I am a weak dependent man. So, it's like I am worst of all kinds. First of all, I am weak. Even after continuous nagging from Krishna, my mentor, who said your weakness right before the war seems like you are unmanly. Do not be unmanly, he says. But such is the contradiction of life. I am still a man. Not a proud one but may be coincidental.
I have been dependent. I will be dependent. At this moment, I am dependent on a lot of people, things and even places. Time, space, circumstances, and in some ways times, spaces and circumstances of my past.
And at last, I am but a man. And most of all, an educated man. In these times, educated circles are where conceptions and perceptions take place. And it is these circles that decide who are victims of the society and who are the accused. I, being a man, belong to the accused of this century. The patriarchal structures have rendered Women as the victims both materially and psychologically. So, the morality of the educated class and public sentiment of the same is towards women and rightfully so. It is in deepest of our psyche that we find misogyny and therefore to find yourself in the cause of women empowerment is the need of the hour. But, again, to find yourself towards the side of the evil not by wish but by a coincidence feels bad. It is not a new emotion to the Indian Psyche. People like Bhisma, Drona and even Karna to some extent, have found themselves in such a case when their heart was on the right side but due to circumstances they chose and sticked to the side of wrong and fell. Not everyone could be courageous enough to be Vibhishan and choose the side of right. Also, A caveat here is, even the most vocal feminist men of our era cannot be women and experience the lived experiences that women go through every day.
So, a weak dependent man. But isn't a weak dependent man something hopeful and something good to look forward to. Hope, in its most basic, has to do with three things to the psychological self, namely, Survival, Vision and Faith. Hope in its most basic form is these three precise things. One more thing to understand, it is safe to say that hope is an inbuilt program in every human being. Either to try to have it or try to lose hope is of no use. The mental faculties you are born with should be embraced and not discouraged. Something like hope at least.
So, Hope is Survival, Vision and Faith. All these links to the hope and to our psycho-social development of our childhood.
Survival is the feeling, ability, intuition or wish that you will survive a blow that life gives you. The survival instinct is put in people, through God or otherwise, and then by mothers and fathers. Mothers, constantly putting up with our constant tyranny as a child, catering to our all whims and fancies as much as she could, showing us how one survives even after suffering. A hope is instilled that if she can survive my blows, I will one day be able to survive my children's blows. This little instinctual act will light a candle for the rest of our lives, who knew. Father, telling you to fight him. Come on, hit me, oh! only this much strength you have. This gives you a survival instinct. You feel an ambivalence. First that you can also get hit by life and survive. And second, if my father can survive blows, it means, I can hit people, vent out my anger on them and they will not die. They will survive even after my hurt.
For example: I fear strong independent women. Firstly because, they are contrary to what I am. In each of these keywords, literally. More so, many strong independent women have knowingly unknowingly hurt me and made me cry. At the top of my head is my mother. Brilliant woman, but a terrible mother really. Then my ex-girlfriend. Brilliant woman again, and may I risk the hypothesis, a really good girlfriend, a really good person, is where I doubt her. But, the psyche of strong independent women, is based on survival instinct really. She survived gazes, they survived social constraints, they climbed top of the hierarchy of their fields, all along with just a hope that in future as well, she will survive. Nothing else, really nothing else. So, this feeling will always be complimented by another wish to be assured in advance, that they can hurt people, and people will not die. People will survive, as she did.
Vision: is the ability or feeling to be able to see the future before they are already there. It is not intuition. It is a deeply seated hope. The difference between vision and intuition is that the latter is value neutral. Vision is value positive. To be able to see an Independent India, in 1929, on the bank of River Ravi, When Pandit Nehru announces "Purna Swaraj", this is vision. Vision is the ability to see amid the darkness, a future seed of light. Every farmer puts seeds in the heart of the earth, in utter darkness, only with a vision that inside the darkness of the soil, will rise a green lustrous plant in the light of the sky. Vision is instilled in us in our childhood by our mothers. When you walk for the first time on your feet and you leave support, your mother in front of you, saying, "come on! baby! you can do it, come on, come to me, come to Mamy, come to mama!" She can see you walking already. And you, in turn, can see yourself walking in her eyes. This encouragement has many other forms of expression. An old schoolteacher, occasionally, remarked, you can do it. I already see it in you. You can score good marks. You become brave. You see through them, where is the nearest light.
Faith: is the ability to grasp reality, really. It is through faith and faith itself, that people function. A closer look to views and actions of people remind us that how people always have views and opinions, close to closure. rare do we find people, will absolute ambivalence and ambiguity. Either there is God, and his name is Hanuman, or there is no god, and the no-god's name is Science. Faith is the basket really you place your apples in. You are on a flight for 2 hours. You are in complete faith of the pilot that you will not die. You lie down at 10 or 11 PM on bed, only with a hope that sleep comes to you. Any side you lean, whatsoever opinion, you may identify with, you are not going to be out of faith with reality or some aspects of reality. Full reality, humans have not been completely, in sync with that.
Faith is what Bhagat Singh hangs on while put a blindfold on. He will die but India, Independent India will live. And it lived. The debates of God and no-God has never been a debate of God, it has been a debate of faith. You mother told you in childhood there is God. And you said, this woman knows. And I have complete faith on this woman. Why to not have? There is nothing very courageous about remaining ambivalent and ambiguous. Faith makes us survive. Faith makes us hopeful.
Together, these three gifts, unlike the deathly hollows or the gifts of death, are gifts of life to all of us, irrespective of where we were born, what were our circumstances, and who were our fathers and mothers. These three make you master of life. Master of hope. And you have it in you. You can't help it. You cannot start or stop it. It is in your heartbeat. It is cardiac muscles. It does not require your help to beat. It beats, and it will beat till the end of your life and a little bit beyond.
All these together make one good spoonful of hope for life. I am hopeful. The times, I am in right now, are difficult. I am agitated, I am a bit sad. I am a bit defeated. But I am not hopeless. I know I will survive. One, because thoughts cannot make me hopeless because of the above written 500 words of truth. Second because, maybe I still have people in my life, friends, family all of them. There light is my light. There smiles are my smiles. There laughs are my laughs. I remain hopeful as I know, I will survive, I have visions that I will shine, I have faith that things will turn out to be good.
Passing it to you like a scroll from a weak dependent man should give you all the more reasons to smile and be hopeful.
A weak dependent man,
Vibhat Kumar [ I listen with Vibhat, and I reply with Kumar]
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