The Lord of the Rings

A few days back I received a call from an old student well over two decades ago. I remember him being the eldest of the batch and of my age. he said he called to let me know that he was leaving his present job at a multinational company which was itself going through the throes of downsizing and axing departments worldwide. He said he was not looking for another job but would pursue his lifelong interest in stocks and valuation of companies despite his career in supply chain. When i suggested that he could always get back to his interest at a later date and that in the interim he could take up some offers he already had and alleviate any anxiety his family might go through. He said he was firm about pursuing his interest and had given it considerable thought and had the consent if not blessings of his family. He also said he wished to take up a spare office and work not from home and maintain a continuity in his professional career. I exhausted some ready nostrums and finally told him that it seemed like a fine idea if he was sure of the risks were manageable given the relative age of his two children and their stages of education. He was certain that they were taken into account. I wondered what to say to him. He obviously did not call just to keep me abreast, though it was the ostensible reason. I winced being in that position and brought back to me my memories my own decision several years ago.

I wish to repeat a tale i have told often enough to those who cared to listen. In the South China seas fishermen are often found in the still waters on long bamboo boats that are merely elongated slats fitted in the middle with a horizontal stump on either side carrying a few cormorant birds. At a cue the cormorants with sleek and waxy glistening bodies sunning themselves are pushed or coaxed into the waters where they dive deep. With ease they gulp into their distensible neck fish that they might have enjoyed once back on the surface. However unbeknownst to the bird is a ring strung by the fisherman that prevents them from swallowing the fish and was forced to give up her prey regurgitated. To ensure the bird's survival the fisherman paid a price of permitting the bird to swallow his catch at specified intervals making the bird obliged to the fisherman and his institutional arrangement! That ring is the lord of the rings!-A metaphor of our institutional culture! It represented the epitome of organisational life and all that it entailed of subordinating the individual unto the will and probably wisdom of institutions. It signified the conditioning that our entire society has been complicit in, in placing the institutions above individuals. It makes us overlook the fact that institutions were an ordering of norms and values and thus resources to serve the individual flower to her own potential; and more cynically of those who held privilege either by birth or circumstance or accumulated wealth. It represents the thrall that modern man finds himself entrapped in and unthinkingly being partisan to. It begins with the progression of institutions that we move through family, school, marriage, profession and are conditioned by not what we personally value but what others place and persuade us as emulable values. As David Brooks says we are shaped not by what we ask of life but what life asks of us. In absorbing the rules of the institutions we build our identities and become who we are and speak of obligations to the wider set of institutions. The earliest Hindu institutional imagination framed these as the three debts (rina) to the gods (devarina) the ancestors (pitrurina) and the teachers (rishirina). The radical of yore who repudiated them was termed (maybe pejoratively) as the shramana- the striver! As modern men we navigate a much more pervasive set of institutions and are indeed shaped entirely by them. Notice parents chaperoning children through schools and classes, even hobbies and fueling their ambitions to enshrine the institutional/organisational nobody 'anomie' to become someone! To question this is not to be an anarchist but to see with intelligence what it entails and that is a tale that is not easy for many of us. Youthful rebellion in the modern individualist is a product of fiction of Marlborough landscapes and conformity based consumption; an institutional imagination bred to an image than a radical choice; a Willy Loman not the Dr Faustus or Robinson Crusoe or Don Juan. It can also take sophisticated forms of being an intellectual, an aesthete or an activist or being spiritual, or even adopting academic fashions of being Left or Right leaning, quoting their respective scripture, awaiting the revolution or God or Godot who will never arrive (at least not yet). I believe that to be truly radical in freedom is to be free of the individual self and I say that with no woolly mystical undertones. There is no path or method to that. If that can be done only then is one truly independent. 

How could I advise my caller! I have no easy advice that is true. I offered him some contacts in the field that he was choosing of ex-students like him. I told him to take some time off and just let the hours invade his mind and discover the opportunity to rethink his life and priorities. I told him it is not easy and wished to tell him it is difficult to remain in uncertainty as a constant presence and that certainty is the reward of institutional life. We let go of certainties to embrace yet other certainties. We fear having nothing to do. We are never with ourselves, the 'what is'. We do not really care for the self. I do encourage him to be his own master (which we never really are). I also know he would do well though it seems like a big step for him. Yet i believe that he was not changing any configuration of values that might make the transition difficult. He despite his anxiety was merely wading from one form of institutional life into another of the same kind. There were some risks though not that he could not overcome.

I thought i would tell him of my own example though it has little value. I state this with no diffidence nor as a confession. I am aware of my own struggles that i yet undergo and that i am still plagued with doubts at the choices I have made and continue to make (by letting things just be). No tale is without its idiosyncrasy and there are no answers, only choices we are accountable for. I quit my job almost 15 years ago to what many thought (including myself) to be on my own, and I believe it has not been easy though it has been easy on my conscience which to many, including my mother has been small consolation at its whittled wallet. I did not choose to be self employed but was forced into that choice (by my thinking), though I cant say i did not enjoy it. With my tiny family that consists none but my mother who was widowed at the same time I left my job and its certainties, I assumed responsibilities i did not bargain for and took to being conscientious as a virtue; only to discover its merit as equally untrue. I have been tending to my elderly parent for long and have even become geriatric in my own view of my world and seem to waver between being liberal and conservative and disappointed at both. I have become domesticated in a way that i have never imagined, and count among my diurnal chores washing, cleaning, cooking, giving medicine, taking mom for a walk and other activity that keeps me grounded from my exaggerated cogitation. My bills were paid not by ancestral wealth but a sliver of independent work that is sufficient for my needs that were calibrated to match. 

My mother probably believes I am a failure and finds it difficult to conceal her disappointment, wanting that I was a jet setting executive like my peers with a fleet of cars and little time for anything else (including herself). My own mentor Dr Shrikant just before he passed away remarked that "other than taking care of your mother you have done nothing (read-have been a complete failure)" and i nodded in agreement weary of any explanation or argument despite my disagreement. Most of my friends have been estranged as they follow a rapid cycle of engagements and appointments that fills their hours and have little patience for languorous rumination. My neighbours look at me i would think with pity if not scorn despite their courtesy though I make myself available to assist or help when i can with no expectations. The life of the mind though a nice term is not entirely without its own institutional demands and ambitions, of being entrapped in demonstrating keenness of intellect and originality of thought or turn of phrase, deed or its radical character. I pursued a panoply of studies, even odd courses in philosophy, history, culture, even science but remained unfulfilled if not uneducated. Only the shadowy life of the spirit seems plausible in its utter solitude though it sounds like like an apology to most for there is nothing to show, just to be! Being plain, predictable and unspectacular is not so bad if the identity we seek is what we are comfortable with. We notice what is common as never before and we sympathise with suffering readily and celebrate little joys and see the world for its ordinaryness. The rain tree is putting out tender green leaves for spring and with the bread crumbs i scatter I see the little crows and sparrows have their beaks stuffed by doting mother birds and all seems well with the world. Time passes as also everything else. 

All trajectories of possible choices my friend, I believe are true and serve their purpose with none better than another. We are led as much as we believe we lead and have our choices thrust as much as we believe that we make our choices. There are not just alternative futures but also alternative pasts (in reconstructed narratives). Volition is overrated and we are fearful of a solipsistic universe where we alone exist. We remain the sole judges and arbitrators of our lives, the more consciously we think through them; though thinking through does not really make better choices or mitigate the risks. Probably thinking just comes in the way. Things just are the way they are and that is not a position of weakness or stasis. It does not have the glory of being radical and to our eyes seems dull and dreary. The human condition has always been the same whether in the Illiad or in Avatar. The truly radical i believe lies within, that is nurtured with care and the deliberateness of being still; for they can say even when the world seems so conflicted, truly "aall is well". 

What can i tell you my friend. Trust yourself and go forth!

P.S. Upon reading this an old student asked me "I am not sure but are you happy?" I think the best answer would be what the playwright Alan Bennett in his lovely play The History Boys makes a school teacher state in later years accosted by his own teacher's ghost who asks him "Are you happy"? "Well I am not happy but I am not unhappy about it". 

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