THE TRUTH, THE WAY

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
Swami Vivekananda

Quite simply, what's true for you need not be true for me. At a deeper level, how many of us are true to ourselves? To our nature? Being true to others is barely an extension of this.

Kierkegaard believed there was an objective truth -- concerned with the facts of a person's being, and a subjective one -- concerned with a person's way of being.

But I'm not attempting, here, to get into a metaphysical discussion on absolute truth, or even reality or the perception of reality. That's a subject that requires in-depth study and analysis.

In our immediate environment, how much of what we see or hear (or are taught) is the truth, and how much a facade? An attempt to control, condition? I'll never forget this scene in Renoir's La Grande Illusion where there's a shot of a radio and a sound clip of a news report on the war, juxtaposed with a person holding a mask.
Joseph Goebbels, who said, "If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed," had all prints of the film destroyed. But that is what the truth does: it's raw, it's powerful, and it's dreadfully painful. And like all painful situations, it stirs change.

I can't say all of the media is a lie (and not just because I work for the industry), but there are enough half-truths and untruths there to set you thinking. For that matter, I don't quite know which industry is free from lying/masking the truth/changing it to suit its purpose.
History textbooks are now being challenged for having fed children with white lies for years. Scientists and researchers fudge data; politicians lie to voters; witnesses lie to judges; the cops lie about 'encounters'; the government lies to the people; people lie to their partners, and even in their resumes. There are, of course, the 'casual lies' we all tell to escape tough situations at work, at home or on the street.
And then there are the exaggerations: those great attention-seeking mechanisms used primarily for the purpose of entertainment.

At the other end of the spectrum, little children -- and adults who are children at heart -- can immediately spot a lie. Not hard to understand: they're pure, they're free of fear; they're more in touch with their "true selves".

But why, why, why does one lie?
Demons, fears and insecurities, in Mahatma Gandhi's eyes, are greatest challenges to truth. Lying is pathological -- there are esteem issues here. Often, lying's a habit, and unless there's enough will power, it's difficult to break out of the cycle. It's often difficult to face what is real.

But just as the truth is painful, lying hurts too, and that pain is long-term.
The world, my friend, is imperfect. And only The Truth is perfect.

SAINATH

Couldn't help feel that surge of pride when I heard about P Sainath being nominated for the Ramon Magsaysay Award. Memories flooded in: Impressionable me, all of 18, in a classroom with other girls my age, riveted to Sainath talking to us about unsavoury 'isms' we'd never given thought to -- globalisation, commercialisation, and rural poverty.

I'll never forget how this girl from Bihar burst into tears when Sainath made a scathing remark about an unfeeling administration in the 'Bimaru' state that simply lets people starve.

But then, that's what Sainath does to you. He shakes you up. Into thinking hard, at times even violently disagreeing, but never passively letting what he says go over your head -- unlike what most media reports and the entertainment industry do to you.
You may think he's talking in extremes, but you simply cannot ignore the man. Because, at the end of the day, he hits you in your gut. You just know you're part of the same rotten system that watches and lets things pass without moving a finger (Nero's guests, he'd love to say: "How could THEY indulge in excesses and just watch?")

Whatever slot you may want to fit him into, there's one thing you can't deny: The man has the courage to pursue what he's passionate about, and what the world doesn't give a damn to. It also takes helluva lot of guts to spend your gratuity and all your savings to report from the poorest villages of the country, and on people no "respectable" publication or television channel would care to reach out to. More than anything else, I'm proud to say, he's left many generations of students -- and that includes me -- with a conscience.

He's talking about issues all of us know are crucial to the survival of our ecosystem and community, but choose to discuss in passing or even ignore... I've often wondered, when I'm at a sprawling new mall that's part of this resurgent economic superpower-in-the-making India we're all talking about: What's happening to all the mill workers and their families who've been shunted out of this space to make way for another monstrosity in the skyline? Where are they going? And DO I really need that 8th pair of Levis jeans when I know the guy who once worked here struggles to make ends meet while his son is probably being recruited by the underworld? Who's responsible for the disparity all this has created? Does anyone have a voice here, and does anyone care about the sociological implications? And who's answerable? Most of all, why do I just sit there and watch?