The morning after

After the prabhat pheris, flag hoistings, march pasts, speeches and laddoos of this year’s Pandrah August, how are we supposed to feel on Monday morning? Top-of-the-mind a false feeling seems to pervade the soulside of Indian life, especially the arts: writing, painting, sculpture, dance and even music. Everywhere, there’s a celebration of mediocrity, of tiny talents making like they’re wunderkind and raucously demanding our applause. There’s so much bubblegum coming out of TV and print that readymix fame seems the only worthwhile goal left. Of course it all points to a loss of faith in the idea of India, a pitiful reduction of the circle of belief to oneself. Most annoying of all to the curmudgeons in our midst, everyone is so darn earnest, like that line by Yeats: “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (think jehadis, rampaging karsewaks or Congress chamchas grovelling before Mrs Sonia Gandhi). Has everyone forgotten what it’s like to not take oneself seriously while taking one’s work seriously?

Instead you have high-priced crash courses on the Karma Kand of the Bhagvad Gita, all telling you how to optimise yourself at the workplace. Nothing basically wrong except somehow it seems skewed. Shouldn’t you help people be better people, not just businessmen? Anyhow, the shop doing the briskest trade is the one selling spirituality, complete with guru or guress photos, dolls, malas, dhoop, aromatherapy packs and prayer books. You think wistfully of Jesus driving the shopkeepers from the temple and a materially free Namdev just deciding to up and leave on pilgrimage with Nivritti, Sopan and Mukta Bai.

Instead of religious tracts hawking sweet surrender and bliss-out bargains, what if we took on the good old Protestant work ethic without the choo-mantar? Think Emerson. He makes the best American pennant. If ever someone’s words were meant to be a cautionary or inspirational poster, they’re his. I guess lots of us like his thoughts, starting with, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know”. The Nehru-Gandhis, the lesser clans, every one of our politicians, should frame this Emerson quote big and hang it at the foot of their bed and on their study wall: “Every hero becomes a bore at last.” And we could put up welcome banners at political rallies saying “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.”

For every spiritual salesman, what about, “Truth is beautiful, without doubt. So are lies”? For ourselves, we could tape up: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.” And a line just made for India: “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”