There are many times in life when heroism possesses us. Saving the world around us from a crisis while the saved citizens of a country sing ballads about me is a recurrent theme in my day dreams. After I break out of them, I catch myself unconsciously giving a passionate smoulder into the distance while wallowing in self-pity because if there was ever such a situation I would be inconsequential citizen number 42 crying for help than the super hero.
But a fully grown up cousin of mine, had other ideas.
When I asked him to come with me to Chennai to distribute some relief material, he agreed instantly. I was suspicious because there is nothing in my life that I would say ‘yes’, that quickly to.
Non-Me: Your name is Mukesh?
Me: (A few quantum Vedic equations later) Mostly that, but some annoying pet names too, whose origin stories would prove the butterfly effect.
I realized my cousin was under the impression that he was going to dive into the flood waters and save drowning children, while he challenges the government on its corrupt moral fibre. Then the citizens of Chennai would tattoo his name onto their foreheads and erect giant statues, after which Jayalalitha, realizing the folly of her ways, would hand over the reins of the state of Tamil Nadu to my cousin. That’s when I realized my cousin’s day dreams were more Baahubali than Batman!
To offset the delusional optimism of my cousin was the comical pessimism of our driver who was visiting Chennai for the first time. It was made worse by the fact that the driver had the audacity to say “It’s good that Chennai had such floods because at least the weather is pleasant”, as we passed through new squatter settlements along the footpaths, that would have transformed Prince Siddhartha into Buddha during the time it took, to cross the street. In a car!
I wanted revenge.
He tried to quip further that Bangalore and Hyderabad had more shopping malls than Chennai. With sincere nonchalance I replied “The Chennai ones were submerged and swept away in the floods.” If the camera was invented for a reason, it was to capture the definition of the word “panic” in his facial expression at that exact moment. I devoured the moment with all the glee of a caricatured fat child who was just offered a laddoo.
When the final moment did come to distribute the resources, my cousin truly understood the tedious nature of disaster management. Real people have to get their hands and bodies dirty, to give resources to victims and take part in the physical cleaning up of a city, have the heart to bear the brunt of abused global environment and mismanaged local urban terrain. It is at this time, I swear I saw in a bright flash, his coke snorting Raju Hirani directed dream of being a “hero”, leave through the kundalini point in his head. During the next couple of hours my cousin also realized life’s biggest disappointment: there is never going to be background music, no matter what the act of bravado is. It is knowledge all of us possess, but it is wisdom when the physical reality of there never ever being background music in life hits us with the subtlety of a paan stain.
In the outskirts of the city, over some tea that had been clearly made by making an angry Malayalee man spit into it, my cousin and I had a philosophical discussion on the nature of heroism being something that is not defined by statues or noble thoughts, but by something that possess us and how we act in those moments. He felt that it was more everyone solving smaller pieces of the puzzle than a one-man-saves-all fantasy that pop-culture and myths drill into our brains. I told him he need not worry because in this weird way he was a hero too. To come to a new city with no ties other than the whims of an overly sentimental cousin (in case it isn’t clear, it is I, the Prince of Overly Sentimental, Imperator of the Awkward, Baron of the Borderline Bi-polar) just so he could help strangers, despite the manner in which he thought it was going to happen, made him a bit of a hero. At least for a couple of hours that day!
Even in that poignant moment, the best background music life offered was the slurping of tea by our driver.
Mukesh Manjunath 