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Grief over
Temporary Relief
By Lunminthang Hoakip
The fleet of sleek motor cars and two wheelers cruising endlessly every working day on both sides of the road-divider of the busy street that separates the state secretariat buildings and the AG-BSEM offices, apart from making quick-lane-crossing a possible bone-crushing experience, demonstrates that human craze for comfort and greed-for-time is unlimited. In the hectic vehicular jostle to drive past one another, no motorist has the gumption to think, "Hey, out there, there is a poor guy struggling to cross with his bicycle and another ill-clad mother carrying a sick child on her back and a pot of cooked meat for sale on her head. Let me slow down and make way for them".
In the pathetic absence of traffic sign-posts, zebra-crossings, sub-ways and overbridges to lighten the heavy burden of motor-movement on Imphal's congested junctions like the Secretariat line-crossings and Maharani bridge, the only temporary solution in sight is a uniformed sign-giver in flesh and blood peppily perched atop a shaky platform of a make-shift traffic island hassled by a hustling crowd. To be honest to a fault, the plight of the poor motor movement controller is no less pity-deserving than that of the master of a choir that sings in discordant notes of a cacophony of sounds.
Let's shift our focus onto families. Take a mental peep into relationships. Restless until he finds his lost rib in the form of woman, man, once settled, cribs nevertheless, about the very rib tipped to fit him best. Wedding-fresh fragrant petals of mutual spouse-pleasing pact peter off with the gradual fading-in of the newly-married twosome's true colors. Sooner or later, the honey of honeymooning period runs dry in hubby-wifey beehive-building–making the erstwhile 'best-partnership' a tasteless honeycomb of a yoke of a bond with the
'pest'. It's not for nothing that tongues was thus, "In the first year of the union, hubby talks and wifey listens. In the second year, the reverse is true; and in the third year, both husband and wife bicker and neighbors listen and snigger". Gone are the days of silent-enduring. Jet-set couples no more hide the tempestuous temperamental maladjustments. When asked why she was putting her wedding-ring on the wrong finger, a bitter-half was heard bitching, "Because I married the wrong man".
Couples bringing the hell out of each other, in utter desperation, court momentary remedies–both inside and outside court. They fight over petty matters burying claws into each other's skin, call each other names, split and remarry–only to suffer double the ordeal and treble the terrible trauma of the first blunder. Some cocky hubbies concoct cock-and-bull stories to cut off ties with the first wife, coddle the second and get cuckolded by the third. He, who had always been nursing a sad feeling that he had not met his match in the choice of his youth, finally meets his match.
Kids born out of such carnal culminations cultivate characteristics even more "bindaas", callous and complex. Operating in a small localized world where occurs a famine of godly counsel, country guys and girls are more vulnerable to romantic ups and downs. Like a glutton, who in glut or scarcity, immediately after lunch, launches a recipe-dream over grub-items to sup, post-adolescence, rural youth ponder all the four and twenty hours about sweet-love-affairs turned sour. But like glass, hearts are made to be broken.
A may be head over heels crazy after B. Yet, B is madly infatuated to C who goes bonkers after D who, in turn, sees no one and nothing beyond E, and so on. To unwanted wannabe lovers, bids to romance more often makes the world go square than round. A broken heart witnesses that some of the greatest love affairs involve only one actor. Love also has the potential to make the merry back block world go down and drowned in depths of sorrow. In certain cases, love graduates into lust and lust-lured lovers of doom opt for the God-disdained route of elopement. The temporary solution to parental rejection is to throw a tantrum and take back the daughter home and lock her up inside. The only reaction of the helpless but high-strung puppy-lover usually is to resort to black-art or commit suicide. Coz the heart is not like an electric switch that can be put on or put off at will.
There are educated country-brats who brag about their high breed. Aiming big, when it comes to choice of life-time partner, their snobbish bent of mind would settle for nothing lesser than beautiful well-bred lass of class. Such a narcissistic choosy shopper in the marital supermarket, true to type, burns the midnight oil till he rises in the light of day with a plum I-begin job to strike a good bargain in match-making. The motivating spirit, of course, is to hook the pretty daughter of a moneyed biggie who calls the shots in high society and make her literally eat out of his hand. However, the main thrust-area is to consolidate future security so as to square scores of age-old obscurity.
The ambitious professional with humble background, after several tumultuous family sittings and emotional tugs-of-war, finally marries himself into a well-to-do family. Of course, everything has a price. If the groom knows which side of his bread is buttered, his happiness is half baked. The fulfillment of his heart's desire comes at the cost of cozy cordiality he once shared with dear parents, bros and sis. In these days of fluctuating fortunes, the hitherto well-to-do in-laws suddenly become 'unwell-to-do' out-laws. And at the end of the day, the son-in-law who hoped to shoot up his stocks like that of the prince-of-Wales has to make do with being a mere prince-of wails.
The better-looking small-town lass with long eye-lashes has such power and magic in her beauty to make heart-beats stop as she swaggers in full glow past her spurned suitor who, nervous as a thief at a dog-show, takes a forlorn glance at his fair-skinned dark-lady from a dusty street corner, like bubbles winking at the brim of a beer glass. Driven to a romantic high by her own cold nonchalance to hot-pursuit courting of a dozen 'buffoons' of suitors from the neighborhood, the immediate brazen need for the-face-that-launches-a-thousand-sighs is to make hay while the 'getting' is good. The rose, once bloomed, can't shut and become a bud again. So our love-letter-laden lady, basking in vainglory, makes merchandise of her cute looks. Desperate green signals are sent out to grey-charactered smitten scions of filthily wealthy city-dwellers. In haste, a deal is clinched. It's too late, later, when the pushy mom comes to know that she had indeed pushed her beloved child into wedlock with a virtual pushover, drug-pusher and user rolled into one messy wretch.
The situation in civil society is no less deplorable. The larger interest is trampled upon for the sake of instant gain. A new-born child marks its grand arrival on earth with a tightly clenched fist. That is proof enough that one is born with an innate instinct to gratify greed in one by grabbing graft till the insatiable fight of sinful tendency is hijacked by a change of mind leading to change of conduct through repentance or is grounded finally by the hungry grave.
By and large, a secular (and even a non secular) post is perceived to be a ploy to feather one's own nest, and not a prop to serve the subject. The insatiable craving to get more worldly stuff muffles the spiritual ears so much so that the inner voice of one's conscience is stifled and shut out by the stronger pull to pamper the flesh. Deceit got so deeply entrenched in our psyche that falsity in public transactions had become the rule and truthfulness, the exception. The system had degraded so low that a decent salaried sucker who, restrained by the fear of God and service ethics, refused to go by the bended rules in maters of PR (read boss-pleasing), transfer etc., are dismissed off as someone insignificant, incompetent, queer and uncivilized. Nothing moves without some degree of political influence, but if sought, the incumbent-in-issue is marked for ever. Makes many wonder if a boss is an awesome authority at whose disfavored decree, it is suicidal not to agree.
The family, civil government and the church are the Author-backed institution God had raised for men He had created in His own image (Gen. 1:26) that areas of His earthly patronage be salvaged from moral wreckage. But that exactly is what we see happening around us. In this region, decades of mis-leadership and 'hireling'-style shepherding rendered many sheepfolds starved of green fodder so vital for healthy spiritual nurture. "For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God (Romans 10:3)"
The statement may be a scathing attack of St. Paul on the rabbinical self-righteousness of his own time. Even then, its present day relevance is too glaring to be ignored. Given a raw deal in earlier affiliations, under prefixed genealogical names seemingly secured by carnal zeal of solidified herd-felling, many braggarts of zealots, by virtue of usurped societal positions, tackle ecclesiastical affairs with the antecedents of Annas and qualifications of Caiaphas. No wonder, in several churches for which Jesus is supposed to be the sustainer, the supplier and the redeeming Savior, He sadly, is the oppressed outcast outsider. How grieved the Lord of Lords would have been when small-time village chiefs, fired by unchastened pride of clan hierarchy, claim to have a big Say and Stake in church administration. Some are so puffed up that they expect even Christ, the son of God, to soothe their ego. It was excessive attachment to things temporal and corporeal that incensed and provoked Jesus to say "My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves (Matthew 21:13)"
Quick-fix remedies are provided to quell situations that are in sixes and sevens. When a straying teen-age son, feeling let down by the pin-pricks of life he has no control over, chooses to blot out his blues by drinks and drugs, the standard parental concern sends the clueless wretch packing to a rehab center. But in most cases, the inherited repulsive, quirks in the restless kid makes the entire preventive exercise counter productive. The simple solution lies in open broken confession of unbroken ancestral sins and curses in deep repentance resulting in restitution on the part of the grieving couple who ought to own up the evil pet sins of the intoxicant-weakened puppet they have jointly parented. God says, He will be "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 34:7).
The first man and woman, by the singular act of disobedience to the divine warning of Eden, forfeited for themselves and generations to come the privilege of zero-suffering existence in the very presence of the living Creator. The curses were therefore, pronounced in-order-of-demerit to Satan, Eve and Adam. The penalty Eve got for having bitten, the irresistible forbidden fruit post-haste to their disgrace when her man was absent-without-leaf, was an irreversible, "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, in pain you shall bring forth children (Gen. 3:16)." Yet, God, being filled with immoral love and compassion for brutal mortal beings He still delights in offering eternal love to, when they quit sin and turn to Him, provides a way out of every affliction. "Nevertheless she will be saved in child-bearing if they continue in faith love and holiness with self-control (1 Tim. 2:15)".
About 2900 years ago, Sin brought catastrophic calamity in Ahab's Israel. "And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria (1 King 18:2)". Severe drought hit the land for three and half years because God was robbed of His glory by Baal worship in the chosen kingdom. Repenting and humbling before Jehovah evidenced by suitable making of amends would have ended the dry spell. But playing second-fiddle to the wickedness of the fickle first-lady of the land, Jezebel, Ahab fiddled and faltered, "Go into the land, unto all fountains of water... we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive... (1 Kings 18.5)". People were dying of a sin-cursed weatherly fiasco but the royalty was more concerned with cattles' well being. It served him right when Elijah, fit as a faddle spiritually, battled Ahab, Baal and its prophets to a shattering victory on Mount Carmel. Heaven let known its immense pleasure with instant downpour.
Today, we suffer a subtle famine–famine of righteousness. If you aren't bothered to keep a close watch during car-repair, garage-boys can dupe your tubes and tires or loot your tools. The same goes for bicycle workshops. If you confront them later, they take it as an affront on their non existent integrity and feign innocence. Why should we crib though, when we know that similar mentality grips the better-placed white-collar class?
Taking measures with its goals set on temporary relief with an eye on gaining reputational mileage, at best, will achieve self righteousness. Excommunicating a boozard from the rolls of a local church in lieu of feeding faith and being prayed for with burden, will only isolate him further to an early grave. Subjecting a dead-spirited couple to stringent church discipline for having eloped, instead of preaching the consequences of breaking God's commandment to them, is bound to harden their hearts. Like Ahab, we are satisfying ourselves with short-term remedies. What several rounds of training on ethics of administration failed to yield, instilling the fear of God and writing godly righteousness on the table of one's heart, will. "Let no mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about the neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man (Proverbs 3:3, 4)".
Back to Imphal's chaotic traffic system, we'll do well to send out expert teams to study how things are managed in developed countries. We are already heading towards a Kolkata-like situation. A stitch in time, for sure, will save us a lot of travel-time and road-mishaps. We can begin with strict limiting of the number of vehicles to be purchased in a year. Prospective owners of four and two-wheelers will be deterred if it's made mandatory to deposit a fairly big sum of money for a few years before they can go for a good buy. Phased out building of flyovers, express-ways, sub-ways, over-bridges etc. are also a must. Private parties can be roped in, if the state can't provide funds, to invest and collect toll-tax later as was done in the case of Mumbai-Pune expressway etc. To limit vehicles on the road, public transport facilities need to be improved. What's wrong if we start dreaming about underground trains and double-decker buses? With the expansion of roads and increase of traffic points, there also bought to be a corresponding increase in zebra-crossings and foot-paths. Only then waiting lane-crossers and sweating cyclists will not be frowned upon with long faces drawn in their disfavor as if they have committed a crime in cutting
corners here and there. Since when was road-crossing the monopoly of motorists alone?
If we like to better the lot of the citizenry of the Manipur we love so much, which I hope we all do, there's no other way than to cultivate godly righteousness in every walk of life. To turn our collective hope of flickering light into a veritable ray, we need leaders of undoubtable integrity to enthuse, not bemuse but to inspire and set hearts afire to unquenchable flame of state-wide upward righteousness. For "When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn (Proverb 29:2)”.
(Courtesy: The Imphal Free Press) |
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