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If you click on the link above, you will see a couple of politicos scowling, not at each other, but away from each other. It is one of the best pics I saw recently.
Let me call the elder chap the Machchar Mooch Wala (MMW) and the other, Chappan Chaathi Wala (CCW).
Each is sulking that the other is ungrateful to him. MMW claims that he is the Guru of CCW whom he picked up from the roadside rubble and made him what he is today. On the other hand, CCW grumbles that it was he who organized the infamous Ratha Yatra which catapulted MMW to power in the Parliament...it is an irony of fate that the nation was ungrateful to MMW, and the halting poet walked away with the big apple at the Race Course Road.
Sir Roger of Addison's Coverley Papers of The Spectator would have said:
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"A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who
have risen far above him"
...Samuel Johnson
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If you click on the link above, you will see a couple of politicos scowling, not at each other, but away from each other. It is one of the best pics I saw recently.
Let me call the elder chap the Machchar Mooch Wala (MMW) and the other, Chappan Chaathi Wala (CCW).
Each is sulking that the other is ungrateful to him. MMW claims that he is the Guru of CCW whom he picked up from the roadside rubble and made him what he is today. On the other hand, CCW grumbles that it was he who organized the infamous Ratha Yatra which catapulted MMW to power in the Parliament...it is an irony of fate that the nation was ungrateful to MMW, and the halting poet walked away with the big apple at the Race Course Road.
Sir Roger of Addison's Coverley Papers of The Spectator would have said:
"Much might be said on both sides"
The fact of the matter is that no man (or woman) likes to be in a position of being eternally (or even temporarily) grateful to another man (or woman). However, they don't have any hesitation to appear grateful to their unseen and unwept Gods.
There is a Vedantic explanation for this:
Each of us is a tiny drop of the universal ocean of bliss called the Atman. And so each of us feels that he is verily the ocean of bliss itself; which all of us are in our state of deep sleep (or death). In these two states, all of us are equal...the grateful chap as well as the ungrateful one. It is only when we wake up alive that we feel our uncomfortable sense of gratitude...or the lack of it from others.
Go to bed or die...if you don't believe Vedanta.
It is said that the Mahabharat is the fifth veda (Panchama Veda). While the earlier four are concerned with gods, the fifth one is all about human failings. Indeed there is no human weakness that is not exemplified in this epic...they are all there...you don't have to look elsewhere for examples.
Dronacharya, the Guru, had two famous students. Dron amputated the more gifted chap called Ekalavya so that he may not outshine his most beloved student called Arjun. With what result? Dron was killed by Arjun's Pandavas and not Ekalavya's famliy. Some gratitude there!...for MMW and CCW to ponder.
Anyway, during my long life, I had been at both ends of the gratitude stick, the giving and receiving, and found them very troublesome. Nowadays however I am just amused as I near my vedantic end.
A ten-minute drive from our gated community leads to a bustling BHEL colony called Deeptishri Nagar. I had discovered there a so-called Green Supermarket. It is just a godown with neatly arranged vegetables, fruits and other provisions. It is owned and run by a family of muslim gents, all of whom from the delivery boys to the counter-men, I befriended over a couple of years. We go there every week to stock up our family resources. And occasionally take Ishani with us for an outing.
A few months back Ishani and I found, under the green-leaves table at the entrance of the shop, a tiny little whitish puppy, obviously picked up from the roadside and taken care of lovingly by the shop-keeper's family. And Ishani is always charmed when we find the puppy, lying smugly, responding to my tongue-clicks, chew...chew..chew...,wagging its tiny tail.
Once it ran towards Ishani who got scared till I lifted the puppy in my hands and let Ishani scratch its back demurely. The puppy has now grown a bit and is found playing and gamboling in the ample front-yard of the shop. It is very friendly and has come to believe that all folks that arrive there are its own welcome guests.
This morning my son and I drove to the shop to buy our weekly stuff and I was happy to be relieved of shopping...a thing I hate unless imposed on me. So I thrust my son into the godown and was leaning on the bonnet of his Tata Indigo parked in the front-yard under the sky.
And was lost in my woolgathering.
A few minutes later, a Honda City arrived and parked on the roadside perpendicular to our Indigo. And the left front door opened and a kid of Ishani's age ran out of it towards the shop.
The little puppy was feeling its oats and was at its naughtiest, running hither and thither. As soon as it spotted the kid, it ran towards him and started climbing on its forepaws reaching the face of the kid, its tail wagging furiously. It wanted to lick the kid's face and befriend its wee guest. The kid got scared and started running away screaming and shouting.
Meanwhile, the right door of the Honda opened and the kid's father ran towards the puppy to tease his little son out of its grip.
And the puppy left the kid and started climbing his father's pant and trying to lick whatever part of his body was available.
The father, a chap in his early thirties, was obviously no Ukridge, and perhaps had never met a puppy at close range in his life. And under what he thought was a furious attack from the puppy, he left his kid to fend for himself and started running away from the puppy.
And the puppy released the pant of the father and started to make love to the kid again. The kid tried to run away from the puppy, screaming and howling. And the father ran forward to drive the puppy away but was once again attacked by its affectionate climbing and licking.
And the father backed off leaving the kid.
This jig went on repeatedly till the son, on the fourth or fifth attack, lost his right slipper and fell down on the ground, crying even more.
And the puppy started playing with the loose slipper on the ground, trying to chew it a bit and carry it away. And the father got more interested in saving the slipper than his son.
Everyone was busy and no one responded to the lively drama being staged.
It was then I thought I better do something.
And I eased my old and dilapidating body from its moorings on the Tata Indigo and walked towards the puppy saying: chew...chew..chew...
The puppy found, at last, a friendly soul to climb upon and turned his affections to me away from the slipper.
I slowly backed to the Tata Indigo with the puppy latched on to my pant and walking on his hind legs in step with me.
During this maneuver, the father retrieved the kid and his slipper and went into the shop to buy whatever he wanted to buy.
Meanwhile the puppy heard the loud flapping of wings of a dozen roadside pigeons alighting on the front-yard of the shop...the delivery boy must have come out with his periodic offering of grain to the birds...a cute muslim ritual in Hyderabad.
And left his hold on me and ran away to play with its winged playmates, trying to scatter them away.
As the father and kid duly exited the shop, I expected the father to smile at me for saving him from making a bigger ass of himself in public...a young chap to be rescued from a 3-month old puppy by an old fossil with white hair...whatever is left of it.
No!
He scowled at me, much like MMW and CCW, apparently thinking that the puppy belonged to me and I had all the while been egging it on to attack him and his only son for my pleasure or his pennies.
I felt sorry for the Honda City father...
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