Mighty Elephants And Mightier Mahouts: About Us As Hostages And Our Dependent Masters

Gentle Giants 

Majestic, mighty, intelligent and highly social, elephants are called gentle giants. The image that comes to us first, when we speak of them, is of the ones regally decked-up for various social and religious functions. We are so enamoured with its serene beauty that we easily miss the chains on its legs and the puny little man standing next to it carrying two stick like things.

Has the narrative about its gentle nature been so much ingrained that captive elephants seem to have forgotten its might?

What else can explain the power of a mahout, often drunk, making it obey his biddings. The only weapons a mahout bears, beside his words of command, are a cane and a hooked-baton. The chain that the elephant always carries around its legs become shackles only when the mahout feels threatened or wants to hold it to a post. Most often, the mahout just rests the baton on one leg of the elephant while he sits to drink or rest; the elephant doesn’t move that leg for fear of consequences. If by chance the stick falls, the elephant by itself picks it up and puts it back exactly where it was kept.

 

Individually, the cane, hooked-baton, chain and not even the mahout can match the strength of an elephant. The mahout depends on the elephant for his daily bread and the owner for returns of the sum invested. With its intelligence, it can turn situations to its advantage and easily break free. Yet, it remains enslaved till its end.

Types of Elephants

Depending upon the circumstances and surroundings, elephants fall into three categories.

The first and the luckiest roams the wild, free. They have to contest with natural enemies and overcome plenty of challenges to stay alive. Aware of their strengths and weaknesses they live in herds and grow up learning the art of negotiating adversities and remain free till poached or old age takes over. Majority of elephants belong to this category.

The second category consists of elephants captured from the wild. These unfortunate ones, once trapped, are trained, claimed and traded. Broken in body and mind, they spend rest of their lives in torturous captivity. Only death relieves them from their living hell. Despite legislations, purportedly in place, to protect them, barbs beatings and shackles hold them in place, lending regal looks to ceremonies. Controlled by a mahout, another les miserable, they suffer their indignity much like slaves of the yore under slave masters.

Blessing or curse, they possess phenomenal memory and recall experiences. They don’t ever forget that they were once free and roamed the wild. They recognise their tormentors, the mahouts, and never forget treatments received. Once in a way, fleeting though, they make it known.

A sizeable population still, their numbers are slowly falling. Increasing awareness both amongst humans in concrete jungles and elephants in the natural wild have resulted in decreasing numbers of elephants in captivity. Yet unending human greed will trap more elephants to live a condemned life of indignity.

The third and the worst of the lot are the ones born in captivity. They never have had the chance to experience or explore forests, roll in mud or laze around in streams. The reassuring presence of a herd is unknown to them. Born in captivity, life in chains filled with physical torture and verbal abuses is natural for them.

Blessed or cursed, never having tasted freedom or the liberty to walk free, chain isn’t an appendage, but an additional limb that brings along the opportunity for travel. Despite the unimaginable daily torture meted out to them, these elephants tend to consider their mahouts as their benefactors. They just fail to see the truth. Unfortunately, the population of this group will grow on some pretext or the other.

Think of it, are we also not like elephants?

Elephants That We Are

Don't waste time wondering which class of elephants we belong to. Definitely, rule out the first. Enslaved by visible mahouts and invisible fears that they instill in us, we keep sliding to and forth between the second and third categories, depending upon circumstances.

Born into families and societies, compelled by conforming rituals, practices, faith, beliefs, religions, politics and nationalities we mostly remain in the third category. However, stifling these may be, all of that are normalised and bondages, each one imposes, are internalised as identities or bonding relationships. We are slaves in such relationships. We are at home like the third category of elephants. These bonds are so normalised that most of us celebrate it. Fear of the unknown, greed for eternity hope of life beyond and ideologies that give us predominance over others are the batons our mahouts wield over us. We never dare question the veracity of such beliefs however illogical they may be. Those who dare are deemed blasphemous. They can make us conform to anything they want.

Man is neither conceived nor born free! Even in death, he isn’t free.

As we grow up, we knowingly or unknowingly let people and circumstances dictate terms. It could be through interpersonal relations like parent-child, sibling, spouse, friends, superior- subordinate or even organisational ones like member of a society, cults or organisations. The list is as imaginative as possible. Even our own behavioural traits can become our mahout masters. Our selfish obsession, jealousy, greed and such other vicious inner beings can enslave us and rob us off our freedom. These, over time, become toxically demanding and enslaving. We willingly allow ourselves to be manipulated in the name of nationality, religion, ideology, clans, tribes, faith, relations, and countless such machinations.

Inevitably we end up being held hostage by the ones propagating the scheme; much akin to the Stockholm syndrome!

Though to everyone else, the manipulators, manipulations and manipulated are obvious, many a hostage remain blissfully oblivious. Attempt enlightening them and risk receiving unbelievable response! While some may be aware of it, pressures and compulsions could force them to act oblivious. The fear of post break-out uncertainty is a deadly hold-back to escape from captivity. Willingly or grudgingly, we ruin our lives as a member of the second category. The sad part is that our mahouts are dependent on us and parasitically feed on us till either their end or ours.

Recently, I witnessed the sad culmination of a brilliant life. Held hostage, by his conviction to serve just one individual, he lay waste everything else in life.  Refusing to see a world with anything but his parent and hence unable to shake free of it, all his brilliance was snuffed out; tragic waste of a genius. He was not the only one; he is neither the first and will not be the last. The story of a bright mind taken astray with emails purportedly from deep within the caves of the mighty hills is another example. Whether it’s a case of such an enslavement or the deft art of a con artist can be debated.

Look around, we can find many such lives; look close enough, we may find ourselves in that group.

Are we also not in some shackles?

Break that Shackles

Most of us individually are peace-loving. Highly social and intelligent, each one of us know what is good for us. It has been proven many times over, through many studies that the human brain is capable of achieving anything it wants. The advances we have made collectively in science and applied sciences, bears its testimony. Yet, as individuals, we rarely use anything more than an insignificant part of our brain throughout our lives. We can acquire skills and knowledge at will. Our brains can find ways to overcome limitations imposed by physical strength. When it comes to capabilities, we are truly elephantine. But that is also our bane. We can justify anything; even our lack of inclination to free ourselves.

If our minds are made up, then unshackling ourselves from our fetters, self-imposed or otherwise, is child’s play.

The problem and it answer lies within us.

Can you feel your shackles? Star the search now

LIFE’S PURPOSE: THE GARDEN BENCH AND FEW REVELATIONS

Background

The cemented garden bench, across my house, with bright golden yellow borders and white cross members, looks perfect a partner for the strange tree painted on the wall next to it. The unnaturally multi coloured leaves, all imprints of hands, make the white wall come alive. I do not know what the artists want to convey. To me, it represents a declaration of the arrival of the new generation, colourful and different. The symbolic leaves, reveal the unmistakable urge for attachment despite the deliberate choice of detached existence, uneasy coexistence of silent symmetry with loud asymmetry and subtle yet visible order in the chaotic riot of colours. 

During day, the bench and the tree on the wall merge into insignificance with the surroundings. But as darkness descends and the caretaker switches the light on, they transform the area into a surreal spectacle, seen to be believed.

Occasionally few, of those ‘palm-print artists’, occupy the garden bench, in a huddle, mostly loud, sometimes in hush-hush mode, but always deliberately unmindful of our existence.

The Trigger

The post-supper conversation between my wife and I sitting, out on our veranda chairs, is a ritual we rarely miss. Our neighbour a septuagenarian widower joins us nowadays. We find something to talk about every day.

It was the first of February and we were half way into to our discussion when I noticed the caretaker of our colony sitting still on the bench.

Appointed for security, he is of minimal security value.  His primary job is to switch on and switch off the water pump that fills our colony’s overhead tank. Very particular in switching it on, which he does many times a day, he often forgets to switch it off. Sensitive to water wastage, I often switch it off. His disarming demeanour makes it difficult for me to scold him, though I do at times. At 72, he is active, always happy and happier after a glass of toddy, which he manages, at least once a day. Resourceful, he easily manages more. Despite the hard life behind him, he carries no grudge.

Sitting motionless on the highlighted bench, he seemed like one who had achieved the ultimate bliss through denouncement. Whether it was toddy induced stupor or age inflicted deafness, I don’t know, he remained oblivious to the sound of water gushing out of the overflow pipe. I shouted out to bring him back to the duty-bound world. He immediately rushed to switch off the motor and came back with the excuse always given and his characteristic smile. Thereafter, he returned to his room to sleep.

As he walked away, I remarked, look at him! He lives for the moment. Neither today nor tomorrow seems to worry him. He has no savings and estate to leave behind with an elaborate will. His daughters are married and wife has a part-time job in the nearby pump. He is not bothered about how his old age will pan out. He lived like that all his life. Content with his state of meagre existence he lives to enjoy the moment.

Think of it, he is a lucky man.

In the hope of making our old age safe and secure, we exhaust ourselves and our lives, struggling to accumulate and hoard things? If that wasn’t enough, we start working to secure the future of our children and even the ‘yet-not-thought-of’ grandchildren. The self-imposed burden of defining their destiny becomes the very purpose of our life and the sole driving force of existence.  Though we know of the uncertainty, today holds and tomorrow brings, we are relentless in our toil in vain.

This realisation compelled me to ask my wife and my neighbour, “What could be the purpose of his life?” “What is the purpose of our lives?”

The Counter

Anniey, my wife is a very intelligent and practical lady. A gold medalist of her times in academics, she is well read and keeps an ear to the ground. “Well,” she said, “He must surely have had some aspirations in the past and some now.” He would have wanted to have a house, wear good clothes, eat good food, travel. Surely every man and woman would want to have all that”.

Yes. Certainly. Everyone in whatever state he or she is born into, would want to become better. Desire to own, improve one’s own state of existence, part take in comfort should be our aim. I believe its our duty to be richer than when we were born.

That is not what is marketed by all sorts of Gurus as ‘purpose of life’. They tend to add halo to our existence and in the process complicate a simple natural process called life.

Life’s Purpose

The ultimate advice gurus give us, is to define the purpose of life. They convince us to connect our present with the future and life beyond, compelling us to do things, normal living things are not supposed to. Most of us are convinced that we Humans are the only ones blessed with possession of Soul.

Even though every one of us know, that there is a definite end to each one of us, we toil today to live tomorrow and even dictate the life after. Many of us want to leave something movable or immovable for posterity. The driving force, accepted or denied, behind such action of ours is the desire to be remembered by our progeny, their progeny and even the society well after we're gone. Most of our actions under the banner of ‘purpose of life’ is undertaken solely with the aim of leaving our footprints, hoping that it lasts for ever[i].

Life's purpose is not a recent discovery. It has been spoken of even in old tests. If we should be driven by a life's purpose now, even those before us would have felt the same!

Examining their life and its outcomes could help us define the purpose of our life and draw up pursuit strategies.

World’s Greatest

The most powerful student of Aristotle, Alexander III, mostly known as Alexander the Great, in 33 short years of his life, ruled ancient Macedonia for 13 years, most of which was spent in ruthless empire expansion. There is no written word about what his purpose of life was, but whatever it was, he would have done everything, with all the force at his command to fulfil it. If it was the creation of an endless empire, or a way of life he wanted others to follow, everything he created over unimaginable bloodshed and countless mutilated bodies disintegrated soon after he died.

Genghis Khan, who created the world’s largest contiguous empire between 13^th and 14^th centuries, often called the ‘green invader’, killed so many, that huge swathes of inhabited and populated land became depopulated and became forests! What his life’s purpose was, remains a mystery. Whatever it was, it isn’t around!

They are not alone. Ruthless rulers, lying leaders, shrewd businessmen; none of them had any different fate. Each of them devised means to decimate opposition, overcome challenges and create suitable environment for exclusive growth and spent a lifetime attempting to create systems to carry their names till eternity. Addiction, it turns out to be, turns them blind to reality.

But we can see! The same story is being spun in vain even now, across the world in every country, society, business and even at home.

Empires, fiefdoms, institutions and people; they all obey this law. One may find few examples to dispute the hypothesis. The disagreement comes from our inability to see the graph ahead in time. Extension of the graph forward on axis of time eventually proves that the exception is merely a visibility issue.

No exceptions?

Exceptions Prove the Rule

There could be an argument that ideologies could beat this law. Therefore, if the purpose of life of an individual is to create and propagate an ideology, would it last long, if not forever?

Dispassionate dissection of the argument would easily dispel the fallacy. The loftiest of ideals, fervently celebrated, could also find itself being trampled upon, at times by the very same people who use it to usurp power. Contemporary National and international politics is witness enough to the weaknesses of the argument.  Communism has acquired capitalist colour driving equals and more equals further apart; religions have evolved finding better ways to sell salvation and assassin of the ‘Father of The Nation’ is repackaged as freedom fighter. Time can make zeros of heroes can and martyrs out of killers.  Nothing is forever; not even gratitude.

‘Purpose of life’ is fallacy that we have been conditioned to believe in; a collective narcissistic pursuit. Though just one element of a complex interwoven food chain, we fool ourselves us into believing that we are special and ordained to lord over others. Kept alive by the grace of flora and fauna within and feeding on flora and fauna outside and mortally susceptible to even the tiniest bacterium or virus, we are only as good as any other species and definitely bad for others. We exploit the earth at the cost of other species and continually endeavour to exploit even others in our own species. Our cruelty remains unmatched among all species. All that we say about finding purpose of life masks either our selfish or escapist motives.

Crass Pessimism?

Against all lofty teachings?

If not for a purpose, what must we live for?

The Truth

Truth is often unpalatable. Purpose of life, irrespective of the owner, has a shelf life.

The Great Wall of China stretching over 21,196 km, was built by a series of Emperors from different dynasties. Built for the ‘purpose’ of fortifying northern borders of ancient China, it has long outlived its original purpose. China continues to claim real estate far beyond the wall, now primarily a tourist destination!

Shorn of hypocrisy and narcissistic masks our purpose of life is existence. Penned plain and simple, there is nothing to achieve beyond ourselves in this life. Everything else, said about us, binds us in pursuit of a mirage. The primary task is to live and let live with dignity. If a purpose has to be defined, then it is just to be good to oneself and others around. Mutually inclusive thought and action would mitigate almost all problems that the world is facing today.

When humans start considering that other races within our species and other species in the inter-species realms have the same rights of existence, the world could be a better place for living. If inventions and discoveries were deployed only for the good of mankind and not used as exploitative means of socio-economic and political dominance, life could have been different for all of us. It still can be!

It is often said that there is enough and more to satiate everyone’s needs. It is the greed of some, that makes it difficult for others to meet even their basic needs. That remains the bare fact.  The pleasure one gets through cheating and untrustworthiness, little or big acts of smartness, would all be in vain.

Being good to oneself can happen even while being just and good to others. Look at life as an opportunity to be good to people.

Bare Fact

On 2^nd February while coming home from the local barbershop, our caretaker fell by the roadside. Passers-by carried him to the medical college nearby. He passed away on 10^th February.

When I went to pay condolences, I saw him peacefully asleep dressed in the purest of whites. I was one amongst the crowd at the funeral. I watched his mortal remains locked in the coffin being pushed into the burial vault. Along with him locked in his coffin, went the purpose of his life; if any he had. Everybody and everything he loved stayed back.

You and I too would soon be gone and with us all that we believe in. All that we built and plan to build will not.

Paradoxical, but true, each of us, leave ‘footprints on the sands of time’, each one momentary, however impactful and seemingly indelible.

Are you still thinking of a great purpose of life?

---

[i] Vehement denial could be the first reaction

VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS OF STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

 

Stockholm Captives All?

It was not until I met Mr Shibi Mohan, physiotherapist at the local Wellness Centre, I realised what physiotherapy actually meant. suffering from lumbar and cervical spondylosis, I would let myself be wired up to machines, that tickle and shock to relieve me of both pain and cash; pain temporarily and cash for good.

Most therapists I met before wore white coats, were suave and machine-beep controlled. They stuck probes at various places, switched on machines and left me to shake or heat as the machines desired. They reappeared when the machine beckoned them with beeps signalling end of each session.  A fortnight of shakes, I would leave with a lighter purse and a set of instructions on what to do, only to be back, there itself or at a new place, for the shakeup all over again. My ignorance or convenience of therapists, or both, I continued to suffer and they continued to earn.

Shibi is different. Operating from a lean-mean therapy room, visibly devoid of high-tech equipments, he helped me understand muscle groups and how they network to hold me up and move. He patiently relieved my hamstrings, focussed on strengthening weak areas and set out to incrementally build  my routines. A fortnight without painkillers and sciatica pains is ‘paradise regained’.

Its then I realised that what I underwent all these years in the name of physiotherapy was pain management; and I never complained! 

I knew what was required. Yet; why did I willingly agree only to be pain-managed? Why didn’t I ask the earlier therapists to get on with real physio – therapy? 

Accepting what was given even when I knew there could be better ways out? Another version of Stockholm Syndrome? Am I the only one like that?

Take a close look at yourself, your relationships and interpersonal transactions. May be you can identify the syndrome being played out in multifarious ways.

Stockholm syndrome impacts, influences and afflicts everybody; rich and poor, powerful and powerless, rulers and ruled, leaders and led alike. It's a deadly game that we all inflict as perpetrators and also suffer as victims, both at the same time.

Everyone a Stockholm captive of some sort?

The Origins

When Jan-Erik Olsson went inside Sveriges Kreditbanken, at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm on 23 Aug 1973 with a submachine gun and took four hostages, he only wanted to rob. He did not think of scripting a psychological phenomenon, called Stockholm Syndrome. As the event unfolded and culminated, the hostages were released and Olsson was captured. Surprisingly, his hostages were reluctant to testify against him.

The syndrome is characterized by positive feelings of captives towards the captor and inability to perceive the captor as a threat. The fact that there existed no previous relationship between hostage and abductor and refusal of the hostages to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to book the perpetrator are the other characteristics.

The Paradox

Stockholm Syndrome is paradoxical because the victim, a captive and in great danger at the time of the event, develops an emotion contrary to the ones normally expected. It is important to understand that the psychological bond between the perpetrator and victim develops in situations like ‘hostage-taking’, where an intense imbalance of power clearly exists.

Though similar responses are observed in victims of kidnapping, sexual abuse, human trafficking, extremism, terrorism, socio - economic oppression, politically discriminative regimes, financial repression, religious persecution and even abusive relationships Stockholm Syndrome has not yet been included in the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’, the American diagnostic tool for psychiatric illnesses and disorders. The syndrome remains a ‘contested mental disorder’ presumably due to lack of consistent body of academic research. 

Funny or laughable, it’s all over; yet it doesn’t generate enough data? Myopia epidemic afflicting academia?

Unrecognised Epidemic

The defining characteristics of the syndrome is presence of genuinely positive emotions of the victim towards the perpetrator despite demeaning or life threating situations, the victim suffers at the hands of perpetrator. What is often not understood and therefore not stated is the impact of physical proximity and time-duration the hostage spends with the captor. More intense the imbalance, longer and closer the confinement, more acute and deeper seems to be manifestations of the syndrome. Unfortunately, the syndrome is often viewed only in reference to physical hostage conditions.

What about abusive relationships, ideological, political and economic hostage situations? Every abusive or exploitative relation, is an existential imbalance in power, irrespective of nature of confinement and hence a classic setting for Stockholm syndrome. Look around us, exploitative and abusive relationships are in plenty. It is found within homes, workspaces, administrative machinery, ideologies and even in matters of faith.

History tells us of populations singing songs in praise of cruel despots, upholding, suffering and yet willingly extending the regimes’ cruelty upon itself? Longer the rule of the despot, louder and more widespread were the songs! Redemption from one ensured arrival of yet another, even more exploitative and repressive. We have seen crowds, once so deferential,  cheer in Iraq and Libya when their once revered rulers fell. Nothing changed for the better anyway!

Why would people who liberated themselves and seized the power of deciding their own destiny overwhelmingly hand it all over to someone who clearly undermines the very same values they fought for? Why would people flock and identify themselves with ideologies only to give away significant part of their earnings to fatten the overlords and discriminate one against another? Why would partners in relationships suffer and condone abusive atrocities?

It may be fear to start with. It could be survival instincts or coping mechanisms but it defiles dignity, defies logic and goes against the very basic tenets of existence in equality and liberty.

Look around us a little closer, Stockholm Syndrome is a raging epidemic and present in every aspect of life and in all sections of society. Yet, academics cannot find cases enough to gather data, sufficient enough, to prove or disprove its existence.

Poverty amidst plenty; a laughable paradox.

Deliverance?

While academics can continue to turn blind eyes citing inadequacy of data or debate to accept or reject existence of the syndrome, we cannot ignore the insights Erik Olsson himself provided. He is believed to have said in an interview;

“It was the hostages' fault. They did everything I told them to. If they hadn't, …. Why didn't any of them attack me? They made it hard to kill. They made us go on living together day after day, like goats, in that filth. There was nothing to do but get to know each other.”

Olsson’s credibility aside, his words carry a very serious message.  The onus of breaking free rests with the victim. It is often the hostage who willingly allows hostage like situation to continue. In a bid to sustain life, however demeaning it may be, they shun logic and truth and may even despise those preaching so. It is said that the initial opposition to the movement against slavery came from blacks themselves. Indian freedom struggles also have such examples.

It is the undeployed, underemployed power we have in ourselves that let us become hostages to individuals, ideologies, regimes or situations. It is we, who willingly wallow in the filth we create for ourselves, for whatever reasons. Each one of us is capable of redeeming the situation, but nobody does.

It takes knowledge and courage to turn the tables.

Meanwhile, let academia find solace in their lament of data drought.