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Overcome guilt with compassion
Ravi Shankar |
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| Twenty five years ago in a sleepy Malabar town that lazed
in the shadow of the Nilgiris, a friend of mine bought a one
way ticket. A casual nocturnal encounter had infected him with
syphyllis, and in that small community where the doctor played
tennis with the college professor and all the ladies in cotton
met once a week over tea and cupcakes at the Rotary Club meet,
secrets were harder to come by than confessions. It was guilt
that drove my friend to death, a guilt associated with that
most everyday thing called sex.. |
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| Buying sex is as old as buying onions, and the social stigma
attached to it imposes furtiveness of behavior. As India becomes
sexually comfortable with itself, and its middle classes find
public displays of affection increasingly kosher, the guilt
attached to casual sex is isolated in a sanitised enclave of
the soul, which is usually the cemetry of most relationships.
In the age of epidemics far more serious than syphyllis or herpes,
basically because of incurability, guilt rides again as the
subconscious sixth horseman whose hoofbeats are heard in our
worst nightmares. |
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| The erudite Italo Calvino compares guilt with excreta: that
we defecate inside small private cubicles inside houses aó
it is in a way a philosophical allegory of expiating our guilts.
Good manners need diamonds and roses to explain things, which
are seen in the light of emotional disagreement, and psychologists
explain the apology as a way of relieving oneself of the burden
of guilt. |
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| As the world shrinks and overflows borders, so does the bacteria
of guilt that multiplies in the secret cavers of our minds.
It is time to face it, and meet it with compassion. It is time
to open the windows and let sunlight into the soul, that lives
can be led without stigmas and deaths be not shameful. |
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| The Masters say that guilt turns a man into introspection
and penance and redeems his soul. Life may be a guilt edged
investment, but it certainly is nothing to feel sorry about. |
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| (All the views expressed in this column are entirely that
of the author) |
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