While the larger population of Goa was under a cloud of gloom after the news of the Chief Minister’s health came forth, there was another part of Goa that unhealthily saw a great opportunity to flog an ailing man. Social media was full of spiteful messages of the demise and funeral of the CM or of ridiculing his illness, claiming that it was a deserving punishment for him......and yet Goa is a deeply religious state?! Both the large communities of Hindus and Catholics visit their temples and churches very dutifully.
All religions and spirituality teach us that death is the only truth. All else is momentary ‘Maya’ or illusion.
In the ancient story of the Trojan War, Achilles the Greek hero commits the gravest of all sins, as believed so by the Greeks.
And that is the sin of disrespecting the body of the Trojan warrior, Hector, whom he has defeated in war. Achilles drags the body, tied to his horse and thus desecrates not just Hector but “death” itself.
Some people have been doing something similar the last few days via social media.
The suffering, disease or demise of another human being are moments when one gives up one’s ego and personal antagonism, as the most human emotion of empathy sets in, because we all know this kind of suffering can come upon anyone at any time, and is the ultimate reality of all of us, irrespective of any distinctions.
The modern day man, like any of us or the CM, might not have the stature of a Trojan war hero. But the point of comparison here is not about the greatness or the ordinariness of a man.
The parallel is in “suffering” itself, which unites us all and is our common fate, no matter how great or small, good or bad, we might be.
In all civilizations, the dead are duly buried, with elaborate rituals and rites. Death has such a finality and sanctity that wisdom tells us not to revile the dead or trifle with the illness or suffering of another human being.
Irrespective of political affiliations, the personal suffering of another is not to be put on a laboratory table, for us to dissect or study and then pass skewed moral judgements.
What has calloused us so much that some of us no longer feel, what the War poet, Owen, terms as “the reciprocity of tears” or the ability to empathise and cry at the loss or suffering of another human being?
Or is it that we get voyeuristic and sadistic pleasure out of looking at other people’s lives and feel complacently safe that it did not happen to us?
Maybe that is the reason Reality TV is so popular in our society. It gives people a chance to live vicariously without ever personally taking any risks and then sit smug and vindicated in their living rooms while they watch others suffer on tv.
A small quirk of fate, or a wrong choice or just chance can put any of us in a similar position of vulnerability to accidents, ill health or death.
I am not a Modi fan or a right wing supporter, or even a congress loyalist, but who cannot help admiring a man who undergoes intense treatment and then he walks straight out of the hospital, boards a flight, reaches the assembly complex, smiles with moist eyes at the crowd of teary eyed, sniffing, MLAs, karamcharis, drivers, staff waiting to have one glimpse of him, and then carries his own bag, walks into the assembly hall, takes out his specs and his papers and starts reading the budget report??
How many politicians in India would do that?
And many people, all over Goa, cry, with relief, while watching this whole sequence on their television screens or mobile phones.
How many politicians in India espouse that kind of love?
Unfortunately, I saw on social media, a few people who rant the most about Goemkarponn, expressing such vindictive stances regarding the CM’s illness, that there seemed no spirit of Goemkarponn in it.
It is the same at the national level. The ones who most rant about nationalism are always doing the most anti national and inhuman things, for example, assaulting a wheel chair bound man for not standing up for the national anthem in Inox Panjim.
When ideologies become more important than humanity, it is a warning for any society.
Goemkarponn or nationalism, doesn’t come from drawing distinctions, differences, lines and boundaries between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. It comes from a largeness of the heart that embraces all.
It is the ability to see the suffering of another and empathise with it in spite of personal differences or political loyalties.
The people who scorned, laughed at, or derived pleasure from the CM’s illness, did not expose the CM’s character. They exposed their own.
And if they feel ridiculing an ailing man is Goemkarponn, then Goemkarponn needs some serious rethinking.
