Summer has arrived with fury in North India. This is that period of the season when you have rising heat, followed by a little cooling down that mostly the dust storms bring; if you are lucky, you may be blessed with a few drops of rain. It was one such relatively cooler morning today, when I noticed the birds flying in the sky. There were also a few eagles circling the sky in ever increasing smaller circles. I sat on my laptop later in the morning, and an eagle was still in the sky.
“Birds have wings; they’re free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy.” These words by Roger Tory Peterson, the famous American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator, and educator, summed up my angst accurately. Is my life going nowhere! Am I not free to do what I want! These were only a few of the emotions flitting through my mind, making me restless.
A few memories surfaced.
I had attended many rail accidents during my professional life as a railway officer. Those were not the days of remote-control operation of the four hydraulic jacks used to lift a derailed coach or wagon. Staff would stand at the four corners of the vehicle and shout out in a sing-song voice ‘hadia’ or ‘hadd’, depending on whether they wanted the jack in their corner to be lifted or lowered or stopped. The four staffers and the hydraulic jack operator would be immersed in the activity, oblivious to the weather or the environment around. This was, of course, on the Eastern Railway; those in other parts of the country may have different terminology.
Another memory is that of labourers straining not so developed muscles while performing a hard task like lifting a heavy object all the while singing dum laga ke haisha. This ditty would make them forget the pain that their bodies might be undergoing, and they would complete the assigned task within no time, waiting for the master to pay them a paltry sum for the hard work.
These were, and continue to be, people, who fight for their sustenance every day of their lives, uncomplainingly, not only believing, but with an implicit trust in a supreme power, that they would certainly overcome some day. I have yet to meet such a person come to me with a complaint against the supreme being. He only wishes to be called the next time that I have work for him.
The same way that the birds were soaring in the sky, not for an exhilarating experience. They too need to work hard for their daily sustenance. They too need to forage for their food. They also might be thinking, as they look down at us, from their lofty perch, humans are truly blessed. But they never complain. They seem happy in doing what nature has intended them to do. Come heat, come cold, come storm, come hail, they would untiringly work for their life. They are their own masters.
I met a family a few years ago — a young couple and their son. The son was in the seventh standard. They had fallen on tough times because of the pandemic. They wanted their son to continue studies but did not have the fees for the school. They had dreams for future, which seemed to be on the verge of collapse. I am happy that my wife and I could be of some use to them. The young boy is now in the 10th standard. He wants to be an astronaut.
Australian author Roger McDonald said, “I am master of my own destiny, and I can make my life anything that I wish it to be.”
And yet, each day of our lives, we find ourselves slaves of our life, thrown into the cesspool of petty biases of gender, caste, creed, religion by people who do not even know that we exist, except as numbers out of the 1.3-billion strong population that we are.
We have the power, and we should, and we will change the heading of our life to “Master of my destiny! Master of my life!”
sanjaychandra59@gmail.com
