PROVIDENCE
Destiny. Will of God. The grand design. Called by various names, Providence is the ruse we employ to explain away phenomenon we have little control over. Tolstoy compares free will - the antithesis of providence - to a river depicted in a picture; broad where it’s viewed from, narrow in the distance. Likewise, says T, the present seems full of choices, the past seems destined. Of course, we all know that this is but an optical illusion. Tolstoy is right(he usually is). And the reason he’s right is that mighty providence mostly employs only ordinary foot-soldiers. The biggest game-changing events in your life aren’t so much momentous accidents as they’re gentle coincidences. Eg., the wholesomeness of your childhood hinged upon the everyday affairs of your folks. Which college you attended depended upon the chance incitement that urged you towards it. The fortuitous ‘wing allotment’ on campus not only chiseled your personality but also influenced your career choice. Your being introduced to your spouse was a chance event too; as was the fact that both of you agreed to succumb to the match(this second chance event being contingent upon the circumstances that preceded the first). Why, even your genes are a chance event manufactured by the chance event of your parents agreeing to get hitched. Providence! But providence doesn’t always walk in through the big doors like the ones mentioned. It sometimes also sneaks in through crevices; through innocuous little cracks like, say, an annual day function. So, it’s the big day and we’re a couple of drunks who’ve taken to the stage and are mouthing profanely inane and boorish stuff. The institute director and other faculty, who’re a part of the audience, are absolutely livid. A well wisher tries to caution us about the consequences of our acts but he’s promptly ticked off with a ‘mardon ne kab kab’ statement - a sentence construction wherein the MNKK prefix is deviously employed to vindicate all sort of puerile behaviour. Eg., MNKK job interview के लिए coat और tie का सहारा लिया है, MNKK अपनी शाम library में गुज़ारी है, etc. Here, the refrain is, MNKK डायरेक्टरों की परवाह की है(which, of course, is a statement not entirely true.) In the strict IIT world, greater men have been shown the door for lesser offences than this. Then, if a professor of management, a policeman, two corporate honchos, and a budding lawyer were spared their careers that evening, the only reason was that another mishap in another part of the campus stole the limelight away from them. As Samuel Butler says in his utopian satire ‘Erewhon’, “As luck would have it, Providence was on my side.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorSachin Jha. Archives
September 2020
Categories |