Virtue
A young woman comes to my home for the first time today. We are meeting in a professional capacity. Very soon into the conversation, she lets slip her disappointment that today’s anti- government bandh did not attract the support it needed in our city. I tell her I had hoped to be a part of the morcha but was laid up with a bad back. She visibly relaxes and our meeting has a positive, fruitful conclusion. I realise that she is testing the waters of our future relationship, discreetly checking my political leanings. She is right to do so. In today’s world, it would be naive not to. Perhaps she may have chosen not to commit to a professional relationship if I had answered that carefully worded question differently. Trust is not easily given these days.
Earlier, an old friend signals her despair over the world wide loss of leadership. She herself has lost hope for the coming year. Will 2020 be the end of hope, she asks? Another friend talks of her anger and fear of speaking out, even though she must. We are middle aged women, happy in our worlds, secure in our relationships. But our hearts bleed for those around us, the fellow humans denied the same security. We are all dealing with the same sorrow, of loss of things past, of anger and guilt and helplessness and most of all, we grieve the loss of hope for a better tomorrow. Hope that has abandoned our lands.
Trust. Hope. Faith. Charity. None were actively taught but somehow we absorbed these values, along with greed, hate and corruption. This last year, I have had to come to terms with the mockery of faith. My faith in friendship and love has been laid bare, exposed and weak, it has died two deaths. A part of me lives in vacuum, neither living nor dead, feeling nothing and bleeding gently. Another part is more dogged in its journey onwards, and it is this that keeps me sane. Alive.
Will we remember the values we once cherished, mourn their passing, endeavour to explain their meaning to the young ones? Or will we continue to take them for granted, those of us who have the luxury to do so? Does it depend on three square meals and a place to call your own, this insouciance?
For many people in this country and around the world, these virtues are foreign, alien even, never known and therefore never missed. Even as I write this, I know that this is wrong. If it were true, it would be so wrong. The truth must be that no matter if it has never dreamt of hope, the human mind still searches for it. If the heart has never known or received trust, it must still hunger for it.
Who will rescue us from ourselves? Who will lovingly preserve this country, its beautiful philosophy, its great and good tradition of Atithi Devo Bhava? This mitti, this dharti, this mulk, this vatan, this land that is born in emotion and embodies an idea, who will protect it from us?
So many questions and still we search for the answers. Some visceral part of ourselves knows the truth, we can lie to ourselves in the still of the night for only so long. May we find the virtues of contemplation, confession and conciliation in our dreams. May we remember these in our waking hours.