Living Bhagavad Gita 022_When Tamas Takes Over

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

[Continued from the previous post]

Sanjaya said: Having spoken thus in the battlefield, Arjuna sank down into the chariot dropping his bow and arrows, his mind heavy with grief. BG 1.47

Chapter One of the Bhagavad Gita began with a question by Dhritarashtra about what his sons and the sons of Pandu did in the battlefield of Kurukshetra and now we have come to the last verse of the chapter in which Sanjaya tells the blind king that Arjuna has sat down in the chariot overcome by great compassion that has risen in his heart, refusing to fight.

The journey of the Gita which is a journey into light begins with tamas, darkness – Dhritarashtra is tamas. We cannot help but wonder how appropriate this is because all journeys have to begin from where we are and we are in darkness now. The purpose of the Gita is to take us from the darkness – spiritual darkness – in which we are now to light. Tamaso maa jyotir gamaya, lead me from darkness to light, says one of the oldest prayers known to mankind, a prayer that we find the Vedic people of India making to the unnamed power that presides over our lives. Gita is about this journey from darkness to light.

The Bhagavad Gita shows us how we can travel from darkness to light. Krishna tells us it is for each one of us to make this journey from darkness to light, it is for us to pull ourselves out of the abyss we have fallen into. Uddharet aatmanaa aatmaanam: Lead yourself by your own self, he says in the Gita. If we are in the gutter it is because of ourselves and it is for us to climb out of that gutter – that is what the Gita tells us, that is Krishna’s way. As the greatest leadership teacher in the history of humanity, Krishna knows that without our will to get out of the mess we are in we will never come out of it.      

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The darkness Dhritarashtra finds himself in when he asks that question in the first verse of the Gita was of his own making – others certainly aided him in that but his role in its creation is no less important than anyone else’s. From the television serials on the epic, many of us tend to blame Duryodhana and Shakuni for the tragedy of the Mahabharata, but Dhritarashtra was the king, the man invested with all power, and he was also Duryodhana’s father. Just as a modern organizational head is ultimately responsible for whatever happens in that organization, the responsibility for the tragedy of the Mahabharata in the final analysis is his, more than that of anyone else.    

It is interesting that this blind king because of whom India fought its greatest ever war was a biological son of Sage Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, the compiler of the Vedas, author of the Puranas and arguably the greatest sage our land has known – a fact that proves greatness and wisdom cannot be inherited but have to be acquired. As Gibran said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Each one of us is a child of Life. In our endless journey, each one of us has had thousands of mothers and fathers – they are the gates through which we enter this world but we do not originate in them. The Mahabharata says our relationships are like the relationships of two logs meeting in the vast ocean, now brought together and now again separated: yathaa kaashtham cha kaastham cha samaayetaam mahodadhau, sametya cha vimaayetaam, evam bandhu-samaagamah.  We are all alike eternal sojourners in this vast ocean of life. And in that beginningless and endless journey, each one of us undergoes endless experiences, including our experiences with our current parents, react to those experiences in our own unique ways and are shaped to become what we are now. Some of us end up as predominantly sattvic, some others as rajasic and yet others as tamasic.  Ultimately the responsibility for what we have become rests on us. [And so long as we blame others for what we, divine sparks the Upanishads calls amritasya putraah, children of immortality, have become, there is no possibility of change.] 

There is no way gunas can be inherited from our parents, as we see in the case of the four sons of Maharshi Vyasa. His son Brahmarshi Shuka is beyond all gunas – an enlightened man who has become gunatita. Vidura, another biological son of his, is predominantly sattvic and Pandu is rajasic. Dhritarashtra, the blind king with whose name the Bhagavad Gita begins, is deeply tamasic. In fact, he could be used as an example to explain what tamas means as I have done numerous times in my lectures to the business school students I have taught and the corporate officers I have trained during sessions on understanding self and others, motivating self and others and so on. It is difficult to find a better example for tamas in the Mahabharata than Dhritarashtra.

Tamasic people cannot create – creativity is the opposite of tamas. But they can destroy. They are not stupid, but have a kind of intelligence that Krishna names tamasic intelligence. Krishna gives us a definition of tamasic intelligence, tamasic buddhi, in the eighteenth chapter of the Gita:

adharmam dharmam iti yaa manyate tamasaavritaa, sarvaarthaan vipareetaamshcha buddhih saa paartha taamasee.

The intelligence which is clothed in darkness and sees adharma as dharma and views all things as the opposite of what they are, that intelligence is tamasic.  BG 18.32

Ruthless, cunning, manipulative, insensitive to the sufferings of others, totally self-centered and joyless, tamasic people try to doggedly hold on to whatever they have. They cling to things, cling to their power, positions and privilege, refusing to let go, ad Dhritarashtra does.

In his international best seller Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach speaks of a village of creatures living at the bottom of a crystal river. He says:

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.”

These creatures at the bottom of the river that Richard Bach speaks of are excellent examples for tamasic people. These insecure people are like baby birds in a nest, refusing to let go of the security of the nest and thus denying themselves the freedom and joyfulness of the boundless skies. Dhritarashtra is like those small creatures at the bottom of the river, like those baby birds who refuse to flutter their wings, let go and take to the skies. The name Dhritarashtra can mean one who holds the rashtra, the kingdom, together. It can also equally well mean one who holds on to the rashtra, the kingdom, one who clings to the kingdom, to the throne and crown, to power, as Mahabharata’s Dhritarashtra definitely does.

Continuing Bach’s story:

“But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom.”

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.”

But they cried the more, “Saviour!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.”

Tamasic people just cannot let go. They are incapable of doing that. Unfortunately without letting go of the alpa, the small, there is no bhooma, the big.

But the tamasic just cannot let go. Clinging because of their insecurities, the tamasic live a life of fear, a life of dread, seeing threats everywhere, afraid of what they have being snatched away from them any moment. They become paranoid.

There is a beautiful Taoist story about a phoenix and an owl:

Hui Tzu was prime minister of Liang. He had what he believed to be inside information that Chuang Tzu [the great Taoist master] coveted his post, and was plotting to supplant him.

When Chuang Tzu came to visit Liang, the prime minister send out police to arrest him, But although they searched for three days and nights, they could not find him.

Meanwhile Chuang Tzu presented himself to Hui Tzu of his own accord, and said: “Have you heard about the bird that lives in the south – the phoenix that never grows old? This undying phoenix rises out of the south sea and flies to the sea of the north, never alighting except on certain sacred trees. He will touch no food but the most exquisite rare fruit, and he drinks only from the clearest springs. Once an owl chewing an already half decayed rat saw the phoenix fly over. Looking up he screeched with alarm and clutched the dead rat to himself in fear and dismay.”

“Prime minister,” asked Chuang Tzu, “why are you so frantic, clinging to your ministry and screeching at me in dismay?”

Had Dhritarashtra cared about the good of his subjects as an Indian king was expected to rather than clinging to power, had he cared even for his own son’s good, the war would not have happened. He should have handed power back to Yudhishthira, whose it really was as per the conventions of the day since his father Pandu was the last king of the Bharata’s and Dhritarashtra was no more than a caretaker. Had he done that, he wouldn’t have had to weep at the end of the war that all his one hundred sons have been killed, that Bhima did not spare even one of them.   

 

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The Mahabharata tells us that when Sage Vyasa came to his sister-in-law Ambika to produce a child through the ancient custom of niyoga as ordered by his mother, seeing his ascetic form she closed her eyes and that is why her son was born. This story is symbolic of Dhritarashtra’s mother turning away from light, closing her eyes to light, rejecting light at the moment of his conception, for Vyasa was light, wisdom, goodness and spirituality at the highest level.

Just as his mother did at the moment of his conception, throughout his life the blind king turned away from light and remained a prisoner of darkness, of the asuri sampada that the Gita speaks of.

 It was not for the first time that in ancient India, or even in the history of the Bharata dynasty itself, that primogeniture has been overlooked in favour of competency. Bharata himself, after whom the dynasty is named, rejected all his nine sons born to his three queens since he did not find them ‘appropriate’, competent enough, and accepted a rank outsider called Bhumanyu as his successor. Dhritarashtra’s own grandfather, Emperor Shantanu was not the eldest son of his father Emperor Pratipa – he was his youngest son. Pratipa’s eldest son was Devapi who on his own gave up inheritance because he had leprosy and became an ascetic. Devapi’s younger brother Bahlika abandoned his right to the Kuru kingdom and went to live with his maternal uncle in what we call the Balkh country today and eventually inherited that kingdom. That is how the crown came to Shantanu.  

The rule that someone who suffered from a physical defect or disease was not fit to rule was based on the ancient understanding that kingship was a responsibility and not a privilege and to be fully effective a king – a leader – should have all his faculties at his command so that he can understand the situation personally and take the right decision. Dhritarashtra was denied the throne based because it was felt by those in power that a blind king will not be able to fully comprehend challenging situations and if he failed to do so and took wrong decisions on important issues, the kingdom would suffer. One of the important expectations in those days was that the leader led from the front, particularly in the battlefield, and here a blind man was at a disadvantage, though exceptions to this rule did exist.  

Rejecting Dhritarashtra, Pandu was made king and he proved himself to be superbly effective. But perhaps Pandu who was very sensitive towards others felt guilty about ruling as king while his elder brother was alive – Ramayana’s Bharata refused to sit on the throne even though according to Valmiki the kingdom was his by birth since Dasharatha had married his mother Kaikeyi by giving the kingdom as rajyashulka, by promising that her son would inherit the throne. Pandu eventually gave up the throne and went to live with his wives in the forest as an ascetic, though there may be other factors that contributed to that decision. From Dhritarashtra’s subsequent behaviour, we clearly see that he had more than ordinary greed for power – power was the most important thing for him, the  be-all and end-all of his existence, power for himself and his future generations.

Like most power hungry people, he had no respect for anything other than power. Once a great rishi of awesome spiritual powers called Baka Dalbhya came to him asking for a few cows. It was a common thing in those days for rishis to approach kings and request for cows and kings usually gave not one or two but hundreds and sometimes thousands of cows to them. But what Dhritarashtra did was truly shocking – he pointed out a few dead cows and asked Rishi Dalbhya to take them – that’s all he would give. As a consequence of this action of the king, says the Mahabharata, the entire Kuru kingdom suffered from terrible draughts and famines that lasted for twelve years and a vast section of the population died from hunger, thirst and starvation. Dhritarashtra accepted his mistake and made amends only when he realized Baka Dalbhya’s incredible spiritual powers.

Power is perhaps man’s greatest temptation. Because with power comes everything else. In modern political organizations, in industry and business, in fact everywhere, we can find people clinging to power whether they are good as leaders or not, and appointing their own people in positions of power – what we call nepotism in English and bhai-bhatijavad in Hindi. Many organizations have died sad deaths because of this.

The Dhritarashtra Vilapa, a long soliloquy by the blind king, is at the very beginning of the Mahabharata. In the vilapa the blind king recalls one by one sixty-eight occasions when he lost all hope of victory – the verses describing these incidents all begin with the words yadaa shrausham, when I heard..., and end in ...tadaa naaham vijayaaya naashamse, then I no more hoped for victory. Practically all these occasions speak of some success or another of the Pandavas – like their escape from the lacquer house in which they were supposed to be killed, Arjuna winning the archery contest for wedding Draupadi, the Panchalas becoming allies of the Pandavas and so on. He sees each of these as occasions that destroyed his hopes.

The Pandavas are really not ‘others’ – they are the children of his brother, and they gave him the same love and respect that they had for their father; but the world of the tamasic is very small and have no place even for one’s nephews. That is a major difference between the sattvic and the tamasic – for the sattvic, the whole earth is their family, as is said in Sanskrit vasudhaiva kutumbam, whereas for the tamasic, their family is too small, and even their own nephews are not part of it.

As his father and as the caretaker king, Dhritarashtra had all the power he needed to stop Duryodhana’s evil ways but never once does he take a strong stand against him, newer a stand that will really stop him. True he did speak against him a few times, but never with all his authority and never in such a way that his son will not be able to go against him.

The face of Dhritarashtra we see in the Mahabharata most of the time is of an absolutely shameless old man who does no more lip service to the children of his brother who are the rightful heirs to the throne. Even in the Udyoga Parva of the epic when the war has become imminent, the message he sent to the righteous Pandavas is truly unbelievable in its meanness: he tells him since they are lovers of peace they should not wage a war against him or even demand their rights, but should go somewhere else and ask someone else for some land as charity!

It is this face tamas that we see in the Sabha Parva of the epic too where the dice game happens. It is possible that Dhritarashtra is the happiest man in the dice hall every time Yudhishthira loses a game. It is his voice alone that we hear at these times and every time his question is the same: jitam mayaa, have I won it? He is asking about what Yudhishthira has staked and lost, including Draupadi as the last stake. There is great thrill in his voice as he asks that question every time.

It is this Dhritarashtra that Arjuna does not want to dethrone because he is his uncle; and also because in that process he will have to slay in battle Bhishma and Drona. Arjuna’s vision has temporarily become clouded by blind mamata, which is form of tamas. But Krishna clearly sees what Arjuna does not see: the danger of surrendering the world to Dhritarashtra’s philosophy. He can see the dangers of having tamasic people in positions of power.

When tamas takes over individuals, they are finished. When it takes over organizations, they are finished. When a culture is taken over tamas, when a nation is taken over tamas, it is finished.  

The Nobel Prize winning book The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass discusses how Germany plunged into darkness under Hitler. Bhishma Sahni’s Tamas brilliantly shows what happened in the days of Partition as tamas conquered us.

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As Arjuna collapses in his chariot surrendering to a dark wave of tamas perhaps for the first time in his life, his mind and body drained of all energy, his will deserting him, Krishna shows him how to walk out of the blinding darkness he is in now and reach the world of light: of victory, joyfulness, prosperity and glory.

That glorious path is the Bhagavad Gita.

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Education and Tracking Down A Trail of Ants

[Developed from the author’s talk to a group of 100 teachers at the end of a summer workshop]

“All your teaching is centred on what has no use,” said Hui Tzu to Chaung Tzu, the great Taoist master of ancient China.

Chaung Tzu replied: “If you have no appreciation for what has no use, you cannot begin to talk about what can be used. The earth for example, is broad and vast, but of all this expanse, a man uses only a few inches upon which he happens to be standing at the time. Now suppose you suddenly take away all that he actually is not using, so that all around his feet a gulf yawns, and he stands in the void with nowhere solid except under each foot, how long will he be able to use what he is using?”

“It would cease to serve any purpose.”

“This shows the absolute necessity of what is supposed to have no use,” said Chuang Tzu.

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No river runs straight from its mountain source to the sea.

Canals run strait to their goals.

But no one writes poems about canals. Poetry is written about rivers. No one makes legends about canals, legends are made about rivers. We do not take sacred baths in canals and pray for the welfare of our ancestors; that is done in rivers. We have no canal goddesses, only river goddesses.

Education should not be like canals. It should be like rivers. Education should have room in it for a lot of ‘useless’ things. Like a lot of leisure, a lot of idling. Like space for friendships. Like time for daydreaming. Like exploration without any focus, as children did in a bygone era when they would wander about with a friend for hours at a stretch. For aimless wanderings.

Those wanderings were what enriched the soul of man.

Children should not be educated to be like canals. They should travel to their destinations like rivers travel to the sea.

In life, it is the journey that counts.

Today’s education leaves the soul of man starved. And this leads to life on a starvation diet. In the middle of riches and technology unconceivable in the past, man’s soul starves today.

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I love a story called Tracking down a Trail of Ants that I read many years ago:

“A week before school opened, I walked the route my first-grader son would take to school. I walked slowly and it figured out twenty minutes. But when he walked it alone, he was ten minutes late the first two days of school. Puzzled, I walked with him the third day. The twenty minutes was all right, as far as it went. But I’d failed to consider such side trips as:

Tracking down a trail of ants from a sidewalk into a lot.

Critical inspection of a display of trinkets and bicycles in a store window.

An educational pause to watch a man change a tire.

Swing around half a dozen phone poles.

Friendly overtures to three stray dogs and one brown cat.

In short, I had forgotten I was six years old once myself.”

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Education should enrich the human soul. And that enrichment takes place best with ‘useless’ things.

Don Harold writes in the Reader’s Digest, under the title Pick More Daisies:

“If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes. I would relax. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things that I would take seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would go more places. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less bran. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary troubles.

You see, I have been one of those fellows who live prudently and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments. But if I had it to do over again, I would have more of them – a lot more. It may be too late to unteach an old dog old tricks, but perhaps a word of forewarning from the unwise may be of benefit to a coming generation. It may help them to fall into some of the pitfalls I have avoided.

If I had my life to live over, I would pay less attention to people who teach tension. In a world of specialization we naturally have a superabundance of individuals who cry at us to be serious about their individual specialty. They tell us we must learn Latin or history; otherwise we will be disgraced and ruined and flunked and failed. After a dozen of so of these protagonists have worked on a young mind, they are apt to leave it in hard knots for life. I wish they had sold me Latin and history as a lark.

I would seek out more teachers who inspire relaxation and fun. I had a few of them, fortunately, and I figure it was they who kept me from going entirely to the dogs. From them I learned how to gather what few scraggly daisies I have gathered along life’s cindery pathway.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefooted a little earlier in the spring and stay that way a little later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I would shoot more paper wads at my teachers. I would have more dogs. I would keep later hours. I’d have more sweethearts. I would go to more circuses. I would go to more dances. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I would be carefree as long as I could, or at least until I got some care – instead of having my cares in advance.

More errors are made solemnly than in fun. The rubs of family life come in moments of intense seriousness rather than in moments of lightheartedness. If nations – to magnify my point – declared international carnivals instead of international war, how much better that would be!

In a world in which practically everybody else seems to be consecrated to the gravity of the situation, I would rise to glorify the levity of the situation. For I agree with Will Durant that “gaiety is wiser than wisdom.” I doubt, however that I’ll do much damage with my creed. The opposition is too strong. There are too many serious people trying to get everybody else to be darned serious.”

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Recently a young man wrote to me. He was until recently my student in one the most prestigious educational institutions in the country. He has a wonderful job with an organization any young man would be proud to associate with and draws a salary of about a hundred thousand rupees a month. Recently married, he has beautiful, young, educated wife and a happy family life. But his life is filled with a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of emptiness. He wanted to know what to do.

This happens because our education today is too focused – too narrowly focused. It leaves no space for ‘useless’ things. It leaves no space for tracking down trails of ants from sidewalks into lots. It leaves no space for critical inspections of displays of trinkets and bicycles in store windows. It leaves no space for the educational pause to watch a man change a tire or to swing around phone poles. It leaves no space for friendly overtures to stray dogs and brown cats.


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Today we have no time for any of the most beautiful things in life. No time for sunrises, no time for sunsets, no time for watching the moon or the clouds. No time to sit down and watch the rain and the winds and the trees dancing together.

No time to pick daisies.

No time to watch the dance of spotted butterflies on green leaves.

I remember seeing a Hollywood film some years back. In one scene in the film, we see a handsome young couple making love. They are both financial executives on the Wall Street. They are clothed as they have sex – they are in a great hurry and there is no time for removing clothes. And as they have sex at a feverish pace, they have their cell phones in their hands. Throughout the sex scene, they talk into their phones nonstop in a high pitched, urgent voice – with their customers. They cannot take a break from their business transactions even to have sex. Who knows, they might end up losing tens of thousands of dollars in those few minutes.

In contrast, let me give here a description of a lovemaking scene from the Bheel Bharath, the Mahabharata of the tribal Bheels who live in the border districts of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Soon after her marriage to Shantanu Raja, one night Ganga is filled with a strange restlessness. She calls her maids long before dawn and tells them they are going for a sea bath. She bathes in the sea and sports with her maids in the water.

By then it is the golden dawn. The lord of the day has begun to make his appearance in the eastern sky. She puts on fresh clothes and walks back to her palace with her maids. Her steps are indolent as she climbs up the stairs to her cloud palace. There, in her palace, she finishes all the sixteen shringaras and thus ready, tells Shantanu, “Come, Raja, let’s go to the orchard. Let’s take a walk in the garden.”

Shantanu puts on his yellow dress, looking like a fresh bridegroom. He puts on his golden crown, his pearl necklaces and wears his slippers with serpent hoods. With bottles of saffron and musk in his hands, he climbs down the steps of the cloud palace taking leisurely steps.

Everything is wonderful in the garden – the orchard looks delightful, with mangoes everywhere. For long they wander through the gardens in exquisite idleness and then settle down in the shade of the champa hung with flowers. They spend all their time in the garden, engaged in sweet, intimate talk.

Soon the sun begins to set in the western sky. Birds have come back to their nests. Ganga tells Shantanu, “Come, Raja, let’s go back to the palace.”

Back in the palace, Ganga warms water in a copper vessel and tells Shantanu, “Come, it’s time for your bath.” The king takes his bath and afterwards puts on fresh golden yellow clothes. He puts on his necklaces, combs his hair and does all the sixteen shringaras.

Ganga cooks a five-course meal and serves it to her husband in golden dishes. She combs her own hair and fills the parting of her hair with sindoor. After finishing her sixteen shringaras, Ganga spreads the royal bed. She sprinkles saffron and musk on the bed. The bed now exudes the intoxicating scent of musk. She spreads soft flowers on the bed.

The young king and queen play a game of chaupad. The stakes go up, the stakes come down. And when it is that time when the yogi sleeps and the bhogi seeks his pleasure, the king and the queen have their sports of love lying on their bed in each other’s arms.

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As we can see, sex here is not a crude physical act of mating, nor a fierce battle of lust, but a beautiful communion, leisurely and unhurried, aesthetic from beginning till end, spiritual in its essence – an act of worship at the altar of life so that fresh life could be invoked within a woman’s womb. The preparations are thorough. Ganga bathes in the sea before sunrise, comes back and finishes all the sixteen traditional items of shringara and then invites Shantanu to spend time with her in the palace gardens. The sun has already set and parrots have found their roosts when Ganga brings her man back to her cloud palace. She heats water for his bath, and while he is bathing, prepares an elaborate dinner for him. She serves the food in dishes of gold, and then gets ready herself with the sixteen shringaras once again. Careful attention is paid to every detail of the preparation of the bed on which they would make love. Flowers, fragrances are all used to create the right ambience. In this fragrant, beautifully decorated room, they sit and play a game of chaupad. It is only then that the king and the queen slowly move into the acts of making love.

As we read the description of the lovemaking of Ganga and Shantanu, we get a feeling that this is exactly how love should be made. The man and the woman float gently into the intimate world of sexual love, smoothly, blissfully. There are no sudden, hasty acts, it is like the coming into existence of an orchestra where everyone of the several elements fit in, in perfect harmony.

But the world is fast moving away from this world of Bheel Bharath towards what we saw the young executives doing in the Hollywood movie.

Because we have no time today.

No time for living. No time for ‘useless’ things.

Our education does not believe in wasting time in ‘useless’ things.

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In my younger days in Kerala, Onam, our traditional harvest festival, lasted for twenty days. Today it is just one day.

Kathakali, the classical dance drama, used to be a five night affair, and sometimes longer still, each night’s performance lasting until the early hours of dawn. Today it is rarely one night long – usually it is no more than a ninety minute thing.

There was a time when wedding guests came and stayed for weeks. Today they do not spend even the day.

We have no time today.

Not long ago it was said that technology will free man from work and men will be able to spend all their time in leisure activities. Alwyn Toffler was one of the futurologists who predicted this.

That is not what we see around us today.

We do not see more people stopping by ant trails. We do not see more people picking daisies. We do not see more people taking time to smell roses.

James Truslow Adams tells us this cute story, Time for the Soul:

“A friend of mine, a distinguished explorer who spent a couple of years among the savages of the upper Amazon, once attempted a forced march through the jungle. The party made extraordinary speed for the first two days, but on the third morning, when it was time to start, my friend found all the natives sitting on their haunches, looking very solemn and making no preparation to leave. “They are waiting,” the chief explained to my friend. “They cannot move farther until their souls have caught up with their bodies.”

I can think of no better illustration of our own plight today. Is there no way of letting our souls, so to say, catch up with our bodies? If one thinks over the sort of life led in innumerable homes a generation ago, our immense speeding up in the process o f living today is clear. People then, as we say, ‘had time.’ Now no one ‘has time.’”

Because our education does not see ‘the absolute necessity of what is supposed to have no use.’

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