The Significance of Being Insignificant

Anu, my next door neighbour barged into my room, without even waiting for her knock on the door to be answered. Her face was flushed and she was ready to burst into tears. Plopping herself on my bed she waited for me to join her. Obviously something was terribly wrong somewhere and she was hurting. Placing my hand on her hand, I softly asked, ‘Is everything okay, Anu?’

‘No! Nothing is okay!’ she burst out.

Anu was a middle school teacher in one of the most reputed private schools in Mumbai. An extremely innovative, hardworking  and much liked teacher, she was recently appointed Section Head of the middle school. I waited for her to go on.

‘I have no idea why the school has appointed Section Heads at all! I tell you, the headmistress! Oof! Not a pin can be moved without her permission! Literally! If she is going to decide everything, why should we be given the charge of Section Heads? The Management decided to appoint Section Heads in order to reduce the load of responsibilities on her shoulders. But do you think she wants to let go? No way!’

‘Even for something as mundane as assigning teachers for substitution, we have to take her permission! Can you beat that? Why should two people work on the same minor tasks? She might as well handle it herself and I can focus on my teaching instead of wasting my time and energy on job duplication.’

‘Shreya, the Section Head of the senior school was so upset today. The HM gave directions entirely contrary to what Shreya had assigned to the peons just yesterday. Imagine Shreya’s frustration. All her careful planning gone for a toss! Besides, the peons will not take her word seriously anymore. They know now that the real authority is the HM alone. How is Shreya supposed to function? How is any of us supposed to function?’

Be it in a business, where the father does not let go of the reins for the children, or the mother holding on to the house and kitchen long after her children are married. Be it heads of institutions who want to be the one taking even minor decisions, or project heads and directors who will keep every decision in their hands. That’s not all, we find even student representatives in colleges, team leaders, Heads of Departments, principals, class monitors in schools... just about in every position of authority and importance that the one in the hot seat, does not want to let go. Yes, kissa kursi ka takes place not only in politics, but in every nook of life. Age, gender, community and nationality are no bar.

The irony is, that the ‘oppressed’ in time take over to become the oppressor, forgetting completely what it felt like to be the one oppressed. In some cases, it is not forgotten, and the tenure becomes a time to get back. Alas, the one bearing the brunt now, is often not the one who caused the suffering to begin with. So who are we really taking revenge on? Often this ‘holding on’ is the cause of strife, stress and bitterness in what could otherwise have been healthy, happy relationships.

What exactly is the psychology behind this holding on and wanting to retain control? Fear of being insignificant? Fear of being forgotten? Lack of self-confidence? Greed? Selfishness? Attachment? The possibilities and explanations are many. The important thing is to be alert enough not to fall into that trap ourselves. Madonna’s song ‘to have and not to hold’ is one worth singing to ourselves every morning!

The only thing significant about our existence is our insignificance in the universe. Once this fact is internalised, and we live in awareness of our insignificance and indispensable existence, we can live free, enjoying everything we have, without being weighed down by our strong holds.

The Essentials of Being Essential

The parking area in our office building would put any driving test arena to shame. An area meant for eight cars, somehow accommodates anything from ten to fourteen cars of all shapes and sizes. Is it magic? No. It’s Ashok.

Ashok is the security guard. Ashok does not know to drive. Yet, without him, all of us drivers are on tenterhooks. It is probably his spacial skills, or imagination, or I don’t know what, but he guides even the worst amongst us to take the vehicle out, even in reverse, without as much as a scratch. You have to see the parking lot to understand what kind of a herculean task I’m talking about. Take a look at the photograph.

‘Cut marke…left se….haan haan…ab seedha…seedha…right se cut mariye….thoda…bas bas….ab seedha….’ and you are out safe and sound. When Ashok guides, the rear view mirrors become redundant. In fact, I would do it with my eyes closed. Except that I need to see the guiding gestures that Ashok makes. When driving under his directions, I keep my brain in ‘Follow Ashok’s Instructions’ mode, with no thinking of my own. That’s the kind of faith I have in his non-driving driving skills. Believe me, that’s what we all do.

But life is such that sometimes there are catastrophes – Ashok goes on long leave! A whole month without Ashok? I nearly give up driving and certainly give up driving in reverse out of the parking lot!

A simple man doing a regular security guards job which mainly involves opening and closing the gate. Yet, Ashok has mastered the skill of guiding drivers and making maximum use of the parking lot. This simple skill makes him essential, makes him wanted and indispensable for the smooth functioning of the parking lot and our peace of mind (no driving around in circles looking for parking). There are so many other guards who come and go as per their shift, but only Ashok has made an indelible mark in our minds and made himself essential to our daily survival.

How essential am I in this world? Which skill(s) have I mastered? Would it make a difference to anyone’s life if I disappeared on long leave? How many would be aghast at my absence? How many would miss me? Eh…I think I’d rather not have answers to these questions! Ignorance is bliss!

The Smell of Good Times

 

Ah! The whiff of freshly brewed coffee while lazing in bed.

Hmm…the aroma of oven fresh cake.

Oof! The stink of garbage as you cross the garbage dump.

Oh no! The odour of leaking gas!

The olfactory sense is not one that gets much attention. It may not even be considered an important one, in comparison to the rest. Yet, think about it…lack of the smelling sense could take the fragrance out of our lives, literally!

We can learn a lot by the smell of things, probably more than by the visual or textural experience. Smells allow us an experience – both pleasant and otherwise, before it becomes concrete and tangible. For e.g., a red-coloured powder could be anything. But a single sniff will warn you that it’s chilli powder, without having to suffer its sting on your tongue. Colourless toxic gases that have a smell can be sniffed out even by a layman, in the absence of scientific tools. It’s not uncommon to have people smell something burning, much before they spot the source.

Often, we are led by our nose to sniff out danger before we see or feel it. What a catastrophe it would be, if we couldn’t smell the gas leaking in our kitchen! Or the bread burning in the oven! Or… (eeew!) the queer smell of food gone bad before we take a bite! Recent research studies show that fear reactions can occur at the sensory level, even before the brain has had the opportunity to interpret that the odour could mean trouble. No wonder that the English language has an idiom, ‘to smell out danger’.

Let’s think of our childhood. Most of our memories are accompanied by a particular smell. My first thoughts are full of the light floral fragrance of my mum’s Yardley talcum powder as I rested my head on her shoulder, the Old Spice cologne when I snuggled up with my Dad, the peculiar comforting smell of my nanny, the smell of earth as we entered my mother’s village… Sigh… the sweet scent of memories. On the flip side, smells can bring back painful, fearful memories too! For instance, the smell of diesel fumes for a soldier or the smell of smoke for a burns victim. Would memories be as intense, in the absence of smells?

Kumar chetta, the cook at Chinmaya Heritage Centre in Chennai, knows just by the aroma, whether the coffee has enough sugar or not! Unbelievable but true! My favourite Aunt Rekha, was such a skilled cook, she could rattle out the ingredients of a dish with just a sniff. Knowing whether a dish is ready by the aroma is one thing, but to guess all the ingredients? Mind-blowing!

Observe shoppers in the marketplace. Many will sniff a fruit to know whether it is ready for consumption. My Dad knows the variety of a mango and its ripeness with a whiff. Now that’s one skill I have kind of developed by sniffing around with him! Does that mean this is a skill that can be refined with practice? Certainly. In the movie ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’, it is interesting to watch how the protagonist’s mother trains him to cook, with much focus on the olfactory sense, more than any other.

Store Wars

As with most people, we too had a room full of stuff in our ancestral home that everyone had forgotten about. Till the day I ventured in determined to empty the room. Yes, it’s called a store room and it is obviously meant for storing.

I was ready to get rid of almost everything, sparing a few huge brass pots and wooden chests which I thought had antique value and could be placed as artefacts. But the number of reasons I was given by everyone around for retaining things were mind blowing! That ‘favourite pair of jeans’, that ‘extremely comfortable shirt that I (hope) will eventually fit into’, ‘the lamp my best friend gifted me on my nth birthday’, my grandmother’s ladles, my mother’s (broken) chair, my baby’s clothes (who is now 21 years old!)… Sentiments, memories, attachment, greed… Ah! Well! Call it what you like. The list certainly went on. And on.

An elderly, paan chewing woman draped in a nine yard sari came in to help us clean up. She appeared to be someone who could have certainly done with having all the things we had stored. I offered her the saris, unused towels and bed sheets I had unearthed.  Her response left me stunned. A simple, ‘No, bai’. Eh? No? I was confused.  

I opened up the sheets and towels and showed her that they were new and unused. Like a salesperson I tried convincing her that they would come in handy at home. No. She wasn’t interested. This continued with everything that I offered her.  Whaat??! She was psyching me! How can someone who has almost nothing say no to anything?

All that she ultimately requested for was an old switchboard explaining that she needed one for her home. Finally, a dab of balm for my badly bruised ego.

The woman had the power of no. It’s no big deal having it when you have everything going for you. But to have it when you have very little? That I believe is the power of fulfilment. I don’t know if it has rubbed off on me, but she’s certainly got me infected with this crazy impulse to de-clutter our home, much to everyone’s chagrin!

Come to think of it, how much is to be stored and for how long? If you haven’t felt the need for it since the time you put it away, does the need for it even exist anymore? Does the reason for storing it remain valid? Once when interacting with a sadhu from the Himalayas, I was told, ‘If you haven’t used something for six months then you have lost the right to own it. Give it away.’ As simple as that!

(This article first appeared in the international youth magazine Chinmaya Udghosh, under the series Mindful Whispers.)