Caught in the middle

Rajender Singh

THE Gujarat elections proved Alexander Pope wrong for saying, ‘He knows to live who keeps the middle state, and neither leans on this side nor on that.’ The elections showed how everyone — centrists, leftists, moderates and middlings — seemed eager to take the right-wing stance, and rightly so. Stationed between the right and the left, the ‘middle state’ is derided by both. At a personal level, the results shattered my complacence, making me realise how my own middle state has been a source of unending problems.   

I was reminded of my disadvantageous middle position among siblings. If the wisdom and authority of my elder brother overawed me; the way everyone pampered the younger one turned me green with envy. 

When I watched BR Chopra’s Mahabharata on Doordarshan in the late ’80s, I viewed everything from Bhima’s perspective, who was the middle one among Kunti’s sons. The empathy I felt was spontaneous and natural. I seemed to know the actual reason every time he was sent to face danger or fight some terrible monster, all alone. The story of the hapless middle son of a Brahmin, who, on his parents’ insistence, agrees to be Ghatotkach’s lunch to save his elder and younger brothers, brought large tears to my distraught eyes. 

Now, while braving the middle stage of life, I have reached this cold conclusion that there is something inherently wrong with the middle position. Terms like ‘middleman’ and ‘middle class’ evoke the feeling of backwardness, mediocrity, disgust and rejection. Once a very ‘innovative’ union minister cut the middle class to size with his epithet of ‘cattle class’. 

The Middle-East is considered to be  virtual hell on earth. Mythology shows its contempt of the middle sphere through the tale of the stuck-in-the-middle king Trishanku. Those who talk of the middle path and buck the trend by refusing to join the extremes are generally written off as cowards or aliens. Man’s middle position — half god, half beast — adds considerably to his overall absurdity. 

During the middle years,  vital organs like heart, kidney and liver do not remain ‘user-friendly’, turning into costly liabilities, eager to uproot the middle stump of life. The middle part of the body — the belly — turns defiant and ambitious, developing a shape and character of its own by over projecting itself. My obsession with ‘middle’ extended to The Tribune. This fetish is now decades old. Even as a teenager, I would rush through the pages to reach the centre of the newspaper for the middle. Their light-hearted nature made me laugh, then, over other people’s predicaments. I read them now to make light of my own troubles.