On Mistakes

I have developed a new axiom: "Any emotion, any situation you can think of can be found in the pages of the 'Shantaram' with a probability > 99%".

Here's one such instance from the 'Shantaram':

"Listening to the band, watching the children, and thinking of Tariq--missing the boy already--I remembered an incident from the prison. In that other world-within-a-world, back then, I moved into a new prison cell and discovered a tiny mouse there. The creature entered through a cracked air vent, and crept into the cell every night. Patience and obsessional focus are the gems we mine in the tunnels of prison solitude. Using them, and tiny morsels of food, I bribed the little mouse, over several weeks, and eventually trained it to eat from the edge of my hand. When the prison guards moved me from that cell, in a routine rotation, I told the new tenant--a prisoner I thought I knew well--about the trained mouse. On the morning after the move, he invited me to see the mouse. He'd captured the trusting creature, and crucified it, face down, on a cross made from a broken ruler. He laughed as he told me how the mouse had struggled when he'd tied it by its neck to the cross with cotton thread. He marvelled at how long it had taken to drive thumbtacks into its wriggling paws.

Are we ever justified in what we do? That question ruined my sleep for a long time after I saw the tortured little mouse. When we act, even with the best of intentions, when we interfere with the world, we always risk a new disaster that mightn't be of our making, but that wouldn't occur without our action. Some of the worst wrongs, Karla once said, were caused by people who tried to change things."

Who can say what we did was wrong? Sometimes, at a moment it looks the right thing to do - for ourselves, for others. But there are scenarios we do not consider, and these exactly turn up. What should we have done? Be very conservative - not do anything we believe in? I think as long as we are the only person affected, it is worth experimenting. But when others are involved, we have no right to give them pain. Its important to value people, they are the most important assets we have. Else, we stand up and see, and there is nothing that we have earned in the process. But its so difficult to always act in a way that others are not affected. The least we can be do is to acknowledge our mistakes, our lack of understanding and make amends to the best extent possible. The best we can do is to excel on whatever path we are following, to bring out the best in us.

As Gandhiji said,
"I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps."