My early childhood has been witness
to the transition of our society from a radio-generation to the Television
legion. The tall 20-feet antenna became
a status symbol and the Sunday evening buzz on our streets moved into the
living rooms watching the week-end feature film.
Those were the initial days of television
euphoria and I rarely missed the weekend movies. One such movie watched on
television seems to have had a lasting impact on my psyche and till date I find
it difficult to overcome the influence.
‘Satyakam’ was a movie about a
righteous young engineer, who lived his life by the book and took an
unflinching and inflexible stance on his viewpoint on any subject. Somewhere in the storyline he also had some
guilt conscious, which I was too young to appreciate in those days, and
therefore went about with an idealistic obsession that finally destroys him
completely.
I assume it is this influence on my
young impressionable mind that made me a stickler in most of my transactions
with the external world, since the time I have become conscious of right and wrong.
This character, nevertheless, has
come to me at a cost. Like the protagonist of ‘Satyakam’, I have been a loser
in many of my transactions in the game of life.
This became more prominent and hurting as I moved up the ladder of my
career. In the initial stages of one’s
work life, the responsibilities or the area of responsibility is clearer and
with my kind of honesty and steadfastness, I had always been a good performer
and a sought-after subordinate. As one scales the ladder in a professional life,
the haziness grows. There are a few laid down rules and there are many unsaid
commandments. Many things are supposed to be understood without a clear
articulation from the superiors. I have resisted such duplicity and have sought
to remove the vagueness – which I thought was my area of responsibility and a
challenge to my analytical skills and diagnostic abilities. My absolutist
passion always came in the way, or at least I assume so, when my superiors
evaluated my ‘leadership’ or my ability to appreciate the ‘corporate culture’
or my ability to carry out transactions with all the crafted ambiguity.
My obsession with ‘truth’ and ‘right’ and
‘politically correct’ had extended beyond my official disposition to my
personal life as well. I always took a
long detour from my house to take the right, permitted ‘U’ turn to go to the
other side of the road – even if that meant reaching late for a show, or
pushing my folks to start 15 minutes early – to the much chagrin of my wife and
children. They failed to understand as
to why, when the other hundred odd residents of my apartment complex took a
chance by driving in the reverse direction for some 20 meters to take a short
cut, I always insisted on taking the ‘right course’. Even if that meant an
additional drive of half-a-kilometer and an additional time of 15 minutes
considering a big traffic junction in between.
A few months back, as I was required
to drop my daughter to her examination center for her all critical 12th
standard public exam, I was stuck at this traffic junction for longer than
expected. As the clock was ticking the
tempers rose. I would not have liked my daughter to get tensed at that stage
but was helpless. As I had always
observed that most of the traffic pile up at that point of time was primarily
due to the local police allowing a number of sand Lorries to be parked on both
sides of the road, ostensibly for a consideration, I too was getting furious at
this reversal for a law-abiding citizen.
The panic and time pressure in the eyes of my daughter was visible and
that hit me like a bolt. Was I too foolish? Was I impractical? Was I a novice?
Was I a simpleton? Am I right in burning this extra petrol that comes at a
heavy foreign exchange for the country – while a few law-makers make a mockery of
the law? I was surely not a Gandhi to have abandoned my work and sit on a fast
at the traffic signal, until the unauthorized Lorries were removed and some
order was restored. I was a simple
law-caring citizen and wanted a decent predictable pass for myself.
As the wife of this ‘Satyakam’
protagonist had once said – “To produce something as beautiful as a fine piece
of gold jewellery, you have to add an element of impurity” – I too perhaps
needed to be ‘smart’. The ‘right’ perhaps is never static, it is
contextual. On that occasion, having
realized the criticality of time, and having realized that roads were blocked
and being helpless to correct the situation, I should have added that bit of ‘impurity’
to my clean self.
I am trying to be ‘smarter’ these
days. At least on occasions, early in
the morning or late in the night, I do check the flow of traffic on the wrong
side. And if the traffic flow is minimal, and if there is no policeman around,
I do take a wrong cut. Am I doing a ‘wrong’? Am I saving the precious foreign
exchange for my Government? I don’t know. But I know that there is a very thin
line between being ethically weak and being a outright offender. Am I too close
to that line? I don’t know. I am just
going through this new experience and I continue to feel guilty for that
20-meter stretch. Beyond that stretch,
the life seems to be normal.
