State of mind or Mind of state

A couple of days back, we sat glued to the big TV screen in the GBPH…waiting for India to pull off a dramatic victory against the sub-continental rival. Ball by ball we followed the match and inch by inch, our eyes followed the ball, as it pranced on the field. Realizing fully well that if India lost, all would come to a naught…silent prayers resonated the atmosphere, benign curses were made, as each one of us rode on the sine wave of elation and anguish; A few hours later, the gap between the lips and the cup began to increase faster than any Zaheer Khan delivery, as India was bundled out for a mere 185, succumbing to a massive 69 run defeat….Did I say ‘defeat’?

Defeat…after all what is defeat? Why are we often regarded as chokers, ‘the defeated’ ones? Are we Indians of a lesser god or does our blood reflect a different colour? With a population of over a billion people and gargantuan resources poured on cricket – the ‘religion’ of India, we fail to win even qualifying matches, as the ‘chhotu’ Bangladesh snuffs out its neighbour with élan this time. Our performance in other sporting events, may it be hockey or squash or even good old kabaddi, is far from being impressive. A nation like us roars when we win a solitary medal at the Olympics. We are proud of our achievement, no doubt…but then, if it has to be 1 medal for a billion people, then we need only 6 of them to cover the entire globe!!

Despite making a strong mark in the IT sector, it is an unconcealed fact that we have been only the back offices of the West, or putting in the words of the noted journalist, Mr Prashanto, we are simply ‘cyber-coolies’. Our research facilities are indubitably one of the best in the world; we have the added advantage of a well-structured curriculum, a large number of colleges and universities, cheap skilled labour and a huge intellectual pool, still how many Nobel prizes or other international distinctions have we achieved so far, more so in the recent past? There can be ‘n’ number of similar areas where performance didn’t come by, when the world expected most from us. Do we suffer from an inherent performance-phobia? Are we bound by our slavish pre-independence past? Not really, since there have been solitary incidences and marked fields where we have performed remarkably well, far from the run-of-the-mill stuff.

Let us remember and reassure ourselves that we would not have another Moses to guide us or Gandhi to shape the destiny of the country. It is we who have to assert ourselves and be the trailblazers for tomorrow. We are second to none on this planet and beyond…all it needs is to extricate ourselves from the ‘defeatist’ attitude…
Martin Luther King once said:
‘Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream…’

Or as Iqbal says,
‘Mujhe rokega tu ai naaKhuda kya garq hone se,
ki jin ko doobna hai, doob jaate hain safinon mein’
(Dare u stop me O boatman, from drowning,
For those who have to, get drowned even in fleets…!)

Defeat they say, is a state of mind; I add, it should never reside in the mind of the state!

ZUHAIR BIN SAGHIR