Self and Yourself

    3pm, 15^th April 1993, summer holidays, Bangalore: Temperatures may be hovering around 36 degree C. The tarred road is almost boiling. 8 boys are oblivious to all the standard temperature and pressures of an Indian summer because they are engrossed in playing the 6 over-a-side cricket match on the road in front of their homes. Their respective mothers have given up on their sons, as they know that the trick of containing these boys inside their homes with ‘rasna’ and other foodie incentives will not last long.

     What’s making these boys stay all the day in hot sun ? Plain and simple – it’s the craving for the sport. The boys talk and live in it. They have just finished the great-grind of Indian youth of 1990s – the final exams, and now are free birds, at least till June 1^st. Sports for them is a form of expression, a purpose for their living, an aim to achieve, and thrill to experience. It is not out of any big ambition of becoming a sport star. Not at all, that is usually never on their minds, but they play it to just enjoy the game and live it as it is happening. A kind of practical nirvana, one may say, without enforcement.

     It is worth introspecting why we, as humans, play and like sports so much. One important reason is the human interaction. You play to bond and compete with others, and this bonding and competition can bring out the best in you. This process of interaction involuntarily helps you to understand one-self.  Playing sport is one of the greatest forms of self-realization. It really brings out the YOU out of you, whether you like it or not. The spectacle of sports too, gives you an external impression, and to a large extent an exposure to the nature of people playing it. You may not know a person, but you can watch her or him play sports for an extended period of time, and construct their image of external behaviour. So sports tell you and others, who you are.

         If someone does love the sports they play, and have been trained to play well since a very early age and extremely passionate about it, then they usually take it up as their career. These people can live their sport and make a living out of the sport. It is a happy thought. So as you may observe there are two components to sports as a career. One is an internal thoughtful realization of the self, and the other is a professional side which puts you at the interface of your ‘self’ and the outside world.

         Alas! Time and again, many sport ‘stars’ have fizzled out of their shine in public, having caught doing wrong things. Why? Why do they do this despite being successful? May be the definitions change in their minds.  If you look up the dictionary for the meaning of the word “game”, you get many definitions such as A contest with rules to determine a winner, and there is another one which defines game as A secret scheme to do something (especially something underhand or illegal). The problem occurs when the definitions are transformed from the former to later; where sporting bravado transforms to out–of-the-line bravery. Only one of them is a positive kind.

      Many of the tainted sport stars are also high-achievers, but somewhere down the line, they lose their ‘self’. Why? May be they have stopped seeing themselves through their own eyes. May be between the ‘self’ and the world they have lost themselves. It is critical to curtail this loss of “one-self”. We know why we need curtail this loss. The important question is how to do it.

May be the answer is also within one-self? 

Cyclic Journey

   

     In the journey called ‘time’, a driver named ‘bureaucrat’ is riding a bus called ‘policy’. This driver is vaguely trained how to ride the bus, and is a close friend of a conductor named ‘politician’. Of course the conductor is in charge of the trip and sells all the tickets to passengers named ‘common man’. People buy the ticket because the conductor promises them to take them around on a fruitful journey in a high quality bus with an experienced driver. Then, after selling the tickets, the conductor leaves the passengers at a bus-stand promising them to come back very soon with a bus from a near-by depot. Meanwhile, the passengers are all excited about the journey they are going to make and are planning to see many places along the journey. After a while, the passengers get restless waiting for the bus to arrive. They know that they will have to take a long journey, but the bus is nowhere in sight. The passengers get agitated. Then, after talking to each other, the passengers realize that each one has been sold a ticket of different price. They are now angry and want to get hold of the conductor, but he is nowhere to be seen near the bus-stop. In the meantime, they see many other people called ‘elite citizens’ travelling by cars passing by the bus-stand, but nobody stops their car to pick-up people in the bus stand. Then, to the same bus-stand where the passengers are waiting for the bus to arrive, a police man named ‘media’ drives in and enquires about the lost passengers. The passengers immediately complain to the police-man about the wait and variable prices they have paid for the journey, and that the conductor is nowhere to be seen. Interestingly, the police man neither knows where the conductor is nor the bus is, but goes around the bus-stop hundred-and-one times and returns to the passengers again to enquire about their wait. Again the passengers tell their sorry story, and now police man promises to go in search of the conductor and the bus, and bring it to them. In the mean time, the waiting passengers start fighting with each other for limited seats in the bus-stand, and there is plenty of chaos all-around.

   Suddenly, an old outdated bus arrives near the bus-stop. Now, to the surprise of the waiting passengers, the bus is completely filled with ‘elite citizens’, ‘police-men’, and guess who? Toward the fag end of the bus, waving his hands towards the waiting passengers is the same old ‘conductor’. The passengers really get agitated and try to get into the bus, but they realize that the bus-doors are locked, and there is no way to enter it. The police man inside the bus takes a picture of all the agitated passengers and shouts “don’t worry; we will fight for your justice inside the bus”. To add insult to the injury, all the people in the bus laugh at the waiting passengers, make mockery of them, and finally wave their hands bidding good-bye. The driver starts the bus gleefully, and leaves the bus-stand right away. The conductor reminds the driver that he has to ride the bus at a faster pace, because there are many more bus-stands to visit on the way.

         After a long wait near the bus stand, the stranded passengers see a new conductor. He seems to be nice guy, and promises that he is going to take them through the journey. People are very skeptic this time, but they want to go on this journey. After a lot of apprehension and debate among themselves, they again buy the ticket and are waiting for the bus to arrive……….