"This world is held together only by a few people,” the Ola1 cab driver said quietly, halfway to the airport. Good people, he meant.
I was on a 24-hour whirlwind errand between two cities to retrieve important papers.
He traversed his fraught journey: living overseas, getting caught in a situation that favored a local’s rights over his, facing people’s courts, and paying the price of his impulsive actions.
Back in India, he bought a Korean-made Kia sedan on a bank loan and began driving to earn a living—set back from dreams, paying his dues, before imagining yet another escape: this time, to a different nation to quadruple his earnings and rebuild his family’s future.
As the driver narrated his life’s incidents, he revised the principle, perhaps to reaffirm its truth to himself: “This world is being held up by the goodness of a few.”
Using a specific Urdu word, ‘Jahaan’ an all-encompassing word, implying not just the world, but the universe.
While long-distance trips are more profitable than airport runs, his focus on value over transaction serves him well, he explained, regardless of the ride.
He described a recent incident in which he waited quietly at the airport while other drivers hustled passengers.
A man walked up to him, making only two asks: “Don’t talk rates to me,” and “Do you own your car?”
Engaging him for a drop home in a neighborhood named “the place of the soldier,” paying twice his meter fare—$50—without a second thought, texting a curt ok to the driver’s surprised thank you sent via GooglePay.
“May have been from the US,” he said, still in quiet wonder. “Such people exist too.”
He recounted that his most profitable drives were those taking visitors from Australia, Europe, Canada, the Middle-East, 800 km (~500 miles) north to a small town called Jabalpur (in Central India) to visit a famous healer.
The healer, a specific Baba, the driver shared, does not take money, but is known to cure many diseases including cancer. Hence, the constant stream of visitors flying in to visit.
I’d never heard of his name. But that is not uncommon in India. As I share in my series, “Mysteries of Faith,” India specializes in faith, its fabric and DNA, cutting across religion, language, and caste.
Though in this age, there are fewer reliable healers left. Those who do not ask for payment are held in the highest esteem, accepting whatever a visitor offers, equal to their capacity: fruit, rupees, a few or thousands.
Taxi drivers the world over, as you may well know, have an opinion about different matters under the sun: the taxi business, city affairs, and world issues. In India, they take care to tailor to the passenger’s viewpoints, adapting to avert controversy, in a region where it takes little to offend, and provides few protections if offending.
But what of the driver’s philosophy?
The Age of Kali
If you ask the average Indian, even those who profess to be less spiritually minded, the deteriorating world is to be expected as this is the Age of Kali or Kaliyuga.
Its key precepts: Lies become prominent. Unjust people rule. Wickedness thrives. Greed is the way. Up is down. Down is up. Might is right.
Hence, a knowledgeable person will proclaim on the decline of morality, shaking their head sadly,“It’s Kaliyuga,” and when affairs seem truly corrosive, “It is terrible Kaliyuga.”2
Yet a yuga spans thousands of years.
So, what of good? Of truth, of values, of empathy, of walking the straight and narrow?
Are these subjugated?
No, claim the ancients. Even more so now, goodness is the way, exhorting people to never abandon the path of truth, no matter what success looks like in the world.
Illustrating through ancient stories of how a person’s goodness rises to protect them, and how false, and unjust ways fail, eventually.
The modern human, faced with constant evidence of success to the contrary, wonders if ancient wisdom is merely smoke and mirrors—irrelevant in an always-on world, where every new story shows the triumph of the exact opposite.
But an Indian, rooted in the mythology of the ancients, is asked to reflect on the stories of the virtuous five brothers, the Pandavas, and their wife who suffered ignobly, escaping attacks on their lives.
Exiled for twelve years, forced to live incognito in the thirteenth, and publicly humiliated despite their closest ally being Krishna, the divine arbiter of righteous action.
Or to consider Sita, wife of the ideal, duty-bound human. Kidnapped by the demon-king, for no fault of hers, then judged by a fickle populace upon her return.
If even they suffered so intensely, what of the ordinary person?
So the lessons handed down through the generations.
Goodness does not imply avoidance of suffering, rather through suffering, the good human models behaviors for weaker individuals to understand, and follow: action, forbearance in the face of injustice, adherence to duty, a relentless belief in Truth shaping human resilience.
A precept evinced through the ancient texts, whatever one’s beliefs: universal laws are irrevocable and aligned on the side of Truth and justice, no matter what the two-dimensional world displays as reality.
Karma
Every individual given the chance to exercise their character, accumulates the result of their actions, large and small.
The good, accrue the benefits; others, the consequences.
To act or not?
Action is far superior to inaction, suggests the wisdom of the Gita, though every action tainted, the hero must act: for without action, the world is doomed. Right action in the line of duty, on the side of Truth, is the way to peace. Act, without attachment to the results.
Some worry, “Prarabdha karma3, what of it?”
The concept, often twisted in the culture, is used to evaluate both others’ lives and one’s own.
If someone is going through difficult times, the common assumption: It is karma, must endure the suffering.
The belief: “No one can do anything.”
The guidance then: mitigate it through mantras, prayer, charitable acts, and ritual worship.
If it is one’s own suffering? The conclusion is the same.
Agency matters, most agree—but is insufficient to override karmic effect. Others, trapped into inaction by that very thought.
The dues must be paid. Prarabdha karma.
A deeply ensconced belief.
Reminding us that actions have enduring effect.
Karma, and its ancillary concepts, drilled early: we are what we have done.
Our past goes before us paving the way for our present. The present, the future.
The unjust too bear the fruits of their past actions, and prayers. Accumulating power. Dispensing injustice.
The law of the universe, not prejudiced by superficial masks, or petty grievances, inexorably rewarding individual actions.
If everyone receives their just rewards, and even the unjust are rewarded, then what of the need for good? Why bother?
Karma—a complex concept.
In its simplest understanding, cause and effect. As you sow so shall you reap. Universally understood.
Yet, this view of karma is too simple.
Consider a 19th century saint’s analogy: If an individual’s actions would have resulted in a broken leg4, the power of their goodness may modify its karmic effect to result in just a pin prick.
Such, he extolled, the power of faith: in goodness, in Truth, in Self.
Clear then that an individual’s goodness goes before them, its depth forging a protective path through the overgrown forest of life, drawing to them the experiences, people, and places to offer comfort, and support, offsetting the negative results of inadvertent actions.
Goodness, a shield that protects an individual’s path, as shoes protect the feet, making ultra marathons of life smoother.
It is believed that suffering is inevitable, brought on by past actions, or by internal thoughts. The mind can be a friend or an enemy, say the ancient texts.
But suffering is not to be seen as a measure of goodness, but rather as a measure of how the soul when tested, finds its mettle, and remains steadfast in its pursuit of goodness and truth.
Its purpose: to free itself from the pain of suffering and gain wisdom.
The texts adjure: action and knowledge cut through ignorance.
So, what of prarabdha karma?
Nothing.
Fearlessly, walk on. Grounded in Truth and the Self, knowing for certain: they burn up the result of actions, as fire reduces paper to ashes.
Duty
The news this month of a Russian national found living in a forest cave in Karnataka with her two small children, in an area infested by snakes, subject to landslides in the monsoon season, trying to mimic the lives of the ancient rishis5, refusing to abandon her home, seeking peace of nature, finally persuaded to return to society.
What of her belief?
The spiritual Indian will shake their heads. That is not the way. It is not what the texts say, her folly understandable—a lay person’s interpretation.
Duty is paramount in the philosophy of this land.
You cannot evade it, escape it, or assume the duty of another.
One’s duties, performed imperfectly, are far better than another’s performed perfectly, asserts the Gita.
Love is what greases the wheels of duty, suggests a 19th century monk: there can be no other reason why humans undertake thankless actions in service of their loved ones.
Duty—the bane of the householder, the second of the four stages of life: the first, youth filled with education or indiscretion; the third, the retiree’s turn to contemplation; and the fourth, the monk’s life of renunciation.
Escaping to the forest, abandoning responsibilities to society, loved ones, and your role in the world is only permitted in the pursuance of the Self.
Seekers of eternal Truth embracing the ochre robes of renunciation recognize no duty, no relation, no connection, save the one that takes them to Truth.
Even they must perform duty on that path.
So, you find the long, matted-hair monk, high in the Himalayas, even today, hiding in the shelter of a small rocky enclosure, by the mighty rivers that melted and rush to the ground, where the Pandavas walked once, eons ago, to seek that holy atmosphere, where goodness abides, to invoke its spirit, to transform his journey.
For not all places are equal.
Some resound with intense spiritual power through time.
As I found him ten thousand feet high, in the Himalayas, seated, meditating in the cold rain, bare-chested, ash-smeared, nearly invisible—startling us.
Yet, in the age of Kali, some point out, monks proliferating the landscape: seeking power, women, fame—expounding spiritual wisdom while seated amid material riches.
Not all monks are equal, a universal truth. Be cautious in the age of Kali, people are advised. A case of not all that glitters…
Find the one who walks fearless, uncaring of comfort, dispensing wisdom for naught, accepting what comes their way, seeing through the veil of Maya, emboldening the good to adhere to their path, and cautioning others: there are no shortcuts to Truth.
The powerless in India believe in the age old themes: no matter how long it takes, goodness eventually surfaces, and restores world order, whether Kali incarnates, or in the words of the Ola driver, it is good humans everywhere, “holding the universe together.”
On this long musing note, I end by wishing everyone a simple path cleared of overgrowth and thorns.
p.s. Read my other monthly musings. This month’s musing comes a little late, my apologies.
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The Wisdom Series translating aphorisms, proverbs, parables, and the Gita.
Modern and original retellings of stories of Rama, and Krishna
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Ola is a ride-sharing app, launched in December 2010, six months after Uber’s launch in the US, but three years ahead of Uber’s entry into the Indian market in 2013.
The belief is that Kaliyuga’s evil will be overturned in the end by the tenth incarnation of the Preserver-God.
In Hindu philosophy, your life is shaped by your past actions. Prarabdha karma is the subset of all your actions that shows as results in one birth. The lesson? Mind your actions, whether you believe in multiple lives or not, for actions may be rewarded in the same life itself.
The 'broken leg' simply denotes the severity of karmic effect, not the literal incident.
Sanskrit. Rishis = sages
Jayshree: Your musings and stories are so addictively compelling. This one is particularly so. Thank you for posting.
Hi Jayshree, Wow, this is a DEEP one. A lot to think about in here! Thanks very much!