To Win:

July 10/2011: Mankind has always dreamt of winning. Phrases like ‘Ends justify means’ and ‘Winner is never questioned’ have been at the base of our mental development. From uncivilized barbaric to today’s modern sophisticated man, the effort has always been to overcome. Whether it’s about hunting an animal for food, Nature for survival and comfort or another human for a mate, we have never stopped in our quest for success and have even gone beyond the boundaries of the earth’s gravity to prove we are ‘first’ and not necessarily amongst equals. There might be tolerance but there definitely is no admiration for an equal. An equal in battle should not exist. In the animal kingdom, there are no equals. A pride of lions has only one male. A fight rages unto death if there be a second. One of them has to leave the group or die.  A herd of elephants has only females and one male. A male baby elephant is also not tolerated and is driven away from the herd by the very father that helped conceive it. This lone male may, and it mostly does, turn rogue or he fights and could win over another to be the single male in a different herd and thereby assert his supremacy there.

Winning, therefore, is a desire to prove one’s strength and that one is above others. The animal kingdom is created on this very rudimentary food chain theory. Humankind may consider itself as the pinnacle of Creation, but it too is slave to this very unavoidable philosophy of existentialism through supremacy. So much so that in modern times we stop at nothing to gain this very ephemeral supremacy, the same theory by which the animal system survives. And yet we have this sham that when and if we ‘fail’, unlike animals who withdraw gracefully to restart in a greener pasture, we either destroy ourselves or whatever it is that we desired to attain. This is not to speak of those romantic nerds among us who, when confronted with their own incapability, prefer to throw acid on the very face that we dreamt and adored sometime in the recent past just to see it disfigured and writhing in pain. Most of us have no clue what the philosophy of existential supremacy is all about.

Let us take the recent case of the Indian athletes caught using medicines which are, in the fashionistas’ language now, called ‘dope’. Most people slightly aged would assume the word dope refers to substances that would alter the mental level of the user. Now, however, we have come to realize this doping alters physical levels to such extent that the performance of an inpidual goes well past normal capacity. So, when a whistle blower retired doctor of Patiala sports complex now says that these athletes were not isolated cases but some amongst many, it sounds plausible. Simply because, when this person says that mostly after dinner, the coaches would ask the athletes to come over and give them injections and the fact was actually informed to government by the few who objected, nothing was done. That is the very essence of existential supremacy mindset at work in India. Although we have deprived our future generations of any worthwhile forests in this sub continent, yet we hold on dearly to our herd animal mentality with some little amounts of thinking power creeping in to make us not intelligent but devious. It is believable that all, or at least most, in the National Institute of Sports setup would have conveniently turned a blind eye to the goings on because all want that a long awaited victory could probably jack up government funding whereby salaries would increase or those bureaucrats about to retire would get an extension as recognition of their achievement. What does bother many is that if, and it is not to be doubted, the players were willing parties in the crime, why should they cry and shed crocodile tears when they are torn apart?

Another story, slightly different. Same philosophy of existential supremacy. This time the desire of parents to see that their wards do extremely well in school exams and come out in flying colors. There they create the pressure to perform on the kids which again acts as ‘dope’. It was sad to see young girls and boys snuff out their budding lives by committing suicide. Reason?--They failed some miserable HSC exam. The Almighty alone knows how much all these exams actually help people in their lives. Yes, good results would help some of the examinees to get jobs and thereby spend a lifetime acting out the role of a servant.

A third example could be seen in our political system. PV Narasimha Rao spent a fortune to retain his post by bribing some Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs, with a simple motive that he had to win by hook or crook, even if he knew he was consciously destroying the very fabric of democratic society that had, in the first place, helped him get the post. Similarly, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi and their cohorts stopped at nothing to gain over MPs of different parties who voted in their favor during the US-India Nuclear Treaty connected voting. Cash-For-Votes became a password for many an email account for some time after that.

All this is being said, not with desperation or frustration but with a slight understanding of what is up and what is down. In Oriya there is a phrase which is ‘smashan bairagya’ or the renunciation invoked by the cremation ground. People realize the futility of greed and anger when they see death of someone dear to them. They also, it is said, immediately plunge back into the same sordid life once the body of that person is cremated. Renunciation may seem not so acceptable. However, objectivity may really help many among us to lead a more cheerful life.