SATYAM- Jayatey ?

The Paradox called Truth

“SATYAMEVA JAYATHEY”- two words on which the whole of our constitution, our Economy , our Social fabric proudly rests– These two words are more than mere expressions of our strong faith in truth ,in it s manifestations and in it’s deapth.As a nation we truly believe that truth triumphs , and yes it does, be it the Mahabharatha or a Bollywood Movie, the Dharma always reins over the Adharma!!. I have no qualms in our faith in the Universal triumph of the truth , But Ironically and Paradoxically, in a country such as India, where we have over 260 million Gods to show us the path to the true salvation, A place where each language speaks a different truth the very word truth has a million meanings and a ten million manifestations.

What is truth to one India makes no sense to another part of it . As Winston Churchill once put it , “India is a mere geographical expression , it is no more united than the equator”. What is “Satyam” to many may be a scoundrel company fudging the balance sheets and bribing world bank !

Picture this:

A business tycoon who has invested crores in the liquor sees the golden liquid as his dreams to possess a Porsche Carrera, elsewhere in youthful exhuberance, a rich man’s son finds in it the truth to satisfy his carnal desires. The same liquid magically seems to let a tired accountant relieve his nerves after a hard day of work while a group of college students hang out and in the liquid find the means to celebrations..but in one of the dark corners of India , the same liquor turs a night mare to a family of street dwellers whose only 12 year old son is run down by a drunk rich guy in the prosche cayenne and yet elsewhere there is the same liquor which makes a violent monster to erupt out of a otherwise loving husband who insults and beats his wife in the modest hutment..

What is one man’s pleasure is another’s woe.

Truth is anything but absolute- Nothing is perhaps, and Einstein is the actual representation of the world when he talks about the relativity.

Truth is relative- It is Relative to the situation,relative to the place, relative to the person and most of all relative to wealth possessed which is so widely spread in India.

So whom are we fooling when we say that miragical two words which seems to be teaching us to lead our lives??

So what is the truth ? Is sincerity the virtue , or is being truthful itself the virtue?

What happens when a father of two starving children , from a family where most of the times the dinner is plain water that the mother fetches from a nearby almost drying pond finds a 50 Rupee note left behind by a potbellied tax evading ,cunning business man?

What should he do with it > return it thinking that truthfulness will feed his family of Karma will tae care of itself or buy his starving poor sons who are on the verge of collapsing,who have not smelled food in three days some food?where does he haver a strnger bound of duty – towards saving two beautiful lives that he brought into the world or in “Satyameva Jayathey”-this is how relative truth actually is- feeding his children is the ultimate truth in his life- the truth is that if he does not compromise by taking the money, he would be responsible for the death of two innocent lives. If he returns the money to the fat moron who trades in black ,he will be solely accountable for strangling his kids to death.

So Truth in India is very relative- It is a paradox.

We live in a nation where there are more color TVs than toilets and more cell phones than Bank accounts! What the rest of the world finds as indispensable, we forgo them with considerable ease.