Hyderabad 11

Weakness is death, strength is life. Death is fear, life is courage. What is the secret of strength? How do you keep your courage? How does one stop being afraid all the time, some of the time? How does one simply do away with fear? Faith? Too easy to use it as a crutch. How about Simply closing your senses to the grip of fear, it's clammy touch, it's nerve grating call from just beyond your line of sight? No, that would only cement your cowardice. How can we stop from starting at every mention of a name, at every sound that sounds like something we fear? Have you ever noticed yourself when you are afraid? Everyone is, at some point, in some way. But just try looking at what happens when you get scared – first there's a minor explosion in your chest, a rush of blood that seems to travel all through your body, but which is actually rushing away from your extremities. A huff of breath like your stomach has been rudely pushed to a side. A sudden opening of your senses, your eyes dilate, your ears twitch and your skin prickles, when you feel you are aware of everything around you, the buzz of a fly, the thundering boom of your heart, the storm of your breath, the distance between you and the next step. You realise the next moment that you are not even aware of what your friend is saying to you. If you can feel your face at this moment, you will know that your skin has sagged, your mouth is gaping at an odd angle, you have sweat on your brow, over your lip. Your responses become slow, your mind is numbed, your vision is blurred, your grip is weak, your legs are wobbly, your underbelly is bursting for release. All for what? One moment in your life, an hour, two? We put ourselves through this insult, this sub-humanness, every time we are afraid. We become a cur with its tail between its legs, snarling and simpering at the same time. I tell you, all of us, without exception have been to this place. Many of us come here everyday, some even more often. Disgusting.


The solution is boring, dull, clichéd duty. We have no taste for it once we have known fear. After all, how can such a strong, personality altering phenomenon be countered by something so dull, so regular? But it is the only solution. Do your job, do what you are supposed to, grow taller than your circumstance by rising beyond any probing into your work. Then and only then does faith let you evolve from being a whinging insect. Faith at this stage gives strength to your principles. There are but two aspects to life – what you do, and what is given to you. You take care of the first and faith takes care of the rest. That is all there is to it. Any fear, however instinctive, however logical, will be no more than a cold draft. We simply shake off cold drafts, wrap ourselves tighter and get on with life. That is all fear is, aimless air out of a hole that should not exist.

I have two stories in the bag, my eyes are opening to new possibilities, I can sense some respect for the information I gathered for the recent story I did. I feel good. I decided to. I met Sai Gopal today, after a long gap. The man likes to talk face to face. Serious chap, thinks the world of hospitals is rotten to the core right now. He's done with health stories and refuses to take them even if they are within reach. "There must be someone with a fresh perspective, I've done all I want to," he said. He has grown, explored newer territory and mastered a field or two. A good example to know. It is easy to fall into a rut when you are a journalist. Once you are assigned a beat, you keep working on it, around it, and you get on a track, that keeps going. Only when you decide to shift or move higher will you do so. The scary part is that you can stop growing and still function. Once you reach a certain level of performance, command a certain amount of respect, there's nothing to push you forward but yourself. Even ambition is numbed by cynicism. Cynicism is such a quagmire. It makes you wallow in it endlessly. Even when you don't respect yourself, it makes you like yourself for being in it. You start enjoying penury, you begin to take pride in your crassness. You stop growing, period. Scary I say. That's probably the danger of having a passion for journalism and nothing else. Understand me, I say passion, not interest. You do need to be passionate about journalism, because without the fire you cant bake your stories. But fires die down, passions wane and without another passion, you are a spent force. Look up at something that will never fade, an ideal that will remain true no matter what. Goals that will stand the test of time and every obstacle thrown at it and still remain as pristine, as relevant and as desirable as ever. Do that, and you're firing on all cylinders all your life. No confusion, no guilt when you stop and smell your baby's hair and talk to your wife. You know you have something to pursue the next morning.

-Ananda