There Are Times When ...

(Published in Banking Services Chronicle September 2003)

There are times when you feel totally at sea. Or, worse still, stranded on an island. In an era when helicopters did not hover for search-and-rescue operations. At a geographical location where ships steer away from you. Avoiding you like the plague. Or, to carry the ship analogy further, like the Bermuda triangle.

There are times when you feel forsaken by the world. The feeling of “not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name.” The feeling experienced by an orphan in the Dickensian world. The big, bad world out there awes you, intimidates you, even knocks you down unconscious.

There are times when the world around you becomes a seething cauldron. An inferno ablaze with flames of Gujarat-like horror. When you are a mute spectator to a scourge like an earthquake. Because it is beyond human control. When you are a silent witness to ghastly acts perpetrated by fellow humans in the name of religion. Because of that attachment to one’s own life.

There are times when you experience the idiocy of being a couch-potato. When you know you are surfing through the channels because you have nothing better to do. When your thinking becomes as flat as the screen before you. When the smaller-than-life figures try to grab your attention. Mocking at your poverty of ideas.

There are times when you work like a machine. Excellent results. Clockwork precision. Symmetry, balance, alignment, consistency, neatness, speed. Ask anyone about the machine and there comes an instant reaction: “What a machine!” And yet you begin to think and feel like a machine. At best, like an intelligent one. The human warmth is missing.

There are times when you conclude that the scriptures contain rubbish. That platitudes are to be mouthed, not followed. That honesty is not the best policy. That work is not worship. That people make a fool of you after you have served them. That selfishness pays. That truth can’t be your friend. That good does not prevail over evil.

And there are times when you think nothing matters. That the seers were right when they said, “God is truth; the world an illusion.” That the world is a construct of our dreams. That life is as Shakespeare called, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Chances are you have gone through and go through most or all of these times. If you have not, you are either a saint or an asinine creature who simply refuses to think. And when you go through these phases, you are enveloped by a pall of gloom and despair. Your road seems to have met a dead end. Clouds of uncertainty drift in the sky of dejection. You run for shelter for fear of a downpour but you find none.

But remember every cloud has a silver lining. And there is light at the end of every tunnel. Every sea has a port. Every sweltering spell of heat comes to an end with a welcome shower. Every night of darkness ends with the rosy tint of dawn. Every Ravana meets his fate in Rama, who is goodness incarnate.

If you have been stranded on an island like Robinson Crusoe, you will find your companion sooner or later in Man Friday. And as far as Dickensian era is concerned, we have left that era long behind. There are various organisations functioning today with the sole purpose of pulling the helpless children out of the muddy world.
Even Gujarat-like tragedy is only a temporary phenomenon — an “aberration” by the otherwise good humans. If you talk of couch-potatoes, don’t forget Ekta Kapoor was also one of the group. What you need is an ability to cash in on your so-called disadvantage.

If you think coolly, you know you have a heart. And the scriptures begin to make sense. For they are “Think A While” of a previous era. Though times change, the basic problems remain the same. And so do the basic solutions. Only their form changes.

So, take courage. The world is a beautiful place. Make success a habit. Nothing succeeds like success.