On a perfect Sunday afternoon , I got an itchy feeling about this whole state of affairs that I will have to mentor a kid who was abandoned by God in favour of creatures like us !! "Well what am I supposed to tell him ?"
And if you were one of those who get carried away by your feelings without reflection , one of those who think that the sole vocation of an intellectual is to babble , one of those who do not assume responsibility just because it was thrust upon them. Rest assured , I am not here to philosophize on issues like "Am I worthy ?" , I am merely asking questions. There is a deep-rooted fear in my heart that what if the kid was able to size me up very early , what if he begins to understand that the reality of life is a cipher , that he knows it ..
Its evening time and I have just come back from my sitara's ( mentee) house in Bandra. As I had expected his parents were very cordial and treated us like "Successful" men . Little did they realize what I was going through and how much discomfort I had in accepting the dangerous assumption.Before I delve into the irrelevance of my meeting with him , let me tell you that the guy who posed as my mentee was a very sharp kid , keen listener and highly focussed towards the needs of his life .It was sublime and beautiful.
Why does God need to play his old trick only on the poors ? I mean how many times we have seen a spoilt rich kid , who is never focussed and ill at ease with the studies , but when someone wants to make a fortune for himself by the sheer dint of his academic prowess , Dear God intervenes and subjects him to a pendulum which swings ponderously between existence and glory. He is never the master of his will , for his will is determined by the ration in his house ,
not that his will lacks spirit , not even that he doesn't want to break the shambles and reach out to the stars , but is ingenuously made a subject of pity , shame and many a times ill - aimed providences.
It gives me immense proud to announce that the boy in question was far more superior to me because at his age I was busy drawing daggers with my class rivals over matters which now appear so trivial to me . Suddenly I , like hundred others, have been entrusted with a mentor role to be played for mostly academic purposes and partly nation building process.No amount of writing can fully express my displeasure towards the pretentious , self - appointed actors of love
and equity , the self-assumed proponents of egalitarianism who act only to benefit even in the meanest of ways.I assume no responsibility , no control over that kid because I know I don't deserve to teach him any lesson , because he has learnt life the hard way and with no immediate signs of any improvement in sight I believe his struggle is pretty much on .
What do I do then ? Shall I meekly succumb to the vagaries of society and treat this as normal ? Shall I do nothing to alleviate their pain of existence ? To be very honest nothing can be of any help , neither my numerous sittings nor my coachings in Maths/English. What he needs to develop is his whole world of satisfaction with whatever little wherewithal he has at his disposal. He must believe that happiness doesn't come in pay packets nor in the comforts of a deluxe house , he must be taught to believe that the very existence of humans was based on gory concepts of life and death , yes a zero sum game.If one is presumably happy today , rest assured darkest hours are by the corner.But let me tell you one final thing as Fyodor Dostoevsky famously said "The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness", so they are indeed blessed as they know its only poverty(how ironical) that needs to be taken care of.
