Change, for good and bad

AS I grow older (and perhaps wiser), I’m beginning to accept that we are all products of nature and nurture. Given that we all have a unique DNA and that we are all brought up by families that are also different in their outlook, it is futile to imagine that one can change a person’s personality to suit another way of living. After 50 years of armed truce, both my husband and I have learnt to live with the other’s eccentricities. And let me tell you, this path has not been without its pitfalls.

When I was growing up, ‘late lateef’ was a rebuke we got when we made unpunctuality a habit. There was affection as well in the moniker but it did not translate into an unpleasant rap on the knuckles. My husband and I grew up in separate homes so while my parents were punctual to an absurd degree, my in-laws led their lives at a less stratified pace. It took me a long time to get used to the idea that while I was always ready on the dot of the time decided, the rest of the family would calmly sip their tea, go for a shower or simply lounge around even as I stewed inside at their careless indifference to an appointed time.

I have since discovered that the happiest marriages are those where one is a ‘ghari-babu’ (another affectionate rebuke that my natal family bestowed upon those who lived by the clock) while the other is a congenital ‘late lateef’. My husband boasts that he has never worn a wristwatch in his life and got by quite happily. On the other hand, I leap out of bed at the crack of dawn, finish all my work before it’s due and never miss a deadline. How we argued when it was time to depart for a train or plane journey! I lived in dread of missed flights, frantic that traffic or a flat tyre could seriously derail a journey. Yet, even as I chewed my nails (and his brains), my ‘late lateef’ would do things exactly at the pace he wanted. Look around you, and you may find that every couple has one who is photo-phobic while the other does not get bothered by a light in the room when preparing to sleep. Or one who likes the room to be chilled and the other who switches off the air-conditioner in the middle of the night.

My point is that we all march to our own drum and though we may secretly abhor our partner’s choices, we learn slowly to accept them or work our way around them. If only we could take these lessons in tolerance to a larger extent, how pleasant life would be. Today, however, the intolerance of individuals and social groups is fast reaching a point of no return. We talk of the exemplary tolerance we have inherited as Hindus but display a degree of petulance and hatred for any thought, word or deed that we consider offensive. To be fair, every religious group is equally guilty in this matter. Insults to religion and lifestyles of individual people are becoming flashpoints of violence against each other all across the country. Where this will lead us is a troubling thought and to all those who are quick to protect their Gods, I want to ask: does God protect human beings or do humans protect God?

One of Gandhiji’s grandsons, Ramachandra Gandhi (affectionately called Ramu by his legion admirers), related this story to me. Apparently when Swami Vivekananda went to Kashmir, he was taken to all those temples that had been destroyed by a hostile religious group. His companions asked Swamiji how they could protect their gods. Swami Vivekananda posed them this simple question and took the wind out of their sails.

In these woke times, when we have taken political correctness to absurd lengths, it is time to ask some sane questions. Sadly, none of our political leaders will ever ask them as they run their shops on the strength of stoking intolerance and bigotry, but what is wrong with members of civil society? Change will only come when the ordinary person raises some fundamental questions regarding freedom of expression and religion. I see some signs of this now in Iran, where women have thrown aside their suffocating hijabs and flaunt their tresses in open defiance of the mullahs. People of my generation can well remember a time when Iran was a free and open society. Under the Shah, women mixed freely with men and took part in all social engagements without fear of being flogged. Today, there are few who can remember how sophisticated Pakistani women once appeared to us in India. They wore make-up (in my girlhood days, this was frowned upon), smoked and drank, danced in clubs and had — what seemed to us provincial hillbillies — such a liberal life. The same was true of much of the Middle East: Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Iraq. Somewhere by the late Sixties, the religious leaders decided that so much freedom in the hands of women would weaken their own social position as guardians of society and stepped in. This is how the Taliban was born.

When I reflect how quickly the change happened in our neighbourhood, I fear the rise of fundamental tendencies in India today.