Entitlements

Are we entitled for the ‘credit’ of something that just happened through us?
It is a very serious question, that occurs to some of us, especially when we know that we just happened to do it, and may not be even able to repeat the feat again!

Even as a kid, my ‘fluke’ strokes which pocketed that ‘impossible-coin, the carom-man’ drew applauses from the onlookers, opponents who were far elder to me, and also far more experienced in the game! And every time, I used to feel embarrassed. All I did was to take an aim, and release the striker. Now it was up to the striker to do the rest! That feeling of doubt about ‘eligibility’ to accept credit remained ever after! Unfortunately, it spread over to many other fields of activity, whenever the applause came in! Personally, I felt more comfortable with criticism, or fault-finding. It gave me scope to look, and set about on the task of looking for ‘fixes’ , patches, repairs, atonement, etc. And, a sincere apology with due gratitude to the person who points our error, seemed like an all win-win situation to me. That person would feel that his ‘concern’ about my faux-pas, has not gone wasted at all. And, I was too often saved the expense of remitting that ‘examination’ fee! (Oh! Yet another problem with entitlement—free services—examination cost not paid!).

I am reminded of a dear colleague of mine, who was too mindful of the “titles”. He even requested me to address him as “Note stitching Machine Operator”, in the presence of his close relatives, who happened to be mostly from the unlettered lot. All he desired was that the title should be some something bombastic, instead of that insipid ‘cash-peon’ which was quite convenient for others to identify the person easily! I readily obliged him, and even enjoyed the process of attributing the ‘due entitlements’(If that was all he needed to please him mightily, who am I to stand in his way, and what at all, is the cost involved?)!

People are rushing fast towards getting everything patented. During my early days, when I tripped into that ‘reading’ habit for a while, the mention of ‘copy rights’ was not seen too often. But now, almost anything that is printed, designed, composed, computed, programmed, is well protected by copy-rights. Sometimes, I did wonder, what would happen, if there were an effective law, which copy-righted the stupidities, errors, blunders, scams, frauds, etc, committed so that people at large are compelled never to repeat the mistakes done by others even! Oh! There would be an astronomical growth of our “GDP” perhaps!

A good friend of mine happened to ask me, about how to feel ‘entitled’ to the good things in life? A very wrong person to ask! Already, I am grappled with the given titles, that I am not eligible for, and now how to ‘feel’ good about it? All I could think of was two examples. What if those dead cells that we call as hair on our head could think thus “Am I entitled to stay on the head of this great person, especially, now that I am a ‘dead-cell’, in the sense of being non-functional?”…. Well, I thought, ask any bald person, and he knows better, how precious they are! Some of us even ‘plant’ artificial hair, piercing surgical holes on the scalp! (Those black and white photographs of the famous scientist, portraying half-bald head with little of unkempt hair, seemed to suggest, that he comfortably managed to allow those non-entitled remnants of grey hair on his head!). The other story I was reminded was of that famous poet Jayadeva, who had serious problems with writing down what ‘occurred’ to him. Krishna was his lord, and the line that fitted in appropriately was something considered ‘inappropriate’ logically! The consort of that lord placing her feet on the lord’s head (or something to that effect!). Ultimately, the story goes that, the lord himself had to complete those words, coming in a disguise of the poet himself, and incidentally, granting ‘appearance’ (darshan) to the wife of that poet, who hitherto, all along did not happen to ‘appear’ to be entitled for such a divine gift of lord’s appearance!

It is said about that legendary singer Sri Madurai Mani, symbolically, that when he sings, the ‘goddess of swara’ (harmony) had to hurry to catch up with the song and its singer, so as to be not left out unnoticed, unrecognised! Oh! It is that Goddess of music, whose turn it is to bother about retaining the ‘entitlements’! Usually, we applaud great singers for their ability to adhere to ‘swara’ with perfection!

My problems do not get seemed to head toward a solution. Instead they are getting only compounded, with that humble doubts from childhood, when I used to merely ‘look up’(literally and figuratively too… they were taller and quite ‘imposing’!) at elders, hesitant to spell out my innocent doubts, about the ‘entitlement of my left hand to be used to eat food, when my right fingers got injured’. I really never mustered enough courage at that age to ask yet another ‘reverse’ doubt about the use of my right hand as a temporary substitute for the left (whose use used to be, but had to be left ‘out’, due to some injury, for that ‘exclusive’ purpose, of water-washing, after exuding, expelling etc, of the excreta!).
Psn(17th August, 2010)