The Hindu Business Line : When a ship sinks, it takes more than itself under

THIS is a story of what happened in a social service organisation not too long ago. The force behind it was Mr X who could mobilise men and money for the cause so dear to his heart, viz. seva. He stood passionately for ideals, lived them, and even passed them on to his co-workers. One fine morning, he suffered a stroke that left a big clot in his head, and turned him into a vegetable.

What was crueller in this quirk of destiny was that he had not prepared his organisation's members for such an eventuality. Therefore, they continued to see him as their leader, taking what his disintegrating brain issued forth as commands and directions to be duly executed. Not something fair to the work they were all supposed to be doing, nor fair to somebody who was only very sick, but this is a common phenomenon in companies too.

Take the case of a religious institution that has been hogging more media attention than politics, smut, and a Bannari bandit put together could manage. Whether at the end, it's going to be `all clear', because verdicts can be as unpredictable as cricket matches, is anybody's guess. Practically though, the mutt has got mired in too many layers of mud, both thrown at and dug up, plus searing volcanic lava. Any rediscovery and, therefore, return to original sheen, is going to be as time-consuming as finding the dinosaur's bone, unless you're sceptical enough to rule it off as Pompeii, the forgotten city. From an economic point of view, the recent developments can hit tourism traffic to a temple city, dent contribution collections, and impact the business of the local industry.

Since one has to take as given the tautology that humans can be corrupt, the best one can do is to think of antidote, or `damage-control'. At best, this has to happen at the micro level, before an abscess assumes Frankenstein proportions. I guess we all owe it to the locality we live in to ensure that it is problem free. Instances are not rare when people belonging to an area joined to fight against what they considered didn't belong there - be it a water-polluting factory, or a mind-polluting establishment.

Isn't that intolerance? Shouldn't we be more suave in our dealings, and go about our ways in a civilised manner? Won't it be better if we simply entered our houses and locked ourselves in, cutting out reality, and clicking the remote happily? If so, let us not complain when tectonic plates move under our feet and bring down a tower of vice next-door, and overnight the whole world looks at our vicinity as a spot where evil things happened for long, even as we slept blissfully and compulsively unconcerned.

It will be naïve to claim that we're `tolerant' to crooks amidst us. Let's accept the truth: we're afraid.

Agreed, appearances can be intimidating, stories can be horrendous, and silence may in fact be golden.

There're modern communication tools that make it easy to whistle-blow, but one is never sure if it can boomerang and blow off the whistle and its blower. Which would again justify keeping quiet?

A convenient moral, therefore, is: If you note a rot that is hot, speak not; wait for it to fester and get everybody's attention. The fallout, however, is inevitable: that when shallow earth caves in, or a ship sinks, it takes more than itself under.

E&OE@TheHindu.co.in

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When a ship sinks, it takes more than itself under