Dusshera: Right and wrong.

 

Today, just outside my society building, three effigies are standing. Dressed in colorful clothes, with faces dipped in the blood of cruelty, they symbolize evil. They will be burnt. People are already standing in good numbers to see them up in flames. The victory of good over bad, right over wrong.

I often have difficulty saying right from wrong in today’s world. In some parts of India, the three effigies that are going to burn are not evil, but gods. Ravana is worshipped. He has temples. To acknowledge him as evil would be to betray the devotees of this great king. Wouldn’t they hate that their king or their god is being caricatured and then shamed for people to display their support for the good?

These doubts come to me when I ponder over other things as well. Building an industry is good for the economic growth of the country. It is the right thing for it gives employment, raises living standards and provides goods to the consumers. It is an answer to the poverty of people, a light in the growing darkness of their empty bellies. But then one thinks of the trees being felled, the pollution in the air, the lands of the locals displaced, the waste being thrown into the rivers that one wonders whether it is at all good. A child may have an empty belly but he still has a land, a home to call his own. If the factory takes that away for nothing, what good is it?

I think about women being asked to comply, to leave their jobs to look after their husband and children, to call the kitchen of the house their temple. It is right for them. The man can earn and she can support him in household chores. She has to dress the way the husband’s family wants. But then what about her independence, her wishes, her power to determine her destiny. What about the slow drift from her times of freedom to this fiefdom, of becoming an idea of someone else. What good is it!

I think about the good behavior of the mentally ill. Of leading their life zombie like on medications. Of keeping quiet and in subservience to the people around them. To not speak on things they do not understand, to not expect much from their life, to be told that the best thing for them is to roll through life as if vitality has been sucked away from them. To be looked and laughed at. To be labeled so that others can form instant opinion of them. What about their opinions? What about the truths of their lives? What about the stigma and shameless they feel because people around them are just not good enough to understand them? What about the injustice and wrongs done to them just because others put the blame of their insufficiency on them?

I think about PhD students of this country. Of having to study under able guides who will build them up for future success. Of being told to study science as if it were the Vedas those were to be remembered. Of being asked to stay away from topics that are not fit to be explored. Of limiting their curiosity as if curiosity is an obedient wife which should be put in place. Of writing what is good for the consumption of the guide. What about the beauty of wonder and the power of awe? What about taking a stroll in unexplored territories? What about asking tough questions that can inform the society? What about challenging the status quo, what is wrong in all that?

Sometimes these questions come into my mind. Sometimes one thinks about rights and wrongs. Some wrongs that could have been right. Happy Dusshera.