Life’s little disappointments…

The last few weeks have been good on the personal front, but a look at the world around us also brought to light a few incidents that have left me more than mildly disappointed.

1. Barack Obama’s picking Sonal Shah as a member of his transition team. Sonal’s links with the VHP are public knowledge, but it is said that Obama knows her from his Harvard days. Maybe we can trust his judgement. Maybe he knows that her support to the VHP is limited to earthquake relief work. Maybe I’m dreaming! He may also be putting together a cabinet of rivals. It’s always better to have hope than to be perennially negative. It’s not a good path to be walking on, easy to start down it but very difficult to walk away from it.

2. Baba Ramdev. While I never bought into his tall claims of being able to cure cancer, diabetes & heart disease through Yoga, I did have respect for the man for having effected a positive change in the Indian masses towards healthy living. I didn’t lose that respect when someone accused him of using animal bones in his ayurvedic medicines. I knew people take potshots at celebrities. The guy went all over the country spreading the message of healthier living. He went to the UAE & spread his message there. I started thinking that a guy with his mass following can surely spread the message of communal harmony in our country. All he needs to do is say in each one of his shivirs that all human beings are equal irrespective of religion. That Indians should remain brothers. The masses would’ve responded well to his call. Even when one of the World’s premier Yoga gurus, BKS Iyengar publicly denounced Ramdev’s knowledge of Yoga, I still gave Ramdev credit for marketing Yoga well in India. I was taught Yoga by one of Ramdev’s disciples and can say from personal (bad) experience that Yoga isn’t the totally safe practise it’s made out to be. It has to be taught by someone who really knows it & knows how to teach it. Then the Ramdev I thought was progressive, inclusive & apolitical, goes & does the exact opposite of what I had in mind from him:

Raising the pitch on the Pragya Singh Thakur issue, Ramdev said: “Power is today
being exercised by people who should either be in jails or who should be hanged.
There will be a massive tussle for power three months hence. The country needs a
big change, where Sant Shakti (religious gurus) and Jan Shakti (people power)
come together. This process will not stop until the glory of India’s past is
restored.”

3. Our current Opposition Party, one that aspires to lead India in her march towards prosperity & peace, one that has always advocated a hardline approach, on being tough on terror, on equal rules for all; for doing a 360 degree turn on all of the above (which incidentally is consistent with their past record!). Rajnath Singh falls back on divisive politics (a harkback to the British rule they claim to hate) by saying on the Pragya Thakur investigation that the Govt. is angering Hindus and that it is pushing the country towards a civil war! Strangely, today’s Indian Express reports that Lt. Col. Purohit during interrogations revealed that RSS leader Indresh Kumar had received Rs. 3 Crore from the ISI!!! I thought my suspicions on the sangh & the ISI being in cohorts was just a silly theory!! And to borrow a sentence from Offstumped, the alacrity with which they moved from embarassment to aggression & opportunistic politics, they have managed to even embarass the word “shame” with their abject lack of it.

4. Disappointed at no one filing PIL’s, making any arrests, banning the seditious website because of this. No one cares, huh? sanjay? swati? guy? Are you not offended? Is your taking umbrage partisan?

5. Disappointed at terrorism claiming religions for themselves. But happy that amidst this madness there is hope, that there are people with whom we may have differences, but who agree on core issues. Do read this, this & this please.

I’ve come to realize that faults lie within all humans, not within all religions. That’s why a leader of men that brings our the best in human nature is called a Prophet; & a leader that brings out the worst in humans is called a politician or more appropriately a crook!

6. I’m disappointed at the difference between the leaders of their country & ours: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-gross/powell-honors-fallen-musl_b_135964.html

7. Ashutosh winning Bigg Boss. I erroneously thought that someone who publicly slapped a woman to win a third-rate reality show, shouldn’t get to win another third-rate reality show. I’m obviously disappointed that the rest of India doesn’t agree with me. But I know that this is not the whole picture.

What is the whole picture? The whole picture is work-in-progress. That is part of my learning.

What else have I learnt from these little disappointments? To ignore them. To move on. If there is any truth to the Karma philosphy, everyone gets their due. Also that “It’s all OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end”.