Guilty parables

Guilty parables  

(I wish a happy new year to all those friends and students those were very near to me with words: I am still very near to you all, only you have gone far.)

·       I have always been the avid consumer of parables, listening to tales strewn with moralities, entranced. Awed by everything parables speak of: the benefits of learning from mistakes lead to paradise regained__ these parables are the stories of dogged tenacity informed by past experience, the stories of grit and enterprise__ and the dangers of repeating mistake lead to one’s falling from grace_ these are stories of succumbing to plausibility, the stories of loving the wrong person, trusting the treacherous and believing the liar again and again.  Parables teach that one’s descent into bad times is always because of one’s own stupidity, one’s own naivety, and one’s own credulity; it is because of seeing the picture in part or it is because of the failure to see picture at all as one never learnt that the real picture was buried deep beneath the veneer of respectability and the gloss of good manners.

There are parables to tell that selfishness can be one’s downfall. Bad times can be because of one’s denial to offer helping hand to good people or because of denying people the dividend one reaps because of the helping hand they lent him.  There are parables those are the stories of the flipside of primrose path__, these parables are the stories of the cost flamboyancy and non.chalance ultimately pay.

These all parables were the core of me; precious nuggets I collected were the main part of my psychological make-up. I was full of moral outrage at anything appeared to be an affront to human dignity. I abhorred selfishness so that it could not be the down fall of me or of anyone; I warned myself and others of sizing up for mendacity before placing trust on them. Be careful of the charms of words were my mantra.

The moral these parables teach is important to make human humane; important to make one a compassionate and loving creature. I would not be attentive; caring and loving creature without imbibing the moral of these parables; without making these parables the part of me. I however, would not be caught off guard; would not be devastated by the avowed ingratitude and would not be shattered by the egregious ungratefulness if these parables would have told me the stories of the price altruism pays; the stories of the dangers sacrifices entail; stories of relation forged in the crucible of hard time fallen apart because of the ravages of good times, stories of adversity that tries friend and prosperity that repels them; stories of people those personified a buffer; acted as the cushion to absorb the unkind blows and punches of life; worked as a shield against the cruel buffets of fate and then after being nucleus of life relegated to periphery; stories of people those were no longer etched to heart of people they love, expunged as unwanted nuisance and excised as the abhorrent growth with the first sign of a good omen.  

Today in the twilight years, I believe that much of the pain of my life is because of the culpable missing on one reality: people are good as long as they cannot think of being bad. Much of the agony of my life is because of the culpable failure of these parables to tell stories of people turning different when times became different; stories of ubiquitous people you see around as your protégés and latter see you as their mentor; words they speak are not telling of plans they incubate at the deep recesses of their minds as there are no such plans; faces they show are not revealing of any ulterior motives as these faces are true to their feelings. Stories in which you are really seen and revered as the intellectual father; and never seen as the gullible human open to milking.  I would perhaps be not the means for many to their ends; not their key to success not their passport to higher echelons if I knew that people are good as long they cannot afford to be bad; if I knew that I the architect of their success would be too unworthy to be given any credit

I feel worse than cannon fodder because my offspring cannot even take pride in me for being expendable at least for the pomp and glory of a great empire.