There was a Time

William Wordsworth wrote, ‘There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem, Apparell'd in celestial light (Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood). These lines once again clouded in my memory as I strongly felt that a glorious period of Natures wisdom, which prevailed in my early days, is vanishing or has disappeared completely. It was a time when family, people and institutions … all  seemed to me apparell'd in  bonds of love and mutual concern. 

We see that professionalism has taken over all areas in life, from begging to faith practices. No trace of pure love anywhere. People are concerned only about extracting the maximum, wherever they are. Recently, I was told that Microsoft has begun bus services for employees at Bangalore. Employees start working from the bus itself and their office hours are counted from the time they start work in the bus. I remember a live story from China. During a robbery in Guangzhou, the bank robber shouted to everyone in the bank: "Don't move. The money belongs to the State. Your life belongs to you." Everyone in the bank laid down quietly. When a lady lay on the table provocatively, the robber shouted at her: "Please be civilized! This is a robbery and not a rape!" We see absolute professionalism in every word the looter spoke. 

When the bank robbers returned home, the bank manager told the bank supervisor to call the police quickly. But the supervisor said to him: "Wait! Let us take out $10 million from the bank for ourselves and add it to the $70 million that we have previously embezzled from the bank”. This is professionalism blended with knowledge and experience. The next day, the TV news reported that $100 million was taken from the bank. What the robbers got was hardly 20 million. The question here is not actually who is the bigger robber or the best professional, but how to sustain in this world of masks, where each word and piece of thought is a fabricated trap. It is important to get educated. The more woods we cut the more we need to sharpen our axes. 

Joseph Mattappally