The wealth of virtue

Reading the new translation of the Kama Sutra by A.N.D. Haksar put me in mind of the growing support around Anna Hazare's fast unto death for the ratification of a Jan Lokpal bill drafted by citizens and activists, which actually has prosecuting powers as opposed to the current draft of the Lokpal bill which hardly challenges a status quo that facilitates and rewards corruption. Although we perceive the Kama Sutra as a sex manual for those with abs of steel, that reputation is based on only one of the book's four sections. The book in its entirety, as Haksar points out, is a guide to maintaining life's most crucial balance, the balance between wealth and virtue.



Similarly the idea of politics, for a lot of people, is the image of the rally or the dharna. And that becomes an excuse to always dismiss it as just 'dikhava' or lumpenism or, if you're the more cynical type, publicity seeking.

But the rally, protest or even elections are only one chapter in politics. Politics inflects most of our choices and is the theme around which our lives are spun. A deep engagement with politics asks for the same balance between wealth and virtue ufffd or self-interest and altruism.

When we see people strongly dedicated to a cause, purists and idealists, we feel a mixture of admiration and alarm, not unlike the mixture of envy and repugnance called up by dedicated sensualists. We feel destabilised by the idea of a life so extreme, unlike the lives most of us lead with assorted principles and compromises. We fear that our admiration might require us to follow suit, so we quickly find ways to minimise this commitment.

And especially at such a moment, when we see RTI activists harassed and killed while the callous and criminal not only go free, but prosper, this feels easier.

But till when can we breathe free in a culture made toxic with greed, injustice and mediocre values? Eventually, to survive, it's not swimming with the sharks we need, but a swimmable sea.

Maybe that's why finally so many different types of people are coming out in support of this anti-corruption bill.
When I see images of young, hip college students at Azad Maidan, fasting in solidarity, it makes me hopeful, in the same way reading about someone like Santosh Kumar, Skype Maths tutor, makes me hopeful. Santosh Kumar grew up in Chamanpura, Bihar, a village without electricity. Struggling for an education, he got into IIT, and today lives and works in Delhi. Chamanpura still has no electricity but Kumar's cousin and some friends put together money to install generators, open a school and train some teachers there. Meanwhile, Kumar and others like him, spend one evening a week teaching kids in the village, over Skype.

The fast and the Skype class are both political activities ufffd and we need both kinds for something to shift. We need this connection and this balance between the personal and the public act.
A trade union activist I once interviewed said this to me about the feminist movement. "Today, wherever you go, you see women getting together, bonding, excitedly talking. But you need to put that together into a socially changing movement so that others can look at it and say ufffd I want to be with those people. I can do that."
Without all our little acts coming together in a public way, it's hard for things to really change. Without change, like without sex, there can be no life. And like with sex, change is usually nicer when you're involved.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevi.com.

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.