Thoughts Inspired By A Sack

A funny thing happened a couple of days back. Our cook A, who pulls out a story a day for me from her never ending bag of tales, and sometimes more than one, told me about a sack being discovered in a side street where she works. The sack, lying on the ground by an old well at the top of the lane, was discovered by a sweeper who looks after one of the buildings where A too, has a part time job. The bundle smelled really bad. I asked A, what do you think it was? She shrugged. Could it have been a corpse, my fanciful mind wondered aloud and she said, who knows, perhaps it was.

I say, how come the police didn’t find it and take it away? She explains, oh, it wasn’t on the main road, it was somewhere at the back of a steep narrow alley and the police wouldn’t think of coming there to look for anything.

I said, why didn’t the cleaning woman inform the police and A says, you crazy? Who would want to have anything to do with the police? You think you’re obliging them but if that thing in the sack were to really turn out to be a corpse or something else suspicious, they’d be after your blood for months. And you know how it is. The poorer you are the more they harass you.

A says, I did think of telling my employer about it, I thought he could inform the police but then I said to myself, if the police were to ask him how he found out, he might mention my name and then I’d get roped into something I really have no time for! So I finally decided to keep mum.

A couple of hours later a friend from Germany calls up to chat. She happens to be working on a movie script which involves child abuse and the question arises, as to how to react to a story which is not strictly speaking your own but which nonetheless affects you in some way. Good question. How would you react to a case of a little boy whom you had nothing to do with really, but whom you knew was being brutally ill treated by his parents? How do you react to stories of violence and cruelty happening far removed from where you are but in which you feel anyway emotionally involved? People getting killed in Iraq, children starving in Africa. A suspicious looking sack lying in a back alley somewhere which you've only heard about but not seen yourself?

To my mind, two possibilities arise. In the first case you feel directly called upon to “do something”. There are those who feel compelled to go “out there” and take an active part in the proceedings, people who help to keep an issue alive, thanks to whom we know what is happening in the world and because of whom it also becomes more difficult for the rest of us to look away, completely. Journalists, photographers, social workers.

There is another way to deal with the external situation, which is more difficult to grasp because it is more low key and at first sight it seems to have no direct connection with people who are starving or brutalized in the world. And that is for each of us to take a ruthless look at how we might be contributing to the general sense of violence and insecurity “out there.” This way involves examining every corner of our minds and looking at our own relationships, at how we react to those we don’t understand, people with whom we disagree or those who are much worse off than ourselves. It is to look at how fairly and with how much respect we treat the people we work and live with.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the first option might be easier. It is easier to make a noise about something outside, no matter how difficult or dangerous the task might seem and I think this is why more people in the world opt for social work and start organizations to support the downtrodden than people who feel called upon to examine their own souls. Because your time and energy in this case is occupied in so-called noble acts and you don’t really have to come into contact with the dirt in your own life and relationships.

Wasn’t it Krishnamurti who said though, that real change will come about only when we stop generating violence and injustice at the personal level? When we as individuals become generators of peace, instead of perpetrators of violence and deceit. And will this not happen when we understand how we, with our own petty and conflict ridden minds contribute to the general atmosphere of decay? Will change not come about when we as individuals, overcome the violent streak in our own psyche? It is so much easier to allow oneself to be swayed into action by external happenings because even that brings visible returns at some level. At least you get a pat on the back from someone or a medal for your efforts which a spot of quiet soul searching is unlikely to bring you.

So is this piece an excuse for not getting involved in what happens in the outside world? No. I think that when you truly listen to yourself, the right answers do surface and they are not always comfortable to follow. The answer for one person might indeed be to step into another person’s story because that is what is needed at a particular point. For another individual the truth might be simply to use an external incident to become aware of unresolved feelings of anger or violence in his personal life and to try and understand those feelings better.

The difficult thing always, is to follow the truth because no matter what you do you will be offending someone or other. And this is what makes it hard for us to accept and to act according to what we really see, hear and feel because there is always someone in our lives whom we are afraid of offending or hurting.

When I put the phone down after chatting with my friend in Germany it was clear to me that in her own discreet way she was persuading me to do something which I in no way felt called upon to do. To inform the police about a suspicious looking sack in a back alley beyond the fringes of my own immediate neighborhood, which I had not even personally seen. Not to do what I felt she would have liked me to, made me feel I might lose her approval and for a moment I felt the muscles in my stomach tightening with discomfort. But then her opinion was not mine. Given the circumstances and the red tape in India, I felt in no way obliged to spend my time and energy following up a task which did not seem to involve me.

However what I did was to chase up that first chat with A, the following morning, which threw up a possible solution to the question of the stinking sack in the back alley. I’ll tell my employer about it, A said, and he can go take a look himself. If he actually sees it he doesn’t have to mention my name because then he can tell the police he discovered the bundle on his own while walking up the lane. So when she turned up for work this morning I put the question to her once more. The sack? Oh, she said, the boss wasn’t home today so I couldn’t speak to him. The sack is still there, only today it wasn’t smelling at all. I went close to it and I couldn’t get even a whiff of anything.

Of course we couldn’t help wondering what the hell really was in the sack but for the time being I’m going to let the matter rest.

Uma

Comments

[Freddy]

mmm nice construction