Remember Chandrababu's song, especially when shit happens!

One of my favorite Tamil films songs from the past is Chandrababu's buththiulla manithanellaam vettri kaanbathillai.  The opening lines roughly translate to "those with intelligence are not all successful in life, and those who are successful in life are not all intelligent."  The song further observes, for instance, that those with money are not all with good hearts, and those with good hearts are not all rich either.

This was a song that made quite an impression even in my young mind.  Experiences in life thus far haven't provided with enough evidence to refute Chandrababu's observations.  It is the sheer unpredictability of life that also makes life absolutely exciting, though the pain and suffering that can surprise us can sometimes be unbearable.

With such an understanding of life, every time I visit India, I am further shocked at the extraordinary lengths to which people go in order to make sure that their children will be considered highly intelligent.  It is depressing to watch the child being stuffed into coaching classes and special classes.  A parent tells me that the system is so messed up that even a score of 98 percent isn't enough to gain admission into prestigious colleges where 100 percent is the cutoff!

I could provide them all with evidence from my own high school class.  I bet even those parents themselves know well that life is not all about how many marks their children score in the exams.  I am sure many of the Tamil-speaking parents are familiar with Chandrababu's song too.  Yet, it is the system forcing them to do all these, they claim.

My father came to know of Chandrababu's songs, including the one I referred to, only through me, it appears.  Over the years, I have heard him quote me and Chandrababu in many conversations.  One such conversation, when his cousin was visiting with us, yielded a lot more evidence.  Tragic evidence.

My father's cousin is well into retirement.  Back when he completed his high school exams at Pattamadai, he was not the school topper. Iyappa (not the real name, but one I use in order to respect his privacy) scored the highest in the school leaving exams.  Iyappa came from what was considered one of the most backward castes, and lacking sufficient exposure to the world outside the village and the nearby areas, his appearance and demeanor were rustic to the core.  Thanks to his natural smartness, he had overcome with ease any disadvantage his caste posed as a hurdle when it came to academics.

In the pre-university exams, father's cousin beat out Iyappa and two other high school classmates who were also at the same college.  Our family man and Iyappa went on to the same engineering college, while the other two went to other colleges.  Slowly the paths of these four started diverging.

Iyappa had a hard time fitting into a social context that was very different from his uber-rural background. A support structure of sorts would have been of immense help to him.  But there wasn't any, and his response was to change himself in order to belong to the new conditions.  Thus radical transformation via things like wearing neckties everyday to classes, with shiny shoes and flashy clothes.  But, he couldn't keep it up for long.  Soon Iyappa  dropped out.  A few years later, he had become a laborer loading and unloading goods.

Another, Maniyan (not the real name either,) from the upper Brahmin caste, who joined engineering at a different college, got acquainted with the party scene in town.  He was soon lost to the world of alcohol, perhaps even to drugs.  Father's cousin thinks that he died young.

Many decades ago, a distant relative of ours was one of the earliest graduates from the Indian Institute of Management at Calcutta.  It was an institution that was set up to bring to India the practice of professional business management that was rapidly gaining ground in the West.  He was successful in the program, and had numerous offers even before graduating.  He worked for a couple of years but was soon back in his small town doodling around while his MBA classmates went on to become CEOs.

I bet that practically every parent in India can tell such stories of people from their own circle of families and friends. Yet, there is a maniacal obsession with academic intelligence.  Forget for the moment that such one-dimensional approaches do not help the young explore their own potentials and talents.  Even that aside, shouldn't parents be at least a tad concerned that they are setting aside Chandrababu's profound message delivered as a simply and catchy song?

If circumstances make a man, well, circumstances can also kill a man.  Sometimes literally, and many times the person inside is tortured and killed and all we see is an external shell of a human.  Intelligence, then, comes across neither as a necessary condition nor as a sufficient condition for happiness and "success" in life.  Shit happens, and it happens a lot, even when we are not the agents causing that shit.  Whatcha gonna do when that shit hits the fan?