thank you sir

A chance remark that one of my professors made a couple of months ago about my intellectual location has been making me think very seriously. Many others who know me slightly better personally have spoken along similar lines before and since. But I have been observing my words and actions more closely during these couple of months, partly because I was not expecting the comment from the professor since we have not interacted very regularly, except for occasional academic exchanges. The incident made me alive to two crucial realizations. One, either people who I don’t know too well observe me too carefully or that my words and actions leave too many telltale signs. The later is more likely to be true for the simple reason that I have no special power or authority to impact people’s lives for them to keep track of my conducts very seriously. Put more crudely, I appear to be rather careless about my public profile, either overestimating my intelligence or underestimating others’. The second point relates to what he actually said and on that let me wonder a bit today. Both have very serious implications, for me as well as for friends, floaters and foes who I keep coming across as a person and as a professional.

On this lovely early autumn morning the other day I had gone to the market complex to pick something up and so presumably had the professor too. He was heading back actually when I entered. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, he wondered whether I had been part of a ‘relay’ hunger strike that had then been in motion, challenging the administration to rectify certain alleged anomalies in this years’ admission process. He said he had seen my first name in some of the posters but was wondering whether I might indeed be the person. Explaining the reason he said he thought I am too much of a classical liberal to take sides, that I always see both sides of the arguments. For that he did compliment me mildly while, more importantly, at the same time cautioning that I’ll have a very rough ride in future precisely for that reason.

To put it mildly, it stopped me on my tracks right there and then and been haunting me ever since. Within a few seconds, he summed up a central trait of my character that I had known all along but refused to digest for what it is. If you wanted to insert that willing suspension of disbelief stereotype anywhere, I say this is the place. Indeed, I have never felt comfortable in a debate for I always find some merit in my opponents’ arguments but then feel pressing it beyond a point leads to impasse and orthodoxy. The truth is slightly more complicated. Deep down I think I would very much like to press my point through but somehow do not and then feel bad about it.

Over the years, I have discovered, believing in your points beyond all reasonable limits has nothing to do with logic or analysis. It is rather a matter or choice and conviction, that is faith. Faith, I have seen, actually moves mountains. If you don’t believe me, please read about a gentleman called Dasrath Manjhi. In brief, he spent half a lifetime singlehandedly cutting a tunnel through a mountain to make a road from his remote village to the nearest hospital. Earlier, his people had to endure a half day long journey circumambulating the mountain to reach the hospital which they now make it about three hours. Manjhi’s wife could not survive such a long journey to the hospital and that got the unassuming man undertake what has been literally a Himalyan task and successfully complete it too. Words fail me when I think of characters of this sort. I only admire in silence. But then I am also fascinated by just how much can be accomplished if one actually persists with one’s simple, basic beliefs.

Now faith of this magnitude calls for an absolute devotion to the cause and shutting out the rest of the world before you. But then my heart sinks at the mere thought of sacrificing my daily dose of neat certitudes. At another, more serious, level I find it very frustrating to see many people enduring a very difficult life in anticipation of a better future that never comes. My mother is not a Dasrath Manjhi but I have not seen anyone believing more in god and destiny and in working silently and sincerely. Yet I have not seen anyone suffering so much in life, in pretty much every phase of it. I have read and thought on this issue occasionally—this thing of ordinary people choosing to repose so much faith over god, over destiny, over science, and over many other institutional instruments of order.

Then I reflect on an observation by the Mother, of the Aurobindo ashram, Pondichery. I had read it at least twenty years ago and it is one of the rare lines that again has remained with me ever since. She said that to start with we must have a simple mind and those who nurture too many dilemmas always continue to suffer from indecision. This is the core point about being tempted to see merit in both sides of the fence—you stand undecided. But I think the real problem is a reluctance to face difficulties. Faith necessarily makes you partisan but it also empowers you to ensure hardship, and to nurture hope for a better future, even beyond the faithfuls’ lifetime. But when one moves from considering all sides of the problem to taking a stand, one has to travel through a loss. This loss involves making the choice that one is never going to get the things that taking the opposite stand could have ensured. I presume I have always had a problem negotiating this road.

That, however, leads us to a fascinating aporia. On the one hand, if you choose to believe in a cause, god or anything of your choice, you are willingly committing yourself to suffering all sorts of hardships until your faith is realized in the way you want it to be. But this option offers you the delusion, or solace, of spiritual rootedless, in a larger sense. On the other hand, if you do not choose to believe and continue to question, like I have done all my life and still do, generally speaking, you cannot afford the comforting embrace of naïve faith in a greater cause and continue to suffer from a paralyzing uncertainty. Unless you question, faith will lead to orthodoxy, whether scientific or spiritual, and will snuff out all dissent for good. Orthodoxy, in its turn, will lead to stagnation. And unless you believe, questioning will only lead to anarchy or chaos, and will only destabilize instead of contributing anything positive towards a better, happier and more constructive future. I guess all of us who can think face this fascinating aporia all the time and work out our own individual solutions which is nothing but striking a negotiable balance between the two. I am, of course, still working out mine. The beauty of the problem lies in the fact that even as it offers so many solutions, it still somehow always remains a problem that never ceases to stir our imagination. I mean here you have a problem that has so many solutions and yet is never solved for good. Amazing isn’t it?

One way I now try to negotiate this aporia is through the position that problems themselves defy a comprehensive solution because they don’t have an external existence, beyond what we ourselves do and are. Problems are essentially within us, not in our surroundings, entirely independent of our contribution. They can’t probably be spoken of in abstraction, if we are indeed looking for a solution for no solution, correspondingly, can be found beyond our own perception of the problem. And when we accept this much, we have little else to do except to try to get back to striking this balance to which I referred above. Since this is more or less within our reach, I suppose the aporia no longer remains so much more daunting. Sounds fairly empowering to me really and I think it’s all that I want to say today. I owe this insight to many friends and well wishers but I must acknowledge fondly that chance encounter with prof J. Thank you prof. J, you’ll never know how great a favor it has been.

Postscript- To those of you who find this too obscure or are wondering where you have heard all this before, please go to the second paragraph in page 56 of Catch 22. Nobody can make this point better than Yosarian aka Joseph Heller and I am making absolutely no claim to originality. But Yosarian finally made it, didn't he? So too will we all. For sure.