The Pink Slip!

My earliest memories goes, touches my childhood, when I happened to get a glimpse of this ‘pink slip’! It was just a memory of something ‘odd’ that I noticed. So the concept was not clear.
My data base of memory is a bit quixotic! When people usually struggle to sift between that bitter residues (which they misconstrue to be memory), and something that they failed, despite concerted effort, full of struggle, to commit into memory, my memory ‘about that memory itself’ seemed to be fairly clear! It is only during the later years that I could realize the worth of this clarity!

Be that as it may, let us get down to pink slips. My father narrated a very odd incident(I was a kid, about 6 to 8 years old, and hence quite inconspicuous among elders who were the targeted audience!). One of his subordinates at his work place, requested my father to fire him! This fellow was very efficient, trusted, trustworthy, loyal, sincere, punctual, alert etc. Just that he was illiterate, or else, he would have gone places! And he was very much attached to my father, like his own brother! That was the very reason why he asked my father to fire him! Sounds strange, isn’t it! Yes, everybody felt it only that way, and logically an accurate deduction. Except that, it seems, his people would look down upon him if he gave up the job (quitting, resigning, etc!), and there fore this request! He gave very valid reasons for his desire to quit, and my father did readily oblige him, taking the bare minimum care of any possible repercussions for that ‘unethical’ act of firing an ideal employee!

Then I read stories (like the puranic ones, Mahabharata), where, Vidura gladly awaited for that pink slip to join the righteous side of pandavas. The story of his birth would amply convince us why he was so fastidious about that less paid job!

It also occurred to me that Adi Shankara, too had to ‘extract’ the pink slip from his mother to extricate himself from normal duties and responsibilities!

So far, I got inputs about people who ‘sought’ pink slips! Then came instances, where pink slips were issued most unexpectedly! The worst instances that I noticed were those when I heard of ‘untimely’ demise of known people around!

By the time age ripened me, I was fairly ready to confront that pink slip.

Something stirred up the earliest of my memories, and now it is conclusively resolved, when I could remove the ‘oddity’ attached to that memory. I am full of admiration for that barely lettered employee who ‘sought’ it in right earnest, unable to bring it upon himself to forsake his loyalty and commitment! I am not too sure if he was aware of the immense value that he so effortlessly carried when he decided to adhere to the tradition that he believed in! I am not very sure if this tradition was traceable to his community or just his class! But for me, this was yet another instance of benediction being showered by sheer force of adherence to tradition!

I am now inclined to go hi-tech, right within me, to seek for pink slips! The manifest form may seem crude, illogical, etc. But ‘mystic’ is the ancient name for it. The last lap of evolvement has to happen by itself. The dissolution. The pink slip from our bondages! The more that awareness creeps in, this sense of commitment presents itself in all its complexities, making that extrication almost an impossibility! Torn between the ‘desire’ to be free from desires, the desire to seek pink slips from all our commitments, our sense of loyalty, the pain is deepest and very unfortunately the sweetest to forgo! Mercifully enough, people around me are very charitable when it comes to giving out the pink slips to me! All I have to learn is to manage the ‘love’ that I feel for them, when I see their innocence about it! I could muster courage to give verbal shape to the battles within me, only when I had a fair sense of control over the outcome of the war! Perhaps, it will at least amuse a few of us, reading this!

Regards,PSN(7th Oct., 2009)