Essay:
Bal Ram Adhikari
My Friend Fallen off the Roof of Superiority Complex
We are two characters here – He and Me. I call him My Friend. He is my soulmate– dear to soul. So, you can call him a part of me. He is my another side that keeps wandering insecure in search of security– in this city, in its streets and its alleys that lead to campus and the classrooms where I teach.
Incident: University test (which is always tasteless)
The task of a test is to tag the candidates as pass or fail. Unfortunately, My Friend was branded with fail. The branding left him deeply wounded. We both underwent the same incident. I call it just an incident. I feel that whatever happened happened. And I console My Friend but in vain. He calls it an ACCIDENT. He grieves over the tag of failure he has got. Opening up his wound he walks around.
That day I greeted him– Namaste, my hands closer to my heart. But he only said 'Namaste'. As I extended my hand, he hastily shifted the bag from his right hand to the left and shook hands with me. His "Namaste" was devoid of the usual excitement. His voice otherwise ever in a crescendo sounded as if a classical raga in a diminuendo. His handshake was lacking in the style and vigor of a boastful comrade. His voice feeble. His gesture withering. I easily guessed the causes of sudden change in him. I knew that the exam result published last week had disqualified him. His name was tagged with Fail.
His students were walking to the classroom, each greeting him "Namaste". Icould sense his attention divided– half with me and half with those walking past us.
He was trying to escape from his students and their greetings.
I showed sympathize with him– Dear friend, really bad news!
He was desperately waiting for my sympathy. His eyes sparkled as if my words switched them on.
“What to say! Something unexpected happened.”
He sought more sympathy. I blamed the university system. He nodded in agreement. “Our exam system is faulty.” In a pensive mood, he fingered his beard with his right hand.
A mentally-withering person seeks sympathy. I had read it somewhere in psychology. He got at least a part of what he was seeking. Now I looked more vigorous. He picked up the bag and slung it over his shoulder. His gesture and words both came to life.
But he grew more agitated.
My Friend's painful experience continued– Yar, I feel pained. When I stand in front of the students I feel as if they are mocking at me. All students know that I failed the exam. A failure is teaching his students how to pass! I think I lying to them.
My Friend was seeking more sympathy while I was waiting for a chance to pour my philosophy. On the pretext of consoling him, I was trying to give a philosophical justification for my own failure. I added my own philosophy – Tell your students– if you can, learn from my success– if you cannot, learn from my failure. Eventually your students will learn at least something from you. Tell the stories of your failure. It would at least reduce their fear of failure. They would know that we teachers are not any special creatures. We are also learners like them. We also fall into the cycle of pass and fail. Get trapped in this cycle. Sometimes, we manage to get through it. Other times we get stuck. Suffocate in it.
I am well known about My Friend’s mental sickness. Psychoanalysis calls it superiority complex. Because of this sickness, he struggles to stand as a unique creature. Everywhere. Every time. He struggles to remain in mystery, away from his students. He considers himself a doctor of knowledge, and his students patients of ignorance. Now these students saw their unique teacher failing. They could read his helplessness written all over his face; they could hear his voice tainted with hopelessness. His ignorance too. My friend is faltering to witness the shells of his arrogance cracked open and his reality splashed out.
I could say this much– Don’t you consider yourself so weak. This failure is nothing. It only means that you didn't fit in the standards set by others. The main thing is deciding your own standards and moving ahead accordingly. When we try to fit ourselves in someone else's standards, we might fail every time in life.
But his agitation remained the same. My anesthesia of logic had no effect on his wound of failure.
I raised a rhetorical question–Is it that you feel so much hurt because a small group tagged you with a failure? The only thing is that your name was not in their list. It is just that."Small group? (Yeah, only a group of three– one from each big political party).
Assuming that he would understand, I indicated the theory of absence to him–You might be absent from this job now. But, your absence here means that you are destined to be present somewhere else. Being absent from one place has the possibility of being present in many places.
In his mind I tried to sketch the map of America. I tried to draw the shape of England. But none of the universities from there materialized before his eyes. His face looked like a wet ragball and from it was dripping his inferiority complex.
My Friend was strong before they declared him a failure, or let’s say, before the result was published. How come he grew so feeble now? With this wonder in my mind, I moved to the college to teach the evening class. There I have been teaching my students a trick of passing the standards set by others.
I reached the bus station, thinking about My Friend. I see him falling off the roof of superiority complex and lying at the bottom of inferiority complex. I search for its answer in psychoanalysis. This says– only a person with superiority complex feels himself inferior. After hearing a conclusion about himself from a small group of examiners, My Friend, who would call himself a Know All till yesterday, thinks he is worthless now.
He is thrown to another extreme– from 'I know all' to 'I don't know anything at all'. He is now suffering from inferiority. It was like a person with high fever caught pneumonia after the application of ice packs.
On the way I get involved in silent talk with My Friend.
Dear friend, look at me. I neither scream with joy at my success nor do I brood over my failure. I find both of them nothing but sensations. Both increase my heartbeat. With the sensation I feel a sort of heat running through my body. I lose a grip on the Present. When others declare– You passed, I lose sound sleep that night. When they tag me with failure, I find myself sleepless that night too. The excitement of success and the pain of failure both rob me of the balance of my mind. Then I turned to myself. I observe my sensation– how I get excited; how my breathing becomes short; how my temples throb. With this observation slowly settles down everything. With this, there remains neither pass nor fail. All that remains is some sensation which becomes experience. We should learn from the very experience. No matter whether we feel good or bad, it’s only the sensation, dear friend
Had he asked me I'd have said – We tend to feel that everything is over with success. We might boast that there is nothing left to learn .We turn outward more. But the shock of failure throws the person off the crowd. The system finds him worthless and drives him away. Then! He stands all by himself. Now he has to see within himself. He finds himself in an existential crisis. He sees himself insecure. His existence shakes to the core. To sustain himself he has to draw on energy lying hidden inward. Those lacking courage to travel inside in the times of crisis see darkness everywhere. Friend, when the light from outside does not accompany you, turn to your own inner light. When our life gets disconnected with the outside world, we have no option but to get connected with inner energy. If not, we might see our life worthless.
Thinking of my friend, I thought to myself– Dear friend, when you cannot turn to your own self, you are sure to fail not only these exams but also your life as a whole. Now you are tired of exams and one day you will be tired of life itself. I do not imagine beyond this. I have no wish to hear about your moving there as a failure in life. I do not wish to think of what I do not wish to hear.
Along the steep road the micro-bus is heading to Kalimati. Now My Friend’s shape, gesture and voice begin to dim. His predicament gives way to my own. In place of My Friend, I see my own figure, wandering here and there for jobs; tired of sitting for exams in my desperate attempt to be part of the system. The figure whispers– That friend is none other than yourself. You cannot tell your friend that nonconformists remain out of the examination. Conformists are always worried for not being included in the standards set by others. You also suffer the same anxiety. Conformists look for the path to enter into the system. They keep waiting for it. You also waited for that, and then you entered. Conformists feel hurt when excluded from the system. On the other hand, nonconformists celebrate exclusion. They willingly stay out of the system. Nonconformists fall into the minority. The majority tag them with deviated mentality. However, it is these deviated ones who bring alternative thoughts to society. Eventually, the majority is guided by the consciousness of the minority. They comfortably live uncomfortable life.
However, I only praise nonconformists, the minority. I am not their follower. I enjoy watching them, reading them and listening to them. But I cannot walk with them. I am a semi-conformist. I enjoy going out of the system and coming into it. Every now and often. I am a complete nonconformist till I can manage my middle-class livelihood. But I become a conformist as the day of paying house rent approaches near, when provisions in the kitchen begin to decrease, when the market price raises, when I have not money to buy my favorite books, when I cannot take a taxi in a tearing hurry to hospital. Then I enter into the secure system. I accept wholeheartedly its rules and regulations. I raise no question. I do not argue. I do not use my wisdom. Raising questions, arguments and using wisdom all jeopardize my comfort zone. Those who stay in the system, those who wear the system-given tag and boast on it do not dare to take risk. To protect my professional tag, I do not take any risk as such when I enter the university premises.
As soon as I come out of the campus gate in the evening I find myself overpowered by Nietzschean spirit. Erecting his image in my mind, and I present myself as his rebellious character– I hate to live without danger . But this revolt erupting from inside is short lived because I have hunger. With my hunger is attached my near and dear's hunger as well. I have some greed too. To calm own my hunger, to fulfill my greed I tether myself to the system. I accept the tag of pass and fail. Success and failure. But I am constantly aware that I am more than my stomach. I am mind as well. I am awareness too– extended far beyond and far away from all dimensions of any established system. I am heart as well. No wall can confine me. I am love.
Toying with Nietzschean thought and keeping Khalil Gibran’s love in my heart, I, the semi-conformist, stand in front of my students. The nature of the course that I teach is something like this. Something from Nietzsche’ Thus Spake Zarathustra, Osho’s New Consciousness , Krishnamurti’s Significance of Education, Gibran’s Prophet, Dalai Lama spirituality, Al Gore's the politics of fear, among others. I tell the students not to be conformists but I myself move according to the rigid routine handed down by the system. I suggest those different ways of preparing the exams. I suggest this and that formula for getting through the web of pass and fail in life. I share my experience. Carrying a black bag of on my back, full of books I return to the room at Kirtipur in the evening.
Then I conclude – I am that friend who wanders around insecure in search of psychological security.Translated by Karuna Nepal
Edited by Bal Ram Adhikari
