Give hope a chance

It was a joy to have Zareef Ahmad Zareef in the programmeMeet the eminent organised by the University of Kashmir this week. More than awriter, a poet and a social activist, what defines him is his biting sense ofhumour. Zareef translates the grim and the dark into the fresh and the bright.His is not a philosophy you take time to understand, his is a line that hitsyou straight. Zareef’s way with words is natural.  Phrases, idioms flow from him at aneffortless ease.

What I don’t like of him is the way he sums up the `glories’of the past and pits it against the `horrors’ of the present. The point wasaptly raised by a noted linguist and critic Prof Shafi Shouq as a panellist inthe function. Though ZAZ fairly explained his point that he doesn’t mean denigratingthe present, but still there are certain blanks we need to fill. Living in a`glorious’ past is not the story with Zareef only, it’s with many (and perhapsmost of our) writers and thinkers. Past is inherently pleasing as it’s no morewith us. When pain fades into memory, it becomes pleasure. That is natural. Butwhile analysing our history we miss the point. Why compare the best ofyesterday with the worst of today? What if the comparison is reverse? Were ourancestors angels to have descended straight from the heaven? Have the besttimes gone for ever? Are we condemned to an irretrievable hell of darkness?Have virtues flown to the skies? Does lust define us as a people? Is God donewith the noble creation? Then what are we doing here? We may not say adismissive NO or a wishful YES to all such questions but we are tempted tothink beyond the obvious. I don’t deny the degradation we have suffered by andlarge, but the rub lies in a straight, either-or, simplistic classification ofthe good and the bad.

   

Greed is in our DNA. Whichever age we are born to, we areborn greedy. What dilutes it is the condition around us. Zareef made awonderful commentary on the moral training the children of the past wouldreceive from their parents. Yes he is right in saying that family is aninstitution of character-building and that bond must be made stronger. We havea role to play here we realise.

Ours no doubt is a materialistic age. But that makes ourchallenge to stay pure even tougher. Unlike us, our saints didn’t have manytraps to fall into. Life has not changed, neither has the character. Actuallythe conditions have changed. Our ancestors didn’t have much to choose from theway we have. I don’t call their piety as a sour-grape righteousness, but incertain cases a compulsion. They too had temptations like we have. They tooresisted and succumbed like we do. They too wanted to taste the forbidden –like we want. The difference was in the condition. Today you have enough topick from, yesterday it was relatively barren.

Jealousy, hate, contempt, malice are as old as hills. It’s astock market of emotions where things go up and down at an evolutionary paceand predictability. Likewise empathy, fellow-feeling, philanthropy, love, careand concern make us humans. It’s now as it was then. We are all good and bad,nice and nasty, clean and corrupt by turns. I alone don’t deserve TARANGAREE as tribute.

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