I am biased!
From trivial football games to something I’ve believed in all
my life.
It isin’t too difficult to realize that you’re biased towards
yourself when playing some sport. It was an instant revelation to me during
football games with friends. Instinctual replies like, “No way that’s a foul!”
and “Dei! Legal tackle da!” were like a
way of life.
However, most occasions in life are not so trivial.
I have always been passionate and proud about the land that I
was born in. Hence, it came as a shock to me when something bad was pointed out
about my country. I realised that I’d been brought up in a society that strived
to show only what’s best about it. Unfortunately, History is not just about the
good stuff. Reading this book called the ‘Age of Kali’ exposed me to incidents
such as the “Police Action” of the Nizam’s Hyderabad and the so called “Liberation”
of Goa.
It was then that I realised that I had some sort of a “mental
firewall” preinstalled, which kicked into action when issues close to my heart
came up. This discovery was a great boon, as I now started thinking twice and
began checking if my thoughts had been blocked. It was clear that my point of
view was not the only point of view and it might not be the right point of
view.
In a battlefield, the enemy will have an equal number of
valid reasons to hate you and seek to destroy you.
The thing with the human mind is that, once it decides on
something or takes up a side, prejudice kicks in. Anyone who is on the other
side is projected villainous. We tend to look at them with contempt and let the
hatred grow in our hearts. This hatred clouds our judgement and we refuse to
listen to reason. We start believing that for us to progress; they have to be
put down. That is never the case, for life is not a game of tennis, where there
can only be one winner.
One person who pops into my head right now is Steve Jobs, who
was everything that has been said in the previous paragraph. But he was quick
to correct himself and came out with his realization during the 1997 Macworld
Conference at Boston.
