Rationalising The Irrationality

“When men fail, they try to rationalize”. Is it so???? Is the rule solely applicable to only one gender of the population or it is applicable to all the people, whether he is a male or a female, or for that matter why not a kid??? Don’t we all try to put a feasible reason for being a failure or doing something wrong?

I was thinking with the book in my hand which I have just finished, where in the author wanted to put across a point with the above tagline. “C’mon you can’t say like that”,I said to myself , as if I was the representative of the whole species he wanted to denigrate(Is it a strong word ,please excuse me if it sound so).But I felt it was nothing less than what I was feeling. Why should only men be blamed for, when we know what the truth is. And the truth is that we do pass buck every time whenever there is a chance that we will be put to scrutiny.

Isn’t our society built on this so called innate attitude of buck passing, since time immoral???Who knows since when this trait might have been built into our psyche? And the trait is so strong that even now also we don’t feel like giving it up even when we have a chance to turn things around.

Now also the exam systems in our educational institutes believe that vomiting some hard core facts & theories, which a student might have gulped the night before the exams day is the best way to judge whether he or she is the best student. Now tell me how many of these theories the student use whenever he or she goes out of that campus life where in he or she is cocooned in the secured campuses building those huge castles of success in the wind?? And how many of those students who earn gold medals become successful in their lives. I don’t mean to denigrate those studious guys, but don’t we see that we have a problem here where we feel that coming first in an exams is the way to salvation(what else do you say, when you see students staying over night & cramming of those voluminous books in order to get a good mark in exams).

Take for example another instance & this is quite interesting than the first one. Who does not how a marriage ceremony looks like? You have a guy & a girl(I don’t think still it is comprehendible for maximum of us to think of a guy getting married to a guy or a girl getting married to a girl, though exceptions always exist),whose parents get the privilege to search for a life partner for each of them. Mind you here I am talking about the main protagonist of the marriage ceremony, not any other one, but he or she does not have a voice of his/her. All the things are choreographed or staged according to what the parents decide. The only thing that is left for the bride or groom is to enact as they are told to do so. You may oppose me in this regard saying that time has changed. But for whom???? Has it changed for the brides & grooms???I don’t find & you are most welcome to point any changes you find. At least the guy & girl should get to know each other very well when they are going to settle down together. Shouldn’t they be given a chance to voice their own concern? Though I am privileged not to be treated like that, I have seen a lot of instances wherein marriage is staged which they called as arranged by parents.

I know one of my colleagues who was unfortunate to go through this kind of treatment. It so happened that even though he was not interested to get married his parents put a tremendous pressure on him to settle down with a .Since he was having a very decent job, there was a deluge of proposals for him from different quarters, & he was having such a hard time to spend his weekend. I remember him going to his home on Saturday & coming back & joining office on Monday morning. Visiting bride’s place duration also included in this time. So you can well imagine what a hard life he might be having. Now it so happened that he was damn confident about the fact that no girl would like to get married to him. So, blandly he used to tell every girl he came across that he would get married to her if she is willing & to his delight all the girls would refuse him. But unfortunately a girl he came across liked him so much that she gave her consent for my friend & date was decided for their engagement. Now the real fun happened after engagement, when this guy wanted to have some time with the bride to know her better. But girl’s family, being a conservative one would not allow the girl to go out with that guy. But the girl being a smart one used to cook up stories to come out in the evening .That continued for 1 year before these couple settled down together for a lovely married life. Now what I was amused is why the two people who have already given their consent for marriage can’t go out together before getting involved in a serious relationship. Is it a sin???Anyway I am not trying to glorify those insane activities that young people get involved in. But those insanity part apart can’t we progress to a more flexible society, where no unreasonable rules are not allowed.

Why to look at society, looking at ourselves also we find a lot of time we rationalize what we know should not be rationalized. Don’t we know when we pay something for getting something done in a govt. office we are doing a wrong thing. But ask all & sundry, the answer will be like ”Arey karna padta hai yaar.” & people who take that money would say “Kamal hai yaar.kaam aapka karenge,,, upar se gali bhi sunenge.Is ke liye aap thoda de denge to kuchh problem hoga kya???” Hmmmmm points well noted down saar.We don’t mind paying you par kaam thoda aur jaldi kar denge to bahut meherbaani hogi.

Take for instance why do we have so many private schools run by private groups mushrooming everywhere???Can’t we make the govt. Schools far better than what they are right now? No we won’t do because the school is run by govt. & the teachers are accountable to an abstract entity called government about which they don’t care at all.

The other day I was going through newspapers and the main news was about guys getting a foreign posting & shamelessly the headlines screamed about the plum posting they were getting abroad, with the dollar salary . How short people’s memory can be I was thinking. It is this affection for everything foreign that put us under British rules for 200 years, & we have got freedom from the foreign power only for last 50 years. No one cares more for what happened to that spirit of Indianness.You ask these people & answer will be same everywhere.”Huuuh I am not getting that scope for doing research & technical advance study here, and our country does not give prestige to people who are involved in research work”. Where from then we had Vikram Sarabhai, C.V.Raman, APJ Abdul Kalam,our honorable president who was a great scientist &mind you I am talking abt those periods when these people didn’t have fraction of facility that current generation has.

Anyway I have already cribbed about a lot of things which I should not have done..But what to do???That cribbing is in built to the psyche of our people I guess. Ohhho, I have started rationalizing irrationality J now.By the way you also do the same otherwise no one will recognize that you belong to that category of species called Homo sapiens