The contrary view

It’s very trying to be different. Being a born rebel means a standing invitation to others to try to bulldoze you. But the trial by fire also makes one purer and stronger that gives one the supreme confidence with the license to give a damn to what other people say about him. Ironically, it also gives one the humility to understand that the principled positions and simplest but the best wisdoms are not the preserves of the people powerful enough to challenge his positions but inclusive of other people who are miles down below him. This provides the never-say-die attitude that comes from the knowledge that whatever you will face will be difficult and painful, not resistance alone but will include ridicule and checks. This is the attitude that talks of climbing the Everest not just for “it was there” but for “I was there”.

In the complicated Shatranz of living within a people network and the so-called society, my favorite strategy is of non-confrontation. I was a born rebel and have fought against all the people I have known in my whole life, and proportionally more with the more powerful ones. Without branding a T-shirt with a photo of Che in the front, this much I could do without any malice and personal enmity as I always took this as business. Beside my Pop, I have gone down in the history for fighting my Bosses the most in my career and still survived 15 years before I finally buried it with full state honors. I consider myself lucky beyond measures that I was still respected by all of them, if not exactly loved, and some of them kept excellent personal relations with me even while I was at the height of rebellion, probably because my behavior was always issue-based and I always tried to keep absolute and ridiculous standards of integrity, decorum and dignity of character.

When your thinking will be different from other people, it is as much as saying only you are right and all others are wrong. The conviction reflects only to a handful few who, ironically, do not matter in terms of survival strategy for non-existence of threats. This is unacceptable mainly for two types of people, one who have false and often empty prides about themselves and secondly the people who have higher authority over your actions. Strategy for the first type is mostly non-confrontation – ignoring their ridicule, sarcasms, insinuations and quietly waiting for your turn to cut them down with a single stroke of the sword – a masterstroke that they will never even have the time to watch in horror, they will be dead even before they know it. Strategy for the second type is absolute but dignified confrontations – with reasons. Always reason with people and keep an aura of honesty around you to starve them of any chance to challenge your positions on the logic of motives. One of the Bosses under whom I had worked for more than four years and even now has a very good relation with me was one I fought so much but always from a position where I had a very good reason, whatever be it, not only apparent but also concrete. But he was also the guy who never even glanced at the heads or the amounts when I put up with any reimbursement bill, after the initial year of our working, a thing he never did with all others. He knew, I am the type who forgets or misplaces most of the valid bills, or just does not care to put them, and the question of inflating bills does not arise at all.

One position that earns a lot of enemies but as well earns a tremendous respect from them is when you will be humble and friendly yet will absolutely refuse to accept any nonsense from anybody. You just cannot eat every shit life will dish out on a platter. A third type of the people will always come after you when they will think that you are weak. Some bums among them will always misread your aloofness and nonchalance as a sign of it but those people are easy to handle as these people can be cut down at ease, the others being far more dangerous as they will often stumble upon your actual weaknesses and use those even small aspects to make a guided missile hit at your much bigger and important pawn formations. I have never cared what people think about me but at any time I have heard them well and then secretly tried to find any actual holes in my position. If I ever found one, I immediately started on the steps to improve them, because even if you manage to get away the first or a few times, you will eventually be hit through those Achilles’ heels and that will take away the aura of invincibility that is the final objective of this strategy.

But, above all, the best strategy of all to fight the other people is to bear, and silently, till you can make an answer that will close the issue and their bloody mouths at one go. The answer may not be even in so many words, but they can be even better.

Beside the need for honesty, I repeat the importance of humility. I love to speak to all classes and types of people, even rusty farmers, notorious drug-peddlers, unassuming rickshaw-wallas and what not, sometimes to much consternation of my dear wife. But over the life, I have received the kind of simple but brilliant viewpoints of life that they were my almost invincible arms in many situations where I was trying to survive by crossing swords with people who could theoretically kill me in one slash but practically they could never do it. Remember that nobody could kill you unless you let them to. To quote Mike Corleone, "accidents do not happen to people who takes accidents as personal insults". Humility not only endears you to a small but beautiful section of the people who become the most important allies in your battles, they also give you the practical strategies that no book or famed institute can ever teach anybody. They are called philosophies, the ultimate nectar of life.

One last word. The price of living on one's own terms and viewpoints is tremendous. I have practiced all my life and got bruised and wounded for as long, before I got up again and be back for another fight. Being a true survivor and a relentless fighter, I have hanged on to the rear mudguard of the villains car whenever they were on the run after kidnapping my heroin, just the hindi films - never letting go - and I still rose inch by inch, without ever bowing my head to anything or anyone for any reward or any punishment. At the end of it all, I am happy and content. To be as proud and as happy, be ready to sacrifice as much or more.

Be very sympathetic to people. They live with so much of hopes, dreams, nightmares, pains and broken faiths that they need an empathetic listening. Also think how their words can be used to improve your formation on the chessboard, but outside that, really give a damn to what they say about you. Every business is, at the end of the day, personal, very personal.