Three of twelve: I had a professor in college, a very strange man. He taught classes primarily on Middle Eastern and sub-continental literature. He was an expatriate from I think India but I'm not certain. As a young man he had been a member of Ghandi's passive resistance movement in India. As I had a bit of a Ghandi complex at the time, and was filled with idealistic visions of a More Perfect Union, I asked him one day what it had been like to know Ghandi. He looked at me, sort of bemused, it seemed, and then said in his deep, thickly accented voice:
"I now believe that Ghandi was responsible for the division of India."
That was it. He had nothing else to offer me on the subject. This from a man who once discoursed for half an hour on the burial of his wife (his main point seemed to be that modern American burial customs were extremely overwrought and quite expensive as well).
And now that I think of it, I believe the man is right. Ghandi was responsible for the division of India. Which is probably where the next use of nuclear weapons will occur.
So? Do I think I have one up on Ghandi? No, I don't. But my lesson for today is, perhaps there is a benefit in being small and obscure. Keep the attention of malevolent gods from being drawn to me. In the end, the world is rarely about the acts of one exceptional man or woman, good or evil. It is nothing more than the daily sum of the parts we play. And if we amplify and magnify our actions, if we end up leading a million, it can only amplify these parts, played well or played ill. Who claims the certainty of self to take up that mantle? Not me, boy. I'm definitely not the man for the job.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
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