Drop a dime on them

We talk about others, but seldom speak to them. We spend more time bitching, but rarely tell them what is wrong. We don't like those who aren't like us. We find no fault with those who follow us. From polity to personality, it affects us--in all walks of life.

We don't do constructive criticism. We settle scores when we take up on an adversary, not because what he does is morally reprehensible but because it makes us personally unhappy. We forget that those who give more must have taken more as well. Yet we praise those who give, more the merrier, like fools who can't tell a trick from treat.

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We like to be taken up the alley and then sent down the river. We admire people who are cunning, people who are street smart and deceptive, people who sell us nightmares wrapped in dreams. Arup Maharatna wrote in the Economic and Political Weekly on 31 July 2004 that Bengal is the region that "...seems to be famous (globally) as much for the Royal Bengal tigers as for its pervasive predilection for 'dreaming'". He then defined dreaming as an act of 'looking without eyes'.

Everything about us is piping dream. We elect dishonest men to public office, and expect them to serve us with honesty. We teach our children to grow up as good human beings, but then expect them to make loads of money. We want the best in this life, yet our eyes are fixed on the next. We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to what suits us and feel bitter if we don't like it. We are an eclectically eccentric people. Now we see it, now we don't. We are a riddle of contradictions. First we defame ourselves to make money in unscrupulous manners, and then we go after fame giving in charity.

We talk about plain living and high thinking, yet our minds are plainly pre-occupied with high living only. We take bribe and go to the mosque. We snatch from others and talk about generosity. Our definition of success is screwed up by all means. Nothing succeeds like success. Everything is made in its image. We worship success like a deity.

So what matters is going to the top, ends always justifying the means. But then blobs of faeces float in the water, while heavier stuffs sink. Considerate men are weighed down by conscience, as they must consider consequences before they act. But then there are those who will do anything to go to the top. They run our institutions, our business, they run our politics.

They steal, lie, womanise, conspire, kill and cheat, their success coming after many moral failings. But we idolize them no matter what, oblivious to the fact that their gain is our loss. We are taught as children not to disrespect the elderly, not to argue with them or criticise them, keeping secret what could embarrass them. We are a nation condemned to condone contemptible and contemptuous people.

We hold it back, and don't give it to them. We simmer, we smoulder, we hiss, we grumble. We go through psychosis, we go through neurosis. We moan, we groan, we suffer in quiet anguish. We forgive as quickly as we forget. We misunderstand more than we understand. Hold those eggs again! I am talking about us, the fortunate folks, not about those who are busy keeping the wolves from their doors. Poor people can't criticise, because the rumbles of hunger drown their voices. What they do is make lots of noise so that others will know where it hurts them.

It is folks like us, who eat well, sleep well and got the time to think well as well. We have the education, we have the knowledge. We have the freedom, we have the choice. Yet we brown nose, we grease the palms, we suck up to the rich and the powerful, hoping to thrive in the vicious cycle of favours creating favours.

We are a conundrum, as a nation, as a people. Wait a minute. I know your hands are itching. But hold those eggs a little longer, don't throw them yet. We cover up for allies, dig up for enemies, and our conscience is driven by the clever agenda of convenience. We hold truth as a hostage, seeking ransom for it, blackmailing it, using it and abusing it like a widow who has no protection.

We don't speak up lest it got difficult, lest it got dangerous. We concede, we condone, and we compromise, but all subsumed within our predilection for contention, our ambition to succeed, our lips sealed in a bizarre code of silence. There is a brotherhood of crooks sheltered in that silence as if we are members of some secret society engaged in a hush-hush business. Our complicity is staggered, the level of secrecy varying with the level of hypocrisy, our hearts connected like daisy's chain, dishonesty heaved upon dishonesty.

We fill the air with slogans, political processions and protest rallies turning our streets into great scenes of public uproar. We talk about decency, rectitude, honesty, duty and responsibility. We are perfect in our living rooms, in our intellectual discussions, in our propensity for punditry. We understand the situation, we blame it on others, show our concerns about the future of the country. We are our biggest contradictions. Everybody knows the problem, nobody knows the solution. Much is wrong, none is guilty.

Now let me sock it to you. Success is at the root of all our failures. It's not success as an objective that is wrong. It is success as an obsession that is spoiling the sport. A person is successful only if he gets to become a better human being, and doesn't do to others what he wouldn't like others to do to him. At the root of everything is our silence, our inability or unwillingness to speak up and criticise people who flout these rules.

Throw your eggs if you like. I would say one who fails most is also most successful amongst us. Leaders must rise through layers of failure to drive the aspirations of common men. They need to understand what it feels like to fail if they must serve their people. This is the only thing that got us in the bind. This is the only thing that keeps us bottled up with a tight cork.

While I wipe the egg on my face, I ask you to think. If you could only look at success from a new angle, and learn not to get hung up on it, it would help you open up again. You will be able to criticise people for the right reasons, and your mind will fling open many doors and windows. Harbouring a criminal is crime itself. You know what I mean! There is egg on your face too!

In the American underworld, 'drop a dime' is an expression to mean that it takes one dime to make a call to the police to inform on someone. Talk about criminals amongst us who are hiding in the underworld of our hesitation and our fear. This will be your success.

Drop a dime on them. Never mind they have grown successful. Wild grass grows faster than them.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.