Of Leaders & Losers 6. The Valmiki- Part I

Prologue:

          This is the story of a man who wasn’t a manipulator per se, but sought to ‘adjust’ to the ‘system’, but finally reformed himself.  We know of several people who reformed themselves, but neither do we nor they reflect on such reformation.  This is an amalgamation of umpteen such transitions, accumulated as one as a piece of fiction.

* * * * * * * * *

          Yes, he had understood it, rather proud to have understood.  He’s managed to get the better of system.  How many people have done that? 

Of Leaders & Losers 5. Who should be the Scribe?

          Many times, we think we are doing a great job by being helpful to people in need.  This story attempts to see this attitude in new light.

* * * * * * *

          Amrita held the hand of an unknown person with disability when he was about to step into a trench dug up on the roadside for underground drainage, and thereby, prevented him from falling.  She was glad she assisted a blind person.

She got up!

          Tejaswini’s memory is clear – she’s sure of it.  She was four years old, and was in kindergarten, her first year at school.  She tried to slide during the lunch break.  Before she was prepared to descend, someone pushed her from behind.  She lost her balance, dashed against the sides of the slide as she went down, and had bruises on her elbows and knees.  But, she got up and was administered the tincture.

Of Leaders & Losers 4. Ms. Casabianca is Right

Padma could not make much sense of it.  No, she wasn’t trying to understand the ‘New Year’ mood of the people in the last three or four days of the year 2004.  Nor was she thinking about the cold water poured on such mood by the tragic Tsunami.  Two days later, while in office, she heard one of her colleagues announcing a tsunami warning in Visakhapatnam, and advising them to approach their boss for permission to leave office to care for their families.

Of Leaders & Losers 3. The Man who was Loyal to a Shadow

We live in a changing society (now, does that sound dumb?) . The definition of the words, family and relationship, may be getting metamorphosed.  ‘Open’ relationships and ‘Friends with Benefits’ are talked about.  While I leave it to the choice of the advocates of such relationships, I DO NOT endorse them.  Did extramarital or clandestine relationships never exist?  No, they did exist.  Despite them, Lord Rama became the icon of loyalty to wife or Ekapatnivratya (Women were always expected to follow their husbands, though).  I vote for loyalty between the spouses for it differentiates humans from their ancestors, the apes.

Anyway, the discussion is not about the way society was, is or going to be.  Each one of us has known of couples who were loyal to each other despite challenges like familial pressure to separate, inability to beget children (which is a valid ground to file for divorce), chronic ill-health of one of them or politics, plain and simple, to inherit property, so on and so forth.  If there were a re-incarnation of Rama in the 19^th – 20^th centuries, he would have been called Ramakrishna Rao.

Book Summary – The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes

The Sense of An Ending

by

Julian Barnes

Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2011. 

Vintage 2012, Paperback, 150 pp, Rs. 299/-

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            The book narrates the revisit of the past in an old person’s life, which throws up a few surprises.

Is Idealism Affordable?

( already published in an in-house magazine)

          This is a real life event narrated in the form of a story. 

          Padma, as you all know, was born into a middle class family. She grew up listening to stories of how Rajah Rammohun Roy braved the society of his time to bring in the Sati Abolition Legislation, how Kandukuri  Veeresalingam Pantulu conducted widow remarriage, braving ostracism  from his fellow castemen, how Sir Raghupati Venkataratnam  Naidu brought about a transformation in the Devadasi community, so on and so forth.

          It was her grandpa, Sitaram, and her aunt, Lakshmi, who were her story-tellers. After relating the anecdote, they would add, ‘See, how courageous he was?’, or ‘One should stick to ideals like that’.

          ‘What are these ideals, grandpa?’  Padma would ask. Sitaram’s definition was ‘Ideals are beliefs in situations which are desirable, but not easily attainable’.