Truth, Integrity and Other Depravities
I was at a convocation of a management institute. The chief guest was an alumnus of the institute who’d passed out a couple of decades back and had done well for himself, becoming a president of a large geographical region of a multinational.
He spoke eloquently, though with unrepressed glee, of his illustrious journey, generously not forgetting to acknowledge his alma mater. And then he started ticking off the attributes which had made him such a successful man, which at best is a tricky proposition - so full marks to him for guts.
And though humility was not his strong suit, he made it up with the earnestness of his own fabulousness.
And I sat back and had a good time, revelling in this fine display of unabashed pompousness.
Cutely and typically, the honourable chief guest mentioned he was only halfway through in his ascent on the ladder of success. And then he started on a list of the things which contributed to his success. Truth, integrity, fearlessness, integrity, community, hard work, helpfulness, respect, et al. It could have been copied from any one of the million books which have talked about such things. And I could see it was washing over the students like water on a baby’s skin. These were cliches, which everyone had heard or read a million times over.
And I thought - how completely different was all this advice from what these students would really encounter in corporate corridors!
First - truth. I have seen so many versions of truth that I have lost sight of its very definition. How can we ever teach these young guns that they will be lied to, they will be lied against, they will be asked to lie. That they will face situations where it will be their word against another’s, and they will wallow in confusion as to how another human being could fib so straight-faced and blatantly.
And then Integrity as the foundation for all dealings? Of course. But here’s the reality check. A friend of mine who works for a large company in New Delhi was going through a phase where a senior colleague (an erstwhile darling) was passing through a tough professional phase, and his boss was going ballistic against him. And smelling this antagonism was a bunch of his peers, who at the mention of his name, had started conjuring stories about and bad-mouthing him. It reminded me of the murder in Murder in the Orient Express where as soon as the man was stricken, every passenger in the train came to poke the knife deeper in the dying man.
So. Who will teach these young minds how to handle such a situation? Both, if they were on the receiving end, as also what shade should their integrity take when their boss would expect them to go on his wild ride with them?
Of course our pompous chief guest was right - we should teach these attributes to young people, but far more importantly they should be taught how to maintain their equilibrium and values in a world which is rampant with everything contrary to what they’ve been taught.
In a world where values are a continuous game of expediency, and every instance of ego-bruising is a call to attack, any young woman full of ideals would find herself confused, nay, maimed.
After all these years of observing the intensely toxic environment of corporate politics, I can only pray that all these young idealists would figure it all out, without having their will broken, or having to become a part of the depravity. Because merely surviving doesn’t mean you have emerged unscathed. As the famous Kabir doha says -
काजल की कोठरी में कैसो ही जतन करो, काजल का दाग लागे ही लागे. (If you enter a chamber of kohl, however much you may try otherwise, you are bound to be smudged with the kohl.)
Hence, caveat emptor, darlings. Beware.
Here is a sampling of poems, every young person should hear to learn of both the disappointments and possibilities of life!