Satyakam

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 12^th 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.