Monday 8 July 2013

REVENGE


                                                 "Success is the best revenge"


Said the wryly man to his counterpart as he sipped his drink from the exquisite persian cup. He looked handsome, suave and his well-developed 17-inch biceps roared of his masculinity.  He seemed like some kind of CEO of some company, given the fact he was dining at one of the best hotels of Delhi- The Claridges. I happened to be seated behind him and was hearing their conversation quite eagerly when suddenly they stopped talking altogether. The man turned around, looked at me and said sternly in a perfect British accent," Do you want something?". I was already gasping at his impeccable hairstyle when I paused my admiration for a second. I knew how embarrassed it should be to be pin-pointed of such rude manners. But my mind was just swinging back and forth from their conversation to the present scenario. I could wait no longer and blurted out," Oh! No, not at all. I couldn't help but listen to your conversation about revenge." I said. He was as impressed by my speech as I was because it oozed with confidence and not some random pauses of umm, aa etc. "Yes." He announced," Success is the best revenge". I wanted to muddle with his brain, playfully, so I said wittily," And you seem to have gotten lots of it." My last sentence brought an enormously broad grin to his face and after exchanging some pleasantries, we decided to leave the topic as is and I concentrated back on the Belgian chocolate cake in front of me.

Coming back home, I let my brain digress about the topic some more. Suddenly, a mild realisation hit me complementing the glass cup I had dropped down at the same instant. It's pieces lie shattered around my feet. But rather than picking them up I rushed to read the HT sunday magazine. It had the article about Anurag kashyap and again I noticed the same thing I had been observing all around myself.

          "You need to be successful to prove that others were wrong to underestimate you"


This mantra was what I had been fed right from the beginning. And it's implications have been reverberating around me for quite some time. The cacophony of the same mantra had been humming very intensely during the last two years of school. I had already developed a hatred towards it, given the fact I am blunt, in my speech and in my ways. I plan later and act first. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Coming back to the topic, a lot has been already said about it. A lot more is yet to come. Afterall, many lifestyle books and many therapy sessions are based on it. How can one challenge the sanctity of this mantra? But I can and I will.


                                            "Revenge is the best revenge"

This is not exactly the mantra I dwell on but still it sounds way much better than our previous one.
We live in a dharmic world. Though many of us do not follow the religion as rigidly as we used to but religion always gets behind our ass. And it pinches us in the right area. Today, it is coming back to even with us in the form of lifestyle gurus and doctors who have excellently conundrum-ised the religious principles to more suitable demands of modern assholes. The favourite one being-"Forgive and live on". But do they fully tell you to let go? No. We are told to live with a grudge which can only be erased if we become successful in what we endear. How is that supposed to calm me down?

I had also embarked about this notion 'success is the best revenge'. But I have learned that what I am really doing is just shifting my goal from the larger target and giving undue importance to lame people. People who are in the hindsight not even worth anything to me. How can you live with a grudge all along the way? Atleast, I cannot dwell upon this feeling of 'revenge' within me. I cannot let it guide my every action, motivated to a wrong cause.Our actions, maybe to impress others or maybe even to benefit ourselves don't you think should have something more substantial, something more concrete force behind them rather than revenge? This notion to avenge becomes a burden before we even know it. Why do you think all these students are committing suicides these days? They have been fed on a dangerous principle. It will backfire. Depression is mostly about the things we were not able to achieve. But the thought of impressing other people is also a major factor behind it, don't you think? Basically revenge acts as a slow poison and it's effects go unaccountable most of the times. I think I am diluting my point here. So without digressing further, the crux of the whole instalment is that you cannot live your life on a platform that itself is quite shaky. We need better principles to guide us. And we surely need to act much more wisely than we are now. The world would have been a better place if we did.

20 comments:

  1. Bhai, kya likha he yaar... I loved this post especially those tag lines.

    You know, what I feel, we should have that grudge somewhere in our mind, it will help you to become successful. I am not saying that keeping that grudge will let you give importance to those people but if you are taking grudge from them then you have actually stopped giving importance to those people and the day you become successful that day is a blunt slap on their face.

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    1. And I loved your comment :) So good to have you here:)

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  2. Thankfully this phase of life is gone..and I don't think you get it often unless you are a very greedy person :P

    I am thinking what were you doing in that hi fi restaurant..haha

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    1. Some of us are not as strong as you nameera, (sigh) It would take atleast me a lot more time to sort out this thing. I am glad that I have made a beginning.

      And in the hotel,umm..well, I was eating my Belgian chocolate cake !! :D

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  3. There's a very famous quote: Holding a grudge is like drinking a poison and expecting the other person to die...

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  4. "Success is the best revenge" statement held me to the post and made me read through. Nice post... Success gives ultimate identity and direction but it is the journey towards success that makes it all the more sweeter!

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    1. Can't argue with that. So true :)
      And also, welcome to my blog :)

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  5. "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

    That's the quote that comes to my mind for this topic

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    1. Since you and I are friends, I can be frank with you, no?
      It was a lovely quote that you reminisced and very rightly so. But the essence of my post was not about fighting. Other people have just reduced my thoughts to the mere level when I started this thought. Like it has not affected them in any way. I wanted to write about our inner selves. Not to fight with any outside forces. My post is not about forgiving people who have been rude to us. It is about forgiving ourselves, I wanted to strike on why do I want forgive others? In case I don't, what implications would it have on myself? And what can I do to prevent those implications from becoming a disaster?
      I hope you understand that it was not a thought to fight but about controlling us not to fight. It was about this kind of rogue fighting that eats us away. I wanted to make an effort to make ourselves and mostly myself to recognise this devious thought. That notion that success will produce the desired revenge is wrong.
      After reading the first comment I was literally reduced to tears because I started questioning the my writings. Were my writings so dull and disastrous that I couldn't even convey my thoughts properly? The first comment, pointed to the very fact what this post had not intended to. It was pointless to make an effort to make him realise that or even go through the post once again...Success is not equivalent to a slap. This thought is wrong. And he reduced my post to...
      I hope you are not offended by what I say. As a friend, I hope you understand what I want to say. I also hope that the first person who commented here, will not feel offended if he reads this.

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  6. Suddenly, you sound so mature. Not that you were not before. For your age, probably, you are more mature than your counterparts. At 27, I am anything but mature.

    Coming to this topic, we all go through a phase where our definition of revenge changes. As a kid, you want to get back at your sister/brother for the extra bit of chocolate he ate. As we grow up, it means different things to different people. But, there comes a time in one's life that "revenge" doesn't matter, it does come in everyone's life but at different ages when you are content with yourself and don't compare or rather, in most cases I guess it is not contentment, it is giving in/coming in terms with our doings/misdoings through life.

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    1. Exactly. You just put it into the right words. Contentment in oneself, that is what I wanted to insist. I am glad you took the pain to read the whole post :)

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  7. Ah! I think the concept of success and revenge is over-rated. For me, success is nothing but peace with oneself. And yes, you are right. If we hold a grudge for a long time, it does become too heavy to carry around. Been there and done that. Now if I don't like anybody or feel like kicking his/her ass, I do it instantly in my mind and my revenge ends there :D Better than going around with a sour face thinking about it. And yes, if everybody found a way to deal with these kind of feelings, the world would be a better place to be around.

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    1. Yeah, I agree with you. The concept is indeed overrated.
      So good to have you here:)

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  8. This is the kind of post that goes straight to the bookmarks bar, because every time I read such stuff, I get new perspective on it.

    You have written the thing in such a good way, so specific yet so abstract!

    I have never been able to think on this topic, because somewhere in my mind I have this line of thought about all people being good from the inside and all, and this stops me from analyzing :-)

    Sometimes I feel like the world wants me to think something. Your experience with these thoughts seems similar to me. I think a whole train of thought just presented itself to you, one bogey at a time, the successful, 17'' bicep dude being the engine!

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  9. One of my favorite quotes of all-time :)

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  10. Success is the best revenge...indeed!!

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    1. ab yahaan log gaaliyan khaane wale kaam kar rahe hain...

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  11. Bhai intelligent baat kar gaya tu toh! :)

    Nice read and i somehow agree with you on the thought that one should not be driven by the feeling of revenge but still it happens, these feelings are more strong than our willpower of staying on to the right path. I mean we men are driven by our feelings, how i wish if i could control what i feel in given circumstances.

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