Analysing oneself and looking at actions taken to understand own personality as well as motivation in life is not everybody’s cup of tea. Meditation is prescribed by the knowledgeable for self-examination and possibly to either feel satisfied with the actions or contemplate alternative paths to experience that elusive feeling of sense of satisfaction and even fulfilment in life. Myurueans in their advanced age, disenchanted as most of them are, can be heard bemoaning the ongoing changes in outlook and acts in society with their signature remark Kaala kettoythu, making no secret of their helplessness. One cannot be faulted to infer that the senior citizens lost years of their early life in pro-actively arresting the change they despise, individually and as a mass, even as they positively bore the brunt of the consequences of changes that society went through year after year, decade after decade. The Hindi idiom Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi or English idiom Every dog has its day or the Kannada saying Athegondu Kaala, Sosegondu Kaala, while not helping the senior citizens to find solace nor reminding the youth that their turn shall come later for introspection.
While perfect uniformity, as opposed to wide inequality, in the manner of people identifying themselves in the socio-economic spectrum, particularly according to faiths they follow and wealth they possess, is not even a hypothetical possibility, distinguishing people on the basis of their calling for livelihood, as mentioned in the land’s ancient scripts seems to have endured for centuries. Drifting from that system to the present system is the undoing of present society.
