Words to the naive

Essay- satire

Words to the naive


“Go with slow speed. You will get there sooner if you go that way.”
Sri Paramahansa Yogananda

I am currently reading the second volume of the two-volume rendering of The Mahabharata by Ramesh Menon. And what a wonderfully readable version it is too! After completing the over 800 pages of the first volume I am struck by a couple of thoughts which I want to unburden myself of here. Why is life so unfair to some? And, how close to the fantastic is it possible to live? The first question has KARMA written all over its forehead but for those who don’t believe in cause-and-effect they can always subscribe to the theory of “random occurrence” being grappled with in the physics departments of every great university around the world. The second question has no ready answer whichever way you cut it but has indeed set the cash-registers ringing through notable eruptions of popular entertainment via fantasia and science-fiction-in print, celluloid and limelight alike-Harry Potter, Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars etc.. etc…

The entertaining uses of rationale busting fastasia apart, the elliptical and obscure does brisk business elsewhere too-for instance, in the high-growth spirituality business. Maybe I’m challenged in the esoteric regions but it’s zen statements like “Go with slow speed. You will get there sooner if you go that way,” that I struggle to fathom. Coming from highly respected seers like Swami Yogananda, they cannot, of course, be taken lightly. But a little voice in my innards that won’t be suppressed says what would going fast do that is undesirable? Don’t we all aspire to the fast-track, fast cars and the seductive fast buck! Some of us wouldn’t say no to fast women and fast food either, consequences be damned! And don’t we like it when we skid onto any of these goodies on the proverbial purple patches that come our way every now and then? So why is the learned Swami trying to put a brake on the proceedings? Perhaps he’s only recycling the old hare and tortoise story with lashings of the slow and steady to help us win races. It’s probably meant to promote endurance over flamboyance, stamina over pyrotechnics, substance over froth but ends up sounding disappointingly like soda over bubbly instead!

Self-improvement is another massive career option for the enigmatic proposition. So what if it’s a sort of mental yoga contortion with some very impressive mind-benders thrown in. Eckhart Tolle, after his own 19th nervous breakdown, says there’s Power in the Now and rides by waving to us from his Maybach. If he only knew the effect his book has had on hapless millions around the world! Here we are, in office and park, in dark corridors and dazzling courtyards, fluffing up our pillows in bed and shaking our heads on the pot, closer than ever to breaking point, as we try to still the unruly traffic whizzing by – rushing onto the past and future totally unmindful of all our arm-waving to the contrary. The plausibility of the statement makes it all the more tantalising. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to work this particular Rubik’s Cube we mutter - but overall it feels like trying to catch a bus in a dream underwater... We tuck the book back on the shelf, wide-awake when we find ourselves doing it of course, and humbly admit it’s our own running technique (both concept and speed) and leave it at that.

Self-improvement and spiritual upliftment aren’t the only arenas in which inexplicable messaging works - mostly by inspiring an uncomprehending awe. Round-robin statements are, were, and always will be, to the political manor born! Remember the prime minister from the “alternative option” who loved wearing full-fur astrakhan caps and frequently said he was busy “managing contradictions” with an absolutely straight face? Of course, to some of us this is going to sound reasonable and to such persons I need to suggest beginning soon as a “social worker” (start small), that is, if they are not already prime-ministers-in-waiting (silly me!).

Another Indian prime minister with a most impressive pout, said he was actually acting when he wasn’t - meaning inaction itself was action of a terrifyingly effective kind! The world economy and I (in no particular order) are quite prepared to believe anything this multilingual bidda said (or didn’t in the practice of his particular brand of zen), because he had the temerity to run a full-term government populated largely by persons from the grand-old-party without benefit of guidance from “the family”. He also liberated us irrevocably from the yoke of third world pessimism symbolised perhaps by the overthrow of the jokes named the Premier Padmini and the Ambassador - mark XXXIII! That they still run as taxis in Mumbai and as transportation for the geriatric political set respectively is quite another story.

Yet another PM, from the other party this time, in this very deep country, practiced the art of the pregnant pause to punctuate both poetry and national policy. His pauses between phrases were the stuff crib-deaths are made of! And of course, all his ministers started imitating his syntax and delivery. Next it spread to the opposition and to the senior bureaucracy till eventually the only ones talking in complete sentences were the absolutely inconsequential who had no appetite for power-speak at all.

If you still don’t get it, please start from the beginning again or alternatively catch the next episode of the X Files because, as you watch, it is bound to dawn on you that the truth is truly and really out there… And please don’t be tiresome and ask “Where?”

(955 words)

By Ghatotkach
1st June 2005