Back To Basics

The financial crisis around the world has touched many of us. People who thought they would never be affected, have felt the cold tendrils of dread as a colleague has been laid off, as a neighbour has been repossessed, as another horror story in the media has filtered through.

Yet, this comes on the back of an era of almost breath-taking prosperity. The current generation is far more prosperous than any previous one, and individuals have reaped the benefits of rising educational standards, burgeoning employment, particularly among women, undepinned by an explosion in technology uninterrupted by major worldwide conflict.

Expectations have risen as a result. What was, in our parents' days, merely an aspiration, is now a given. Unfortunately, those dizzying expectations have also created a very unhappy generation, buffeted by the vicissitudes of a rollercoaster financial system, driven by an ever increasing thirst for corporate profits and shareholder value. When things go wrong, as they recently did, the pervading gloom becomes endemic, a self fulfilling prophecy spreading by contagion, feeding on itself.


How do you stay above this? Is it even possible not be affected by the miasma of misery that seems to be everywhere?


I remember, as a teenager, paying a visit to our local mission, run by an organisation called the Bharat Sevashram Sangh. There was one monk in paricular who impressed me. He was young, very spare, and unfailingly cheerful, and I decided to find out what made him tick.


His dwelling quarters comprised a single room. There was a bed with the thinnest of mattresses to cushion his ramrod straight back, a spare pillow, a table, a cushionless chair for prayer and rumination, and a humble bookcase packed with books that told stories of God, knowledge and other aesthetic pleasures. That was it.


Sworn to celibacy for life, he woke every morning at 4 AM, exercised, and got down to the sacristy for morning prayers. Breakfast was as spartan and basic as his environs, followed by a session he spent with orphans from the local community, who lived at the Sangh and studied there.


During the myriad natural diasters that India seems to have more than her share of, the young ascetic would be called out at a moment's notice to travel hundreds of miles and serve the needy and dying, providing what little succour he could, armed only with a smile and very scarce resources garnered through donations.


Yet, despite that monastic existence, that life shorn of any vestige of material pleasure, job prospects, company pensions, and whatever it is that people take for granted these days, I can honestly say that he was one of the happiest persons I have ever known. The light of self-denial shone in his eyes, and he had a bearing that told of a man utterly at peace with himself.


I don't know where he is now, where destiny has taken him, but he strides my memories resplendently like a beacon of light on a dark night, exhorting me to simplify my life and go back to the basic tenets of austerity he epitomised.