile acceptance of all things great and beneficial. They are not the one-off kinds to indulge in demolishing the good qualities of an erstwhile great person or the value of a medicine that has been proven to be effective for many decades; unfortunately, this has become the norm of the day. Pull down all those put up on a pedestal and leave the world bereft of anyone worthy to be lauded( except the Seymours and Assanges, Subramainam Swamys and the RSS-BJP brigades for their  pulverizing contributions). Seymour’s exposure of Kennedy earlier and his present bare-it-all story of the American success of Bin laden’s capture have catapulted him to a position higher than that of those whom he has brought down in the name of honest reporting( primarily Obama). In his interview with Chidanand Rajghatta of the Times Of India, he spoke about his earlier writings on the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war that killed thousands of people, on Abu Ghraib torture, on former American President, John F.Kennedy to show that he was not a great guy as had been made out and on the latest on the corruption in Pakistan’s ISI that helped the US to get to Bin Laden(with no credit to the US much famed SEAL’s efforts). This has become a new global phenomenon- to bring down the reputation of great leaders of the past and open up classified documents that would fuel afresh vendetta politics and violence among nations after a long period of comparative hiatus from war hysteria.

Today in India a lot of muck is thrown upon our first Prime Minister- even to the extent of a veiled suggestion that Pandit Nehru was keen to hide Netaji behind a bushel of lies about his death in a plane crash so that he never returned to  thwart his own Prime  Minstership and Panditji was covertly instrumental in the death of his successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri  to facilitate Indiraji’s ascent  to the throne. Such palace intrigues are offered suggestively so that what sticks is the mud thrown at the spotless achkan of Pandit Nehru. The latest to join this band of illustrious pedestal pullers is Tunku Varadarajan, the New York based columnist who in one stroke has brought down Nehru and Man Mohan Singh. He writes: “It is hogwash to say that Manmohan Singh was the architect of the reforms that won India its independence from Nehru in 1991”, denuding both of them of their contribution to the Nation. The architect of modern India and the architect of modern Indian economy have been pulled down from their pedestals by the searing stroke of a sentence. Our present PM whenever he is abroad talks about his vacation-less life and his 24/7 efforts to clear the backlog of three decades - another sleight of hand example of running down all the PMs of the past who seem to have vacationed all through their years in the PM’s chair and did nothing. It is not necessary to run down all the predecessors to get noticed or to gain in stature and popularity. 

But this seems to be the easy route to greatness- to criticize all the erstwhile heroes and present oneself as different and therefore a superior human being. The ability to speak negatively is regarded as a sign of intellectual objectivity and maturity, Today no one is spared if they had claims to any sign of greatness. Re-reading the past and reinterpreting it and arriving at the cynicalconclusion that all those who have been venerated have had their Achilles heel and therefore should be expunged from the list of the Greats are now the new national pastimes. Even Shakespeare has not been spared, not to talk of much smaller mortals. All the classical canons that had earlier given us an insight into the timeless beauty of art and literature have now been replaced by  the new School of Resentment and the School of Relativism  that promote biased negativity against  established assumptions  and thereof set them aside . If great works of art and literature have been shred to oblivion, all great men also suffer a cavalier dismissal into insignificance and obscurity.

What is now left, as a result of the vacuum created after hurling down all those who were revered, hero-worshipped and exalted, who had left behind their footprints on the sands of time? Do we have to indulge in erasure of all those footprints to create new footprints with guaranteed permanence that they would not meet with  the same fate as those we have destroyed? Do we have to take the sheen of the works of great men and women of the past to project ourselves in showy splendour?

We are in the age of Selfies- trying to create   flattering image of ourselves in an act of overt narcissism. The new age Selfies propped up by Facebook and other forms of Social media are easy prey to mukha sthuthi ( flattery). Denouncement or excoriation of the past greats is the best form of flattery. Closely allied to Mukha sthusthi is Ninda sthuthi ( complaint by praise) -something akin to Mark Antony’s oration that keeps a veneer of praise to sneer at the opponents-

  “Brutus is an honourable man;  So are they all, all honourable men”

It is a pity that in our eagerness to bring down statues from the pedestals, we have not raised our stature. This global phenomenon coincides with the world entering the fourth cycle of its chronological age.  The world has moved through the Theocratic Age(Age of the Gods to  the Aristocratic Age( Age of the Kings and aristocracy),to the Democratic Age( the Age of the common man) and now to the  fourth one, the Chaotic Age. The Democratic Age has slowly morphed into the Chaotic Age and in the chaos around us we do not have a figure to shape us  out of it into chiselled human beings.

We have made an art of excoriation of the past heroes. Following Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, we question all the traditional assumptions about heroes and try to expose the deep seated contradictions in their personality. No doubt, it needs a special skill to deconstruct like we need a special skill to construct. In the process, we are gradually forgetting our identity as human beings. No one is a wingless angel on earth. But we celebrate our effort to discover that the statues on the pedestal have only feet of clay. We rivet our eyes only on the feet and refuse  to view the aesthetic wholesomeness of the statue.

Let us learn to remember with gratitude the contributions made by those whom we have till now worshipped. Even the Indian palm squirrel with its three stripes on the back had contributed in its own little way to the construction of the Rama Setu bridge by rolling in the beach sand and  running to the end of the bridge to shake off the sand from its back (chanting Lord Rama's name all along). Lord Rama, pleased by the creature's dedication, caressed the squirrel's back and ever since, the Indian squirrel has carried white stripes on its back, which are believed to be the mark of Lord Rama's fingers.  To denigrate the heroes of the past is to suspend one’s rationality and one’s humanness. This is not to say that there can be no re-viewing of the past heroes(and heroines) but the reviewing should not limit itself to negative deconstruction nor should it ignore their  positive and  significant contributions  to strengthen the quality of being human.

I revert to my opening quotation and wish the reverse is true- I know how to build a nest ;I do not know how to undo it.