What is really prevailing in today's Manipur?
Tomba Shairem *
The world is too small to hide even a small mistake; however, it is too large to propagate the religion of the truth. However wise enough you are, you can never hide your wisely committed mistakes.
Even the humblest of humbles can judge the wisest man in the world. No pretention can ever last forever in any of the kingdoms of human society. Truth is always the truth.
Neither truth can be created out of untruths nor can it be destroyed completely. Power may suppress the voice of truth for sometime but it will not be able to make it extinct once and for all. Then why do we opt with the wrong means to achieve our goal which will not be honestly admired but will always be cursed?
The voice of the commoners is stronger than the power of a single wise man. Copernicus failed to convince the people of his days the truth of the working mechanism of the solar system. That was why, his wisdom turned out to be the cause of his death.
In the kingdom of blinds, it is not sure that one eyed man will always be the king. Rather, he may be taken to be an odd man among the rational blind people. Thus, the society bears the collective nature of men and their established principle of truth. It is very risky to think differently from the existing norms of the society.
The effect of doing so would either amount to put you on the throne of social appreciation or pull you back to the lowest throng of the ladder of human popularity. But, who is willing to become a just man among the socially wicked, culturally sick and unconsciously living people?
What is really prevailing in todays Manipur? When the price of essential commodities becomes unprecedentedly high, we use to accept it unprecedentedly while the whole world is worried about us.
Here in this land, everybody criticizes the corruptors but many of us are willing to become one. If one is involved in the scandal of corruption, it is psychologically conceived in mind that the person is not from a humble background.
In Manipur, there is no difference between the real meaning of corruption and side income as the minds of our people are homogeneously mixed with dilution of truth and concentration of wrong. Powers, money, amount of friends are the goal of our wise people; no matter, how they are going to earn them.
A constable of Manipur commando or a clerk in PWD is taken to be more valued than a High School teacher. People in this land talk about morale, culture, honesty, or academic achievement.
However, when one is supposed to choose ones own son-in-law or ones own groom everybody forgets everything except how much caliber he does have, to capture money. They believe that money can do anything in this land.
What a shame! Money can mean a good public government post, money buys a good posting, money can make you a public leader and money means everything from a beautiful wife up to the seat of chief minister.
Our familiarity in this land is that when money speaks, the truth becomes silent. The richest is the wisest, the best, and the strongest in the social book of this land.
Have we ever realized the meaning of true happiness? Is money everything for us? (If we think so then....???).
What can you do with your money when your only son has become a drug abuser? What game of happiness are you playing with your money while your dear wife is in her drivers arms?
How can you boast of your wifes success in achieving higher salary of higher post if it costs the beauty of her body to the man from whom she has stolen the promotion?
Have you ever realized how your daughters are living so happily in the hot summer days of outside Manipur where there is no father or no mother, while you are counting your thousand rupee notes?
Do you believe that it is a great win for you to win the heart of a young woman in your old age? Do you think that her interest is centered on the beauty of your body, not in the content of your purse?
Think, people think. Let us keep on thinking if money is everything for us.
With full consciousness we get the answer if we feel the difference between The Heaven and The Hell. Otherwise, we still get confused in differentiating his wife and our wives.
* Tomba Shairem contributes regularly to e-pao.net. The writer can be contacted at tombashairem(at)e-pao(dot)every1(dot)net
This article was webcasted on December 14, 2010.
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