WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM JIAH KHAN By: Ramesh Bijlani

 

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM JIAH KHAN

By: Ramesh Bijlani 

The tragic death of the highly talented and accomplished actor Jiah Khan very very recently should wake us up to some uncomfortable facts about today’s society. She saw herself as a failure. If she was a failure, how many in the world can claim to be successful? She had accomplished in her twenty-five years what many cannot in twenty-five lives. What then, was her point of reference when she saw herself as a failure? The point of reference was the society. Every society has some cherished values and goals, and that influences how we judge ourselves. The most enlightened societies (India included) during their most glorious phases have valued simple living and high thinking. Based on this dictum their cherished goals have been peace, honesty, freedom of thought, self-reliance, scholarship, and so on, and the ultimate goal has been self-realization. But unfortunately we live in an age that values high living and simple thinking. The prevalent simple thinking is to get as much money as possible any-which-how because money can buy all the good things of life, which in turn will make us happy. Based on this thinking, even the best of our schools prepare a child for making a living, not for life. The upper-middle class that sends its children to these schools has, in general, abundant resources and very few children. Therefore, the life of these parents revolves around these children. Because of their love for their children, and with all good intentions, they not only send their children to the best school possible, they also pressurize the child and the school to make sure that their child is successful in all the board and entrance tests that pave the way to the best-paid jobs. Further, to ensure success, they send their child for tuitions and coaching classes. They also want their child to become an all-rounder, and therefore, for a few years they may also send their child for additional classes in sports, music, dance and painting. The result is that the child is hardly ten but the child and the parents are on a roller coaster everyday, the child moving from class to class, and the parents (usually the mother, or the driver) dropping and picking up the child. Under the best of circumstances, the child succeeds in achieving the goals that the parents determined for him, but not without paying a price. The price that he pays is that he develops, what psychologists call an entitlement personality, that is, a firm belief that he is entitled to get from the world whatever he wants. Further, he grows up without learning many indispensable lessons of life.

• He does not learn that effort is not all, and results are unpredictable. He forgets that the starting point of his success was his parentage and the unique gifts and talents with which he was born. The beautiful beginning that his life got was irrespective of his personal effort. What he observes instead is that it is possible to get predictably from his parents whatever he wants without much effort. In exams, he can reasonably predictably get whatever he wants, of course with a lot of effort. At the work place, the relationship between effort and the outcome becomes much less predictable. And, when it comes to life, so many terrific as well as terrible things happen irrespective of, and sometimes even in spite of, personal effort. That happens because superseding all human effort is an unseen hand. Neither school nor home has prepared this rich and successful boy or girl for the uncertainties that plague life.

• He does not learn how to face success or failure. Success needs gratitude and humility because it comes not just from effort, although it may seem to be so. Unless the divine will coincides with human will, no amount of effort can succeed. I saw this message inscribed once by some simple folk behind a truck: mehnat meri, rahmat teri (my effort, Your Grace). Wealth and education make us forget what the simple folk of this country know. Failure needs surrender to the divine will and wisdom. If in Its supreme wisdom, the Divine has given us a ‘failure’, there must be something good in it. Therefore, I should not just reconcile with what has happened grudgingly, but should rather accept it happily as a gift from the Divine. If I cannot see anything good in it, it is because of my own limitations. Neither school nor home has prepared the rich and successful boy or girl to accept success with gratitude and humility, and to accept failure happily in a spirit of sweet surrender.

• He does not learn that success and failure are relative; one might even say they are misnomers. What we get in life are not success and failure, victory and defeat, insult and praise, but just conditions and circumstances for fulfilling the purpose of life, which is spiritual growth, or growth of consciousness. And for fulfilling this purpose, we need both types of events – those that are perceived as good, and those perceived as bad. If everything went well with life, we might get so absorbed in ‘wine, women and music’ that we forget the purpose of life. On the other hand, if all went wrong with life, we might get so depressed as to not even feel like living. Therefore, weneed both success and failure. By accepting both success and failure in the right spirit, we can use both as opportunities for spiritual growth. God does not give us everything we want because that would not be good for us. He gives us everything that we need for spiritual growth. Neither school nor home has taught the rich and successful boy or girl to look at success and failure in this dispassionate manner, and to use both for fulfilling the purpose of life.

• He does not learn to see beyond himself. The parents have been so focused on their child, and have taught the child to do the same so effectively that the child forgets that he is part of a larger whole, a fragment of a larger unity. He forgets that he cannot insulate himself so effectively as to be happy when those around him are unhappy. This has at least two ramifications. First, the successful boy behaves as the owner of his wealth, not as its trustee. Secondly, if faced with failure, he cannot see that his problem is very small as compared to the misery that many others are living in. Sharing success, and helping others in need, help most the one who shares and helps. The one who shares and helps forgets his own problems, and grows spiritually through all happenings in life. Neither school nor home has taught the rich and successful boy or girl the paradox that it is in giving that we receive.

• He does not learn that life is precious. Human life on earth is a privilege. This is the only phase in the long journey of the soul during which the individual grows in consciousness. Neither school nor home has taught the rich and successful boy or girl the deeper truths of existence.

Stereotypes are never completely right. I am quite conscious of the many many honourable exceptions among the rich and the successful to whom the above generalizations may not apply. But I believe these exceptions exist in spite of the system of education and the social milieu we have in the country today. This article is a tiny effort to facilitate moving towards a society where we do not have repetitions of the Jiah Khan tragedy. The fact that she was not totally Indian makes little difference. In today’s globalized culture, the upper middle-class Indians live more like those in London and Manhattan than in the Bharat that few have the time to think about.