Usha Memorial Lecture 2012 K Govindan Kutty
Don’t Worry. It May Not Happen.
Usha Memorial Lecture 2012 K Govindan Kutty
Don’t Worry. It May Not Happen.
I
never saw Usha. I spoke to her once. A few words, no more. Words seemed coming strained out of her. We had just checked in an hotel in Kochi, my wife, Sabu and I. Sabu was to explain why he was away and how he would be late. My wife insisted she should get to know Usha. I spoke a word or two. Till that shortest possible exchange, she was just a name to me. After that she became, mysteriously, a human wall behind which resided an inexplicable stress. She was, I guessed, fighting it with silence. Her silence, even through the phone, had an infectious quality. That and what followed had no connection. Cancer claimed her with an arrogance seen only in death. It was lurking in the corriodors of Lake Shore when we wanted to visit her. Sabu had been passing through spell after spell of tension. He had taken on rent an 2 >
apartment outside the hospital, ready to reach her at a moment's notice. He was unaware of, or unprepared for, the imminence of the end. Nor were we when we visited him. It was raining, more heavily and continuously than I had seen in recent times. We could not visit her. It was rather late, we were told. Usha was being taken in an out of the hospital with a week's or a fortnight's gap. Before the admissions became frequent, Sabu had asked me to have a word with Dr V P Gangadharan under whose eminent care she had been placed. I had known him as a doctor who could break bad news with not a muscle twitching on his bearded face. I am sure it was so, and his voice was not tremulous, when he told me over the phone, coldly accepting inveitability, that there was nothing much that could be done. Sabu had just come back into the circle of my close contacts. He was fascinated by my association with a journal on pain I was helping a palliative care association to put together. He volunteered to help the cause by inserting an ad which was quite useful to the journal. I composed its text with an extreme austerity of words, attributing it to Usha and Sabu. I have, in my time, ghosted for many people, big and small, but Usha was the only one who never knew I had composed a sentence or two in her name. The bad news had not yet been broken then. Sabu was going about his work and nursing with a degree of self-possession. That was the occasion I started using for Sabu's consumption the words which have formed today's lecture's title: Don't Worry. It May Not Happen. I kept parroting them whenever I was < 3
in touch with him. I even imagined he was buying it without reservation. Then, that day of rains, happened aborted visit to Usha. And, a week later came, the end. It would have then been patently stupid to say it may not happen. It had happened.
Don’t worry. It will not happen. I know what worries you now. It calls for no clairvoyance, which I certainly do not have, to fathom what one’s listeners are worrying about. Your worry is how long this lecture will last. That is not your worry alone. Everyone who is condemned to be a captive listener of a monologue is apt to wonder and worry when the compulsive speaker will end his oration with which he is naturally infatuated. As I am wont to say often, our greatest worry is about the interminability of speeches. So, don’t worry, I say to you, this worrisome exercise will not go on for a second longer than I am allowed. Let us now cut this crap, and come to less light things about worry. “Don’t worry” is a constant refrain of our social discourse. The earliest occasion I noticed its use was on a bill board in the corner of Bible Bhavan near Jantar Mantar Junction, now made famous by activists and agitators of all persuasion, in New Delhi’s Parliament Street forty years ago. Is it still there? Those who know the joint will know how wearied wayfarers wait there, their engines purring, spewing smoke, feet impatient to press on the raised pedals, many cursing the red light that yet does not turn into yellow and finally green. It is a crowd crystal, as 4 >
Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, in his famous book, Crowds and Power, would have called it. The shape and the mood of the crowd keeps changing inexorably with the glow of the green every three minutes but it has a constant state of mind, a state of worry. To that world of worry is addressed the Bible Bhavan’s message: “Don’t worry. It may not happen.” It was soothing, maybe irrationally. I liked to imagine that I was reassured that nothing would go awry, and I did not have to worry. Everyone who waited for the green glow was possibly braving a worry in his heart, a big worry or a small worry. Can I be in office on time? Will I get my salary today? Would my love turn up as agreed? That big bid, will it go in my favour? How long can I avoid my creditor? Do I reach home before it rains? Add to it a thousand more worries and the list will still remain endless. We seem to be faced with an epidemic of worry, which is chronic too. To those who seethe with worry, a word of reassurance, terrestrial or heavenly, is indeed a blessing. And, mind you, there is nothing that cannot be a matter of worry. Examinations can be worrying, when they come and when they are cancelled or put off. Loans can be worrying, when they are given and when they are not repaid. The scorching sun is a worry when your crop is in need of water. Clouds can worry you when your crop is just about ready for harvest. The sight of dark clouds can upset lovers separated from their loves, as Kalidasa’s Yaksha was in Meghasandesam. The poet spoke about clouds inspiring worry even in otherwise calm minds. That poetic vision had come long before medical doctors < 5
diagnosed what came to be called seasonal addictive disorder (SAD) in patients who felt simply off-mood with the onset of winter or rains.
Why do we worry? Does a parrot or a rabbit or a python worry? Is worry an exclusively human experience? We do not know. We will have to await a fundamental research in that area. Till such time we will have to make do with the corpus of worry literature human philosophy has so far produced. For my own use, I have evolved a rather simplistic worry theory. I hold that worry is usually about what we want or what we may lose. That is not being very original. Gautama Buddha had hit upon that idea, and tenaciously propagated it through his wandering monks, two thousand years ago. He saw worry as the primary human condition and identified desire as its cause. Gita approached it the same way, though with a different emphasis. According to the gospel from the chariot in the battlefield, those who dwell on sensory pleasures would be reduced to worry, anger and eventual mental ruin. An Islamic scholar whom I looked up had listed eight causes of worry. I will mention only one of them: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bad thoughts of others.â&#x20AC;? Beyond desire, before it if you like, there is something that upsets us. It is the sheer impossibility of knowing what lies beyond or before. We are verily condemned to the lot of a toddler lost in the middle of an unfathomable nowhere. And, we are not able to come to terms with the essential incomprehensibility of the nature of the world and life. 6 >
That was the worry echoed by Poontanam, my favourite poet, a Malayali Nampoothiri who was ridiculed for writing in his mother tongue. His “song of wisdom” was an essay in high-minded philosophy couched in arresting simplicity. What he saw as mankind’s misery was that we didn’t know what it was till yesterday, and we don’t know what it may be tomorrow. It is a worry that sears through our being. It remains ever, much as we try to peep into the womb of the morrow with the aid of cowries or parrots or stars or a wide assortment of other media.
Medicine students are known to suffer an attack of worry when they start their lessons in pathology. It is called the Third Year Syndrome. That is a direct result of their newly learnt knowledge of diseases and symptoms. Fever can be a symptom of common cold as well as an uncommon, possibly incurable, infection. Armed with that knowledge, a student, when his body temperature rises slightly, begins to fear he may have typhoid or, still worse, a brain infection. A swelling on the leg may be due to a mild inflammation but it can as well be a tumor that may lead to cancer that may lead to death. With a little knowledge about cause and effect, our medico will keep brooding over his impending end. It is not his fault. It is a familiar expression of the human proclivity to worry. When there are two possibilities, one safe and one not so safe, it is a general tendency to start worrying about the unsafe mode. Not many are willing to dismiss the unsafe possibility out of hand as extremely remote, and go their way without a moment’s pause. It is tempting to imagine that danger < 7
is around the corner, and ceaselessly worry about itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; until the moment after it is learnt that there was no danger right from the beginning. Permit me to drag again, with due reverence, a fictitious Malayali Nampoothiri to illustrate this point. He was on his way to a mystery destination. It was an accursed rainy day. Luckily he had a battered old umbrella with him, just enough save his pate from the fierce downpour. From the narrow bund of the paddy field, he clambered on to the bank of the swelling river. As he trudged on, imbibing the riverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music, there appeared on the other bank a famished dog, naturally drenched. It could be rabid. The Nampoothiri was nothing if not cautious. It was a possibility that the rain could abate. It was even a greater possibility that the waters of the river could drain, or it could suddenly turn shallow. The next thing was to be no possibility but a certainty: the dog would cross the river, pounce upon the man, and he would die like a tormented dog. So the wise wayfarer broke his umbrella to make a stick for his defense. That was worry in perfect action. There was no question the wayfarer was a worried man. It also stands to reason that others may have to worry about his state of health. What worries one may enlighten and/or entertain another. When one is absolutely rid off worry, another may, looking at him, worry that all is not in order. To worry never is being less than normal just as it is not normal to worry ever. The Nampoothiriâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is an extreme case. Such simultaneity of calamities as faced or imagined by him is neither 8 >
normal nor frequent enough to induce worry. There are other firmer worrisome possibilities which, ideally, should not cause worry even when recognized as possibilities. Clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists, come across every day so many people who seek complex treatment for simple conditions. They need psychoactive drugs for their worries. For a worry victim to imagine that a dozen tablets or an injection of some medicine will relieve his worry is bad enough. For a doctor to assure him that he will be back to normal with some wonder drug. Some psychiatrists argue that this tendency has arisen from unmitigated medicalization of psychiatry, often in tune with the marketing plans of the pharmaceutical industry. This is not to suggest that worry needs no management. Worry is so pervasive, so chronic and often so intense that its victim can use a good deal of help from friends or counselors. Someone who will not take an elevator for fear of its crashing needs to be corrected. It is not that he is not realistic in his assessment of the possibility of the elevator crashing. It may well come crashing now or later, much like any other thing may crash. But it is a phobia to be afraid of it, and phobia needs to be removed. In fact, not only is it assumed that worry can be treated effectively but what may be loosely called worry drugs have flooded the market. Across the developed world in particular, sales of drugs to control anxiety have been steadily soaring. What else can a doctor do other than feeling obliged to offer a chemical remedy when a patient turns up with this kind < 9
of complaint: “Quite suddenly I had the feeling I couldn’t breathe. I was overtaken by worry and I began to feel I was dying.” The soaring sales of anti-anxiety drugs show that those who are in need of mood elevators or anti-anxiety drugs are also growing in numbers. For instance, many men after 50 are seen to worry about the onset of andropause, quite like menopause in women. Medicine manufacturers and practitioners have readily come up with a chemical answer to this problem of aging. Pump in some testosterone in the blood stream and the old chap’s worry and its cause should vanish instantly. Pump in some neurotransmitter like dopamine for a feel-good effect, including a new urge to show affection to the family. Pump in some serotonin and induce a regulated mood change. Of course, we have known long about drinks and drugs which produce beatific visions, sought after by seers as well as sinners among laymen.
Seers. Sages. Messiahs. Prophets. Godmen. And, of course, godwomen, if you like. Their singular stock in trade down the ages has been what I call worry wisdom, wholesale or retail prescription for chronic feel-no-good condition. I mean no disrespect to our wise forebears who were ever preoccupied with a ceaseless inquiry into the meaning of life and the purpose of nature. They were, quite like us, overawed by the whims of nature in which they hoped to discern a design. As they set out to discover the ultimate purpose and plan, such as it could be, they saw a thousand new mysteries closing in just when 10 >
one mystery was thought to be unraveled. What lies yonder is still a question tinged with visceral worry as it always was. Life, human life, has always been predicated by a fascinating sense of inscrutability, ignorance, on the one hand, and, on the other, a nagging fear that something horrendous hides in the unknown realm. In its extreme form, that fear may turn into a maudlin conclusion, as echoed in the poet’s dark words, portraying “human life as pain,” and “humanness” as “deplorable.” Sages and soothsayers have compulsively addressed this problem throughout history. “Don’t worry” has been a constant catch phrase for all of them, and us, their humble disciples and descendants. Soothsayers are what they are, those who say soothing things. They make light of the grim prospect, with or without logic. By the same token, there are doomsday prophets who thrive by their scare stories. When people are scared, leaders and prophets have a niche to stay and work. Out of the blue, they keep coming up, now and again, terrorizing us with a repeated version of the prophecy of the imminence of the end of the world. The world was to end this month, December 2012, according to the fabled Mayan calendar. That nothing happened gives credence to the theory that we can survive in spite of prophets, and that nothing feared may happen. It is useful to add a rider here. There was the Greek character, Cassandra, who kept alerting people about bad things. No one believed her—that is, until her bad words came true. We have our indigenous ver< 11
sion of this scare tale with a slight twist about the intention of the boy who cried wolf, when none was coming. When it really came, all were asleep, bored by the consistently false alarm. All the same, it is debilitating to worry all the while about the wolf that may come, or may not come too.
Time was when a song had become popular with the opening words, “Don’t worry; be happy.” Music, and lyrics, being far out of my narrow mental territory, I went about trying to make sense of the background of that simple song. Somewhere I found that soulful expression, “don’t worry,” attributed to a mystic called Meher Baba who held the spiritual stage till half a century ago. The Baba was a self-proclaimed avatar. Parenthetically, there is nothing unusual or alarming about being an avatar. Everything born is an avatar, a rimpoche, in Tibetan Buddhism. I am an avatar, as much as you are. Don’t worry. That is the cardinal point of the homily attributed to Meher Baba. Now, such attributions need not be universally or perennially valid certifications. Consider yoga and meditation, India’s ancient culture mode for body-mind-intellect harmony. Astute vendors of esoteric doctrines of spirituality keep coming up, here as well as elsewhere, claiming total authorship of yoga or, in a modest manner, presenting themselves as refiners of the complicated system. That there was Patanjali, and before him anonymous generations of seers, who gave shape to it is beside the point. This is the kind of intellectual traffic jam when we are tempted to dish out that homily, “don’t worry.” 12 >
I looked up prophets who had ready prescriptions for worry. Mind you, all of them had some prescription or the other. So much so that no prophet, who has no prescription for worry, is worth his salt. The purpose of prophets is to allay worry. Luke quotes Jesus as saying "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.” Isn’t that usually the cause of our worry? Krishna was hoping to cure Arjuna’s worry too. The doughty warrior was in a quandary: he wanted to fight and win but without killing. He wanted to catch fish without wetting his hands. The worry that stems from such dilemma is excruciating. In dealing with it, Krishna had, at one stage, resorted to an orotund approach. He said: “Abandon all exertions. Come to me. I will save you from all sins. Don’t worry.” Those last two words, “don’t worry”, ma sucha, would seem to sum up all philosophy.
We have already seen how experiments with chemicals to cure worry flourish in our times. Where drugs fail, even when they tend to succeed, worry masters prescribe plain prayer or spiritual therapy, involving a certain degree and kind of anaesthetization, for the problem. They are called soothsayers because they tell you nice things, “don’t worry, it may not happen.” They have no fool-proof way of telling what it may be or if it will or will not happen but a reassuring word spoken in right tone cane be useful. One soothsayer was frank enough when he said he was not sure if he < 13
knew the future but he was sure he would not be able to alter it. All he could do, if at all, was to alert his client. That is not a bad thing. When you fall, expecting it more or less, you are likely to be less hurt. Evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins in our times, and philosophers like Charvaka in olden times, have been at work with a missionary zeal to prove that there is no extra-natural force that can be propitiated to human advantage in moments of worry. Yet a vast section of worried humanity is all beholden to “whatever that pulls back the sea from rising and sinking all lands.” The question is not whether it happens with an abjectly human sense of purpose and plan. If it works somewhere to relieve worry, if for a while, it is important. Just as it is important to comfort a worried man by telling him that it may not after all happen, even when everyone knows that no one knows what may come and no one knows a way to change it. My chosen way is to be aware of the possibility of the “sea rising and sinking all lands” and face it, not wish it out of existence, holding on to the Parliament Street homily that had fascinated me decades ago: “it may not happen.” The fact is that it may happen, as probably as it may not happen either, and we better get ready for it. If there is a fall, let us not be falling into it entirely unprepared. Given the will of someone like Kazi Nazrul Islam, that indomitable Bengali rebel poet, we can even declare: I am Bhrigu the rebel and will stamp my footprints on the bosom of God! I will cleave the bosom of that capricious being—God. I am the courageous rebel eternal— Alone, I tower over the universe with my head unbowed. 14 >
That was somewhat of the spirit in which, I take it, Usha faced life, or, if you so choose, death. It was not in her nature to rudely challenge ‘what holds back the sea from rising and sinking all lands.’ She did not waver when she went through it, steeled by an inspiring sense of realism. It may well happen. Don’t worry.
Dec 20, 2012 M J Centre, Sulur, Coimbatore
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