The middle path

P. Lal

Follow the middle path, young man, and you will reach the pinnacle of your career,” advised the Deputy Director as I stood before him on the day of departure, way back in 1970, after the completion of a year's training at the National Police Academy. The adage meant nothing much to me at that time as I was yet raw in matters mundane. However, with the passage of time, I realised that the advice was relevant not only in career advancement but also in other situations. A middle position affords protection, perceived or real, in many circumstances.

Thus, in 1972, when I was traveling in a bus, it banged into a truck from the opposite direction; from behind followed a bump by an oil-tanker. Passengers in the front and the rear received injuries. I and others in the middle rows, though jolted out of our seats, came out unscratched. Since then, whether in a bus or in an aeroplane, I seek out and occupy a seat in a middle row. At the take-off and climb-down of the plane, I sit secure in the belief that God forbid, if things went wrong, the tail or the nose would hit the ground first, making passengers sitting close to those areas more vulnerable to harm!

On the GT Road between Delhi and Ambala, in the past when it had no road-dividers, I had seen buses, trucks, tankers, lorries and other heavy vehicles racing across in the middle of the road, instead of keeping to the left. A bus driver, confronted by me, replied: “Keeping in the middle is safe! It enables one to drive fast! Vehicles from behind can overtake you from the left or the right, leaving you undisturbed. Those from the front would avoid you to save their own lives. You are, thus, the master of the road till you reach your destination, safe and fast!”

In government service, which provided me  bread and butter for about four decades, I saw those following the middle path rise very high, and I also saw those adopting the wayward ways, kiss the death on a railway track or even finding themselves behind bars. The middle path in bureaucracy is synonymous with mediocrity, risk-avoidance and treading the beaten-track. Max Weber,a German sociologist and an authority on the ways of the bureaucracy described the tendency as debilitating leading to the ‘depersonalisation’ of organisations plagued by the ‘scourge’. Thus, one finds in government offices a tendency to hunt for files of  ‘precedent cases’ instead of breaking new grounds to serve the needs of the individuals whose concerns are under consideration. And thereby hangs the value of a functionary, a clerk or an assistant, who can fish out such ‘precedents’ suo motu or after the greasing of the palm.

In the judiciary too, judges often rely on judgments delivered by superior courts, sometimes going as far back as the Privy Council under the British. Nature also prefers the easy path. Electricity follows the path of least resistance (Ohm’s Law). Water flows through unhindered ways.

Of the three paths of getting salvation — jnan, bhakti and karma — the one which is the easiest and most recommended by sages, seers and gods is the way of bhakti. The one of jnan is fraught with risk and danger as in the case of  Vishvamitra whose penance of a thousand years for attaining the status of a brahmarishi was negated by Menaka, an apsara who seduced him with her charms. 

Recently, when I gleamed from a post of a Facebook friend — “Playing it safe in life is the most dangerous thing you can do — Andrea Schulman” — I was jolted out of my reverie. She argued that playing it safe amounted to following the herd-mentality which prevented the full development of the potential of a man. To buttress her point, she quoted Nelson Mandela: “There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than one you are capable of living.”

But now it is too late. Or, is it never too late?