Indulging in introspection

Analysing oneself and looking at actions taken to understand own personality as well as motivation in life is not everybody’s cup of tea. Meditation is prescribed by the knowledgeable for self-examination and possibly to either feel satisfied with the actions or contemplate alternative paths to experience that elusive feeling of sense of satisfaction and even fulfilment in life. Myurueans in their advanced age, disenchanted as most of them are, can be heard bemoaning the ongoing changes in outlook and acts in society with their signature remark Kaala kettoythu, making no secret of their helplessness. One cannot be faulted to infer that the senior citizens lost years of their early life in pro-actively arresting the change they despise, individually and as a mass, even as they positively bore the brunt of the consequences of changes that society went through year after year, decade after decade. The Hindi idiom Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi or English idiom Every dog has its day or the Kannada saying Athegondu Kaala, Sosegondu Kaala, while not helping the senior citizens to find solace nor reminding the youth that their turn shall come later for introspection.

While perfect uniformity, as opposed to wide inequality, in the manner of people identifying themselves in the socio-economic spectrum, particularly according to faiths they follow and wealth they possess, is not even a hypothetical possibility, distinguishing people on the basis of their calling for livelihood, as mentioned in the land’s ancient scripts seems to have endured for centuries. Drifting from that system to the present system is the undoing of present society.

Inability on the part of sections in the population on the wrong side of 80 years to keep pace with the fast life, particularly in urban space, may be said to have begun during the second half of 18th century, when the first industrial revolution happened between 1760 and 1840. Many other revolutions, led by different social reformers and individuals commanding influence on society, not to forget philosophers founding many faiths, creeds and cults have also contributed to the perceptible changes in the outlook and ways of life, more in cities while the rustic population has held fort to a significant extent. That brings us to the point of pondering about the right and wrong of all actions that have created the current scenario of society in which no age group feels gratified, much less the elderly.

While the condition in which people at large are living in present times can be expressed in one word, namely stressful, human-beings as a mass seem to be heading towards the next condition, namely suffocation, prompting one to invoke the advisory for people to introspect. Our ancestors believed in acting to right the wrong all the time (Prayashchitha) not merely Pashchaathaapa.