Category: Lateral Thinking

I had a professor who was way too different, when I was pursuing masters in Econometrics (yes, the same major of Revathi in Mouna Ragam) who used to insist that anger and hate are two very positive and constructive emotions that must be nurtured and not suppressed. He was kind of arrogant and kept smoking in our classes (for the chainsmoker that he was). In one of my earliest classes I asked him not to because the smoke bothered me. He apologized and quit smoking in our classes for the entire two year period. But it seemed, whenever I missed my class, he told the class that ‘as vijayalakshmi is absent today, let me take the liberty of smoking’ and puffed away to the chagrin of my classmates. It shocked me that nobody else in my class had the guts to bell the cat. I did it and thanks to me my friends got to miss the passive smoke fumes from the professor. So he would tell the class (and I knew he addressed me in particular) that anger, outrage, protest and hate are very good and positive emotions. Obviously he was referring to my objection to his smoking. He would say, unless we expressed our displeasure, anger, discontentment and dissatisfaction – there was no way these could be dealt with. ‘Be angry for the right things’ he would say, because if you are complacent enough to put up with WRONG THINGS then you have no right to complain of your miseries at a later date. Anger for right thing is actually JUSTICE or aspiration for justice. By keeping quiet, you are voting for injustice. You have to show your dislike, disapproval and hate for things that you are not comfortable with or don’t want done. After years I am reminded of this man who always told us to express our emotions explicitly. Speaking our mind was very important to our professor. My relationship with the professor also would remind me how I was subtly and really bold over the other girls who liked to giggle with him but never mustered the courage to talk him out of his smoking habit. I never approached him once in his lunch room or struck up a conversation with him in the corridor like some girls did. Been way too proud all my life! He was much older anyway. I gave him the pass but he in his 50s was like my dream hero then. Probably he knew it! In life we come across rare gems like this. I felt no need to go and butter my professor like other girls did. But I exalted in the secret happiness that I was special to him. This period lasted for just two years. Most of the time I ended up picking up arguments with him. It wasn’t a smooth relationship at all. But I guess this man became an influential figure in my thought process in the proceeding years. Decades later I still have this question in my mind: what made the others stop short of asking him not to smoke in the class. Why do they all need a scapegoat, someone to bell the cat. Cowards! Like the mice following the pied piper! And why could these same girls not resist crowding over the professor and chatting him up about anything under the sky from latest picture to politics. And most of all, why the hell wasn’t I like the other girls. I gave the professor wide berth whenever our paths crossed in the university. I maintained my distance and he did his. He was over my father’s age yet most of the girls could not stop drooling over him.

Anyway, thanks to him I have no qualms about nurturing a temper, red hot at that! Speaking the uncomfortable truth, keeping a straight face, confronting lies and dishonesty – these came to mean a lot to me. For our brutal honesty, some of us get branded as negative people. The fact is, who we have around us are mostly TOXIC POSITIVE who encourage falsity and trivialize grave situations. Toxic positive guys try to undermine the seriousness of matters by generalizing everything as ‘common good’ which may not be the case. For instance, unhealthy free sex to them is openmindedness and liberty even if the collateral damage could be by way of broken homes and families. One of first things we have to set right about perceptions is that, we learn to distinguish between what is right and acceptable and what is not and beyond the limits of decency. We have to come clear on this aspect of intellectual honesty. And we have to put down in writing what we believe in. Where your word is like a written rule, you must give your word, you must record your say. I have no respect for those who cleverly ‘sit on the fence’ and play it all safe.

In a world that is increasingly asking us to ‘tolerate, forgive, forget, be patient, distance ourselves from drama’ I am forced to recall my professor’s words asking us NOT TO TOLERATE, NEVER TO FORGIVE OR FORGET BUT TAKE YOUR ADVERSARIES HEAD ON. ‘Release the hate, cleanse your mind’ is the sermon drummed up your ears. Quotes of them, reels and then there are the gurus who preach too much of love and forgivance that at times we are overwhelmed carried away be the waves of ‘kindness, openness, goodness’ and all that stuff! Whereas ‘Hold the hate, whip up a healthy temper, fight fair with tooth and nails, ALWAYS REMEMBER and NEVER FORGET’ was the counsel that I received from my experienced rebel professor!

When a friend of mine died in her early 40s, her two daughters in higher secondary school, were not even allowed to weep over her death. Their father stood by them and was reminding them of the so-and-so guru’s teachings that leaving life someday was inevitable whoever it is, and we must never mourn the passing away of even a family member. So the girls held tight. That really put this question in my mind: if the daughters cannot grieve openly about losing their mother, then what is the point of such a spirituality. Do we even need this?’

The girls of the gang I left behind had a different view on controlling emotions. They called me rigid because they claimed to be Osho followers. They had liberal views on sex and were open for free sex (at least phone sex). They lived for cheap thrills (as I found out later). For them, positivity and optimism was all about sex. Breaking homes was fine because freewill mattered. Individual aspirations counted. The emotions to be kept under wraps were anger and mistrust and hate and doubts because these are what that troubled others. Voicing your discontent ruined relationships. I had difficulty coming to terms with their kind of freedom of the mind so I quit. One thing I noticed about this free sex idea: its fine for the men so long as the liberal women were not family. The men wanted their own wives and daughters and sisters to be clean. NO FREE SEX FOR THE WIFE. With the gang I left, I went into spin figuring out what is love and what is hate really.

So how do we determine what is admissible and what is not. Here is the catch. What is NOT okay for you cannot be okay for others. Its as simple as that. I go by my intuition in these matters. What you don’t want to be done to you, you must not do to others.

Through all this I try to retain my clarity of thought: about what matters. What is important. What must be kept under self-control and what are the emotions that can be allowed to take flight. I still get angry for right things, things that must enrage anyone. I catch my adversaries by their collar and fling them on to the wall for the feeble shitty helpless flies they are. I break their wings with no mercy. They deserve that kind of brutality for the passive aggressive toxic selves they are. World can do with women like me. I wonder what made me, out of the class of 22 or 23 of equal boys and girls of 21 years, raise a hand and ask my professor to stop smoking in the class. I am the same girl. I still have the same fire in me. Don’t expect anything less from me. By the way for the internals, my professor awarded me my the whole allotted mark of 20 upon 20. I didn’t have to butter up my professor. I did nothing to get into his good books. We shared nothing personal. But I knew I was someone who made a difference to him. Like he did to me.