Sweet speech

The Vedas, Vedangas and the Thirukkural praise the soft voice and the sweet word. In fact the Upanishads say that speech that is haughty and harsh is demonaic in nature. Sant Kabir’s doha says “Madhur vachan hai aushadi, katuk vachan hai teer”. (Sweet words are healing medicine, sharp words are arrows.) The Holy Bible lauds “The soft answer that turneth away wrath”.

So why do we yell and speak wrathfully? Obviously, because we’re brutalised by circumstances. Try getting a piece of paper out of a government office, try making sense of millions of miles of illiteracy — or worse, semi-literacy — in a profession like journalism where language is supposed to be our professional metier. Try getting an honest day’s work out of chronically lazy people who would rather hang out in an ‘‘adda’’ than deliver the goods on time. Try making sloppy minds understand the need for ‘‘good finish’’: to an article, a tv graphic, a window frame, a garden trellis, a seam on a shirt, a drawer that would slide smoothly if properly set, a simple nail on the wall, for heaven’s sake, that does not need disfiguring saw marks around it. Try buying a car if you’re an NRI who hasn’t yet acquired a ration card. Try to spend 24 hours in any place without the UPS having to activate. Try driving home from work. It’s a laugh reading about “India as an investment destination”. The fact is, we love being klutzy and we seem to want to go on being klutzy despite a few mad people killing themselves to point out the obvious alternative.

In such a situation you first want to tell anyone with the temerity to faff on everlastingly about the “Self” and all the Bhakti saints and every escapist who ever suggested ‘‘prapatti’’ (total surrender to God) to go take a flying leap into the Indian Ocean. Prapatti taken literally at a superficial level, as we seem to do in India, amounts to dumping everything on poor God and not lifting a finger to help ourselves. The consequences are truly dreadful. The first thing to go is our sweetness of nature as human beings. The inner rasa becomes woefully curdled and we fall into unpleasant habits of sarcasm, bad temper, bad language and finally, acts of verbal if not physical violence (road rage is a good example of what happens when we totally lose it).

What’s the cure? Alas, scripture utters one stern word: sudama. Rigorous self-restraint. As the Awadhi doha urges: “Piran rasna tham ke, kar miskini bhes/mithey bolo ne chalo sab hai tumahre des.” ‘‘O sufi, keep quiet, keep away, speak sweet words and live straight; the whole world will then be yours”. I guess it’s prapatti, after all, because you surrender to inner stillness. Is that what they mean by the Self?