Don’t you know who I am?

There are phases in life when people come to you – and this happens right from school – and ask you, ‘How could you put up with that?’ ‘Why didn't you say something?’ “How can you let them do this?’ If you aren't seen screaming and protesting and doing a sort of a war-dance, sword in hand, at all the perceived injustices being handed out – being a Mamata Banerjee, basically – you’re seen to be passive, timid, a rollover. You are supposed to make yourself seen, heard, known – to let people know, with collars up, who you are. What do they think you are, anyway?

 I have not been a fan of that thought process. It means that the guy who brings his car to a violent halt bang in the middle of the road and rushes out to slap the auto driver for denting his shiny door panel is the epitome of true manhood. It means that when a disoriented school kid bangs his screeching scooter into my car and smashes my taillights, and I see what’s happened and simply continue listening to music, disappointing all those around waiting eagerly for me to stomp out to settle scores, I’m being a loser. Ditto, if I do not opt to have a protest demonstration of sorts at every point of life where I think I’m not getting my due. But who is getting his due, anyway?

Am sorry to disappoint, but to not react with abuse or rant at the first sign of being irked is not weakness. To strut around with a robotic gait, and the vibes of an off-screen Rajinikanth at all times, is not being cool. Being the school bully or being the reckless SUV driving son of a quasi-don – said SUV usually having been purchased primarily with illegitimate money – does not make you a Cool Dude, sonny boy, even if does get your testosterone and adrenaline pumping furiously.

 We equate brashness and cockiness with strength, and a dignified keeping quiet and carrying on with timidity. That is akin to equating a calm sea with an absence of water. The strongest of men have learnt to keep their egos under check and not be affronted when in situations where their presence is not heralded with pomp and show. It’s not easy.

Think of the big clash of the Mahabharata – Krishna-guided Arjuna vs standalone Karna. Karna was fully aware of who he was; a man of royal blood equal to the Pandavas, but he was content to be seen as the charioteer’s son. Neither did he find any reason to embrace his biological mother and leave the ones who raised him. He saw no reason to tell the world, I’m as royal as any of them. His peers may have mocked him as a Sootputra among the royal warriors, but the lord of the devas, Indra himself, knew very well who Karna was, knew he was the one who could defeat Arjuna, knew the ‘daanveer’ part of him as well, and knew that he wouldn't hesitate even if asked for his kavach and kundal. Did it really matter for such a man what everyday people saw him as?

I tend to respect Karna more than Arjuna, but Arjuna too wasn't someone who needed to strut around and tell the world who he was. In the period of agyatvaas, the man addressed by Krishna as ‘bahubali’ lived the life of an eunuch for the final year – a sharper contrast is difficult to imagine. Would he never have cringed at having to live that life in an era where prowess and manhood were the definitive traits of the Kshatriya prince? But he did; he lasted that year without going into an angst-filled drunken session and declaring to all and sundry, ‘you don’t know who I really am!’ Krishna himself – though he would hardly need such indexes of self worth – grew up among the cowherds despite being from a royal family, and even after being acquainted with the facts, never needed to distance himself from his less powerful foster-parents.

Closer home, when I read about the figures that interest me, I draw a mental picture of Humayun wandering in exile with the newborn Akbar; of a Maharana Pratap sharing grass rotis in the desert as he fled Mughal forces; of a Shivaji attempting to curb his ego and stand in the court of Aurangzeb (it didn't work for long, though); of a Bose trudging across the Afghan frontier as a poor and dumb villager, being heckled and prodded by guards. Men with no deficiency of self-esteem, men with a sense of honour, often fairly powerful in phases, who, when circumstances dictated otherwise, did not rant or scream or turn into melancholic brooders. They shrugged their shoulders and quietly carried their cross on their backs. Till the tide turned – or even if it did not.

There was a ten-rupee poster of ‘A Prayer’ by Max Ehrmann tacked up above my office table. Midway, it says, “Though the World know me not, may my Thoughts and Actions be such as shall keep me friendly with Myself.”

Let the world not know me. I do not feel the need to answer to anyone who asks – ‘but how can you not raise this? How can you let them do this to you? What do they take you for?’ Not even when I am sometimes, in an ego-driven moment, asking myself the same questions. It seems to me too close to the typical existential North Indian query: don’t you know who I am?

My take on it is: Maybe you don’t need to know who I am. May be you won’t understand even if I told you.  I know who I am, and that is quite enough.