Poornima Manco

In Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, Satan postulates that it is “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven”. Interestingly, I’ve come across a completely opposite mindset lately.

On my travels across India in the last few months, I had occasion to speak to a lot of people about the changing political landscape. There were very many valid concerns about the rise of radicalism and right wing rhetoric, about callous and unthinking laws being put into motion to the detriment of the common man, about the lack of infra structure to support the rapid expansion of metropolitan cities and/or small towns, and a general fearfulness and dread that democracy, such as it is, was being eroded by an authoritarian government.

However, what shocked and saddened me was the stance of a particular generation. This is the generation that was born shortly after India gained its Independence from the British. This is the generation who was too young to remember what it was like in the days of the Raj, but old enough to have enjoyed the remaining benefits of a disciplined governance and a healthy infra structure. Their stance is paradoxical to Satan/Lucifer’s. They truly believe that as Indians we were better off being ruled by the British. That we are a corrupt and morally bankrupt nation with a slavish mentality. That, like chaotic teenagers on the loose, we will end up destroying India. That, under the British, there was cohesion and rule of law and a principled superintendence.

Of course there was. The British saw the Empire as an extension of Britain. They plundered while they ruled. But they also built the railways and the schools and the courts, and everything was tickety-boo. For them.

Winston Churchill, that great hero who led Britain to victory in World War 2, once said, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” His antediluvian statements can be dismissed as the thought process of the time. Of a culmination of the Imperialism practiced by many European nations, with the justification of subjugating, colonising and ultimately benefitting the savage natives of the East and of Africa.

Yet, by admitting that we were better off as a colony, aren’t we also admitting to being those very repugnant savages that Britain chose to bring to heel?

India had a rich and varied cultural history much before she was colonised. There was education, tradition, art forms and healthy trade. There was also casteism, infighting and poverty. It wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever is. What over two hundred years of colonisation did was try and make India into a pale facsimile of Britain. And that is the vision that some choose to cling to, to this day.

While I am not in agreement with the myth of the puritanical Hindu land where aeroplanes and surgery were invented in whatever century B.C., neither do I agree that India should have stayed under the British Raj. Whatever great muddle the country is in now, it is it’s OWN muddle. One that the free thinkers, the activists and the common public, will help unravel in due course.

70 years of Independence may not have necessarily evened the playing field for everyone. Yet, as a relatively nascent nation rebuilding itself, India hasn’t done too badly. Every nation carries the burden of its history. What it chooses to do with it, is entirely to its own discretion.

Chosen servitude is voluntary abdication of responsibility. It is a cop out of magnificent proportions. Can anyone be happy being enslaved? As Thucydides, the ancient Athenian historian once said, “The secret to happiness is freedom…And the secret to freedom is courage.”

There’s this lady that works at the Reception of my gym who really doesn’t like me. She has never been overtly rude to me, but every time I approach her, her face turns stony, her gaze glacial and her tone borderline obnoxious. I would think that perhaps that’s just her personality, except that I have seen her laughing with and being nice to other people. So, what is it about me that sets her teeth on edge?

I’m not a rude person. If anything, I am extra polite. Being in the service industry, I can’t help but be nice to people. It’s a default mechanism. Every so often however, I come up against people who take a dislike to me. Some, like the aforementioned woman, I have minimal dealings with. Others, who after a certain amount of time spent in my company, find that they truly cannot abide me. My overriding fear at times like these is: am I horrible person?

Now, I know that I am not a horrible person. I am just an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, and in the course of this life, just as I accumulate people who love me or like me, I am equally likely to accumulate those who don’t. Yet, with a writer’s predisposition to analyse everything, I’m truly perplexed when these instances crop up.

I examine my behaviour. I go over words, actions, expressions; tooth combing them to see how I may have caused offence. In short, I over think everything. Then I swing the other way, trying to feel blasé, as though none of this bothers me, when in reality, it does. It’s exhausting.

I wish I could be that person who lives and thrives, irrespective of others’ opinions of her. I wish these tiny slights or major snubs didn’t dent my self esteem and send me into a spiral of self examination. I wish I had the ability to not take everything to heart.

Yet, without any of this over-sensitivity, would I be the writer I am?

Perhaps that is the trade off.

Every nation has its Achilles heel. If in America, everything big and shiny and new is aways seen as an improvement, then in Britain royalty and any connection to it confers an automatic superiority over lesser mortals. I’m sure such like must exist everywhere. But in India, there is a fascination with dynasties. In the absence of royalty, we have lineages.

I grew up in India. I grew up in a household that had supported the Congress party. Up until the time I could think for myself, my allegiance lay in the same place as my family’s. Later, as the party fell apart, and a certain family name became inextricably linked with it, I started to wonder why, as Indians, we placed such importance on a bloodline. Did having the same genes make you necessarily better at the same thing as your forefathers?

A recent row that erupted in the Hindi film industry, also known as Bollywood, was over nepotism. That ubiquitous practice of promoting family regardless of talent or merit. Bollywood is rife with it. Millions of rupees are ploughed into projects with star sons or star daughters. So rarely do they bring any returns. And yet, riding on the coat tails of their ancestry, these talentless no hopers survive and thrive. If an outsider happens to question this practice, they are mocked at, shunned and publicly humiliated. Then life carries on, pretty much the same as before.

Be it the Gandhis in politics, or the Kapoors and the Bachchans (amongst many others) in films, there is an automatic presumption of accession. Yet, what if nature does not provide that which nurture wishes to promote?

Cricketers’ sons do not automatically become cricketers. Writers’ children don’t always write. Artists’ progeny may have no interest in art. So, why do parents or society see it fit to shoe horn people into professions they may have no natural ability or aptitude for?

There is no denying that amongst those that DO have the interest and the inclination, not forgetting the competence and faculty, ancestry can play an important role. Here, the foundation is laid and the environment is conducive to progress and excellence. Support, mentoring and an understanding of the profession can be invaluable. Nature and nurture can work in tandem.

Sadly, more often than not, its the chaff not the wheat that gets pushed to the forefront.

Perhaps it is time for us to abandon these idiosyncrasies, and celebrate talent, intelligence, courage and competence wherever it occurs. Perhaps it is time to relegate nepotism and favouritism to the rubbish heap where they belong.

Or perhaps, it is just time to get my head examined. Utopia, after all, exists only in the minds of the mentally challenged.

We have a strange relationship with time. As children, it seems to stretch out in front of us, endlessly. Days are long, oft monotonous, and the routine of school, homework, exams seems to be a never ending loop with no end in sight. We can’t wait to grow up, to govern time, to make it do our bidding.

In our youth, time is still on our side. With the careless optimism that fills our days, we match our step with time, outpacing it sometimes with our feckless, buoyant energy, ignoring it other times in our sleepy, enervated lassitude but always, always taking it for granted.

When jobs, marriages, partners and children jostle for space in our lives, time is in short supply. We race from one moment to the next, barely pausing for breath. Days, weeks, months, years fly past and we can scarcely keep count.

It is in our twilight years that time once again slows down. Our days are numbered but they are no longer filled with a hurried urgency. We don’t have the luxury of an entire lifetime. We don’t have the insouciance of youth. Our fruitful, fertile days are history, and all that lies ahead is the certainty of death.

What is time then? Is it a friend that helps us grow, change, develop and experience life? Or, is it a foe that eludes us when we need it most, and stabs us when we aren’t looking?

Time is both and neither.

Time is a silent companion that knows only to march forward relentlessly. It bows to no one. It turns back for nobody.

The sad truth is, that by the time we come to appreciate its worth, it is nearly always too late.