The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.” My colleague Vinod exemplifies this Shakespearean dialogue. These words, uttered by Prospero in The Tempest, are among the most beautiful in the English bard’s plays. I am a short-tempered person and get infuriated for the slightest of reasons. As a government employee working in a department that does have direct contact with people, my anger has landed me in trouble many a time. Even if I love Shakespeare, and I enjoy such Shakespearean sentences on forgiving one’s enemies, I am a vengeful individual. If somebody behaves haughtily with me, I will be restless until and unless that person is properly ‘punished’.
I have never felt that my short-tempered nature might be provoking people until I was transferred to the present office, where my colleague with his calm and quiet demeanour inspired me to introspect. Once a man came asking for the building number for his newly constructed house. He started blaming Vinod saying that he had furnished the application a year ago and visited the office many times.
My colleague told him that the overseer, after the site inspection, had reported violation of building rules, and hence he is helpless and cannot process the application. The man asked him to go with him and inspect the site. Vinod politely replied that the overseer is the competent authority to inspect the site, and that he has inspected it and asked the man to rectify the violation. The man again and again blamed Vinod, but my colleague was not provoked or infuriated.
I would have become angry with the man, but Vinod never lost his temper. And I have observed many such cases in which, even if Vinod had ample reason to lose his temper, he refused to be provoked. I realised it was a quality worth emulating and tried to introspect. I felt many of the skirmishes that I have had with people could have been avoided had I been a little more patient. It is said that Christ urged his disciples: “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.” We love people like the Buddha, Christ and Gandhi, but in real life we follow the principle of ‘an eye for an eye’. People like Vinod walk between the two and that is the practical way for a peaceful life.
SUKUMARAN C V
Email: lscvsuku@gmail.com