THE DISCIPLINE OF DECORUM

LOSING our temper in public and having heated altercations seem to have become the Indian norm, as incidents keep showing in the news.

- RENUKA NARAYANAN

Whereas our traditional position was, ‘maintain decorum, no matter what and why’. Consider Queen Kaikeyi, who is furious that Rama, not Bharata, is to be king. How correct her behaviour is, nevertheless. No nasty, vulgar scenes for her. She retreats into the ‘kopagriha’, the anger room. It’s notable how she is so proper even when she’s being horrible. This old Indian dictum on propriety has its merits. Because, while righteous anger cannot be wrong, unrestrained temper damages everybody—the individual, society at large and the entire functioning process.

As a respite from all the name-calling going on in the world, let’s think for a spell of pleasant names and their positive resonances. One of my frequent-flier friends calls it her airport mantra. She finds it exhilarating to see the electronic flight status roll past. “Such amazing city names, that’s the romance of travel, of being part of a great flow,” she says, for all that she’s a canny corporate-type not given to undue sentiment.

I, too, am unable to be blasé on flights. I am unabashedly delighted by the wonder of being airborne, though I pray like anything to Pavanputra Hanuman before take-off and if we hit an air-pocket. East Europeans and Turks applaud when the flight lands, which shows appreciation—for the pilot’s skill, for the grandeur of human invention and for the laws of aerodynamics and gravity. And surely, gratitude to ‘whom it may concern’ is due, whatever name we call ‘that’, for having made it safely back to terra firma one more time?