Forward Motion

Forward Motion


To think of paying for a mistake or a wrong doing with penance is the norm. I suppose if it’s a criminal grade act, being punished and made to suffer is entirely appropriate--though you wouldn’t think so if you count the numbers of such persons swaggering about the place.

But supposing we do own up--we say sorry. We humble ourselves. We do “kar seva” at mosque, temple, church, gurdwara or Witch’s Coven. We make, or try to make, sincere amends. We strain to be sensitive this time around and lean forward with eagerness to understand the wronged one’s point of view. It is hellish uncomfortable and abasing to do all this, and we long to be shot of it as we struggle with the rising bile. But supposing we ignore this personal discomfort and fix our minds on the intended outcome, fast forwarding to the part when the wronged party is smiling approvingly and we’re over the hump and off the hook.

Yes but we should be so lucky! Most of the time, this trying to put things right comes horribly unstuck. You begin to understand the brigade that says never apologise, never beg, with some degree of fervour and passion. Because, far from appreciating your haloed efforts, the aggrieved party seems catalysed in the wrong direction, like dodgem cars jumping their moorings in the direction of pensioners, not feeling good at all, but reliving the hurt and humiliation, amplified and exaggerated far beyond anything you remember inflicting. And you, in your misguided zeal to set things right, start to see the whole ball of twine unravelling into an unintended mess, gorier and crazier than the first time around. So much for imagining that the proffered apology would be accepted with good grace!

So the thing to do is put on a burst of forward motion and help the wronged--in a generic sense, via their successors, via intended consequences. By putting an African American in the White House for example, or a Woman, even a White one. Nearer home, elevating a Dalit to the Chief Justiceship couldn’t be more poetically just. And watching the Supreme Court he runs make it possible for small traders to get off the pavement and back into their desealed shops is just too. Atonement works much better than apology. Ask any Aborigine.


(390 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday 15th February 2008