DEAD SNAKE GROWS LONGER!!

DEAD SNAKES GROW LONGER! !

The expose in the media, of the ongoing telecom scam has brought out an aspect about life that needs greater thought. I refer to the role of role models !

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Two media heroes have turned out to be ‘fixers’. They do not just report events—which is their primary duty-- but in fact create events , create news .

These two have been held in high esteem by readers and viewers. Media schools discuss the styles and ‘analytical skills’ of these two with bated breath. They have been held as role models by young aspirants to a career in the limelight.

The lesson I seek to draw on the basis of these as well as many other events is this—one has to be cautious in these days of ‘manufactured’ celebrities. This is not an Indian invention. Prof. Pffefer of Stanford University writes in his book that many of America’s much admired corporate heroes tend to reconstruct their pasts to make themselves far more heroic than they actually were.

They attribute to themselves qualities that they either did not possess or developed AFTER they achieved stardom. In fact Pffeffer says that many heroes played what we in India call ‘ dirty politics’ on their way to the top, something they are hardly likely to admit in their books or interviews.

The tapes of the conversations between a corporate lobbyist and the media legends tells us that maybe our admiration for them was misplaced and we need to temper our admiration with some consideration for the devious role they have been playing and might have played on their way to the top. My media friends tell me that these ‘ celebrities’ do nothing for free !!

That leaves us with some tentative conclusions. We need to be very careful in accepting at face value the biographies and hagiographies of ‘ great ‘ people.

In many cases there is much that we ‘ modern’ people can learn from treasure troves of ancient wisdom. One such vignette comes from ancient Tamil folklore. There is a Tamil proverb that says that a dead snake grows longer and longer! Scientifically impossible? True , but it is a fact.

Consider my grand father who lived till the ripe old age of 98 and died in the early 1980’s. When I was 7 I first heard him tell me of how heroic he was when he was a teenager .One day, his narrative went, there was a scary hissing sound in his neighbour’s house in his village.

The old couple living there summoned my grandfather for help. What did my relative find?A cobra of gigantic proportions. ‘About 15 feet long’ he told me and left me gasping for breath. As fear ran down my young spine he described how he bravely grappled with the cobra and single handedly caught it by its neck. Looking back it was almost like Bruce Lee snapping up a snake in ENTER THE DRAGON.

But my grandfather’s story does not end there. I heard him narrate this story of courage in the face of enemy fire several times to many people and to my astonishment the snake---long dead--- got elongated from 15 feet to over 20 feet in a matter a decade !

Prof .Pffefer and I know that many people tend to reconstruct their pasts. Prof .Pffeffer tells us that my grandfather is not the only victim of this malaise. Be careful when you read motivational books.

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRRAVI.COM