ethics

Living Clean

No stealing, no bribing, no meat, no queue jumping. Madhavankutty Pillai gives the ethical life his best shot, and finds it tough going.

Madhavankutty Pillai Madhavankutty Pillai | 05 Jun, 2009

No stealing, no bribing, no meat, no queue jumping… ethical living challenges even those who will give it their best shot

MY GRANDFATHER name was called KCK Raja and there was a reason for that surname. He was from the Samudri lineage, rulers of Malabar (a large swathe of Kerala)before Tipu Sultan sent them packing. When the British sent Tipu Sultan packing, the kovilakams, or branches of the ruling families, continued as before, but without power—the age of those kings was over. They had enormous property, though, and a trust of sorts that took care of everyone with a Raja against his name. Members of that clan did not have to do any work. Most of them didn’t. My grandmother still remembers going to her husband’s kovilakam and seeing the men sitting in the compounds of the quadrangular residential quarters, whiling the hours away with chatter. My grandfather was not one among them.

KCK Raja became a freedom fighter and, like many in Kerala, turned communist. He got rusticated from college, got arrested, jumped jail, got arrested again, started a union in the Kolar gold mines, and after Independence when the communists entered the mainstream in 1950s, the party gave him a ticket for the parliamentary seat in Malappurram constituency. It was an impossible seat to win. Malappurram is the Muslim heart of Kerala. Only a Muslim could have got elected there. The only person who believed that he could win was my grandfather. And he was proved wrong. He lost his deposit. Elections were costly even back then and he squandered on it all the money he had received when the clan split its wealth. He still had land, but then his own party enacted the Land Reform Act. So he was now without land too. With five children, he suddenly found himself on the verge of poverty.

Instead of breaking down, my grandfather flip-flopped ideologies, gave up on communism, became devout—he was always murmuring ‘Narayana Narayana’ beneath his breath—became Gandhian and, to make ends meet, gave tuition classes and went from house to house, marketing khadi garments. He got all his children educated, all his daughters married. No one ever heard him say a lie, he never stole a thing in his life, he was as upright as they came and he never became rich again.

Many years passed. The government announced pensions for freedom fighters. He applied for it. A government officer came home one day and asked for a bribe to get the pension sanctioned. My grandfather replied that he would give him nothing. And so, he had to wait 15 more years to get the pension. But he never regretted it. The idea that he should have paid up didn’t cross his mind.

My grandfather was as ethical as they made them. I put his genes to the test last November. The experiment was to be an ethical extremist. For two months, I would not lie, steal, bribe, pollute (environmental ethics, you see) and eat non-vegetarian food (I am yet to figure out why I included the last; there is some evidence that non-vegetarianism contributes to global warming, but still…).

The results became apparent even before I had begun. I fixed a starting date and then immediately postponed it because I had to fudge a bill. It wasn’t a dishonest thing. The bill was for work I had once done for an earlier employer and I was taking the money in a relative’s name to save tax. No one was going to jail or sack me over this. But a line was being crossed and it wouldn’t do if I was being ethical. A week later, the money transferred and having gorged myself on a non-vegetarian dinner on a Sunday night, I began my new life the next morning. That same morning, half an hour after I woke up, I spoke my first lie.

The phone had rung and I’d picked it up. It was 9 am, the time when my mother finishes sundry housework before leaving for office, the hurry hour. She, on hearing the phone, started waving her hands left to right and right to left. If it was for her, she didn’t want it. Over the phone, a woman’s voice asked for her.

“She’s…um…er…eh…um…gone to office,” I lied instinctively. “That’s not possible,” said the voice. “She can’t have left this early. I work with her.” “Um…er…she must have gone somewhere else before going to office,” I lied again, this time with deliberation.

The woman reluctantly put down the phone. ‘Liar,’ I read in her mind.

Over the next two months, I cut corners all the time. I was an ethical person with a lawyer on my shoulder pointing out the loopholes. On the to-do agenda, non-vegetarianism was the one for which I had zero conviction. I managed it for a few days, but one day, on returning home, there was mutton curry, the aroma of its spices wafting through the air. I immediately decided that having the gravy would not break the spirit of the covenant. The next day, I had fish gravy and then on, I had gravy after gravy of many non-vegetarian dishes.

Then, there was the thing about taking public transport, of going only in buses and trains so as to keep my contribution to the earth’s pollution down. I found a way around that one too by deciding that shared cabs and shared autorickshaws were all right. By the end of the week, all taxis and autos were public transport.

Littering public places was on the not-to-do list and though this I managed, I got plenty of vindication about the pointlessness of it. Once I had a sandwich from a street-side stall and finding no place to trash the wrapper, walked half a kilometre with the paper crumpled into a ball in my hand. When I finally spotted a trash can and threw the ball into it, it popped out from below and embraced the earth as if it had always belonged there. Someone had sliced the bottom of the bucket away. I picked up the paper ball and stuffed it into my pocket. When I passed the same spot a week later, there was no trash bucket anymore. Someone had stolen the whole thing. I went many days with my pockets full of wrappers.

I don’t remember stealing anything during those two months, but I did give a bribe. Instinctively. I had gone to drop someone at CST station in a car that also had a driver (you will notice my public transport rule being broken, but let me not belabour that point). When I returned from the station, I found the car parked near a gate. As soon as I got in, a cop appeared next to my window. “Give him something. He allowed me to park here,” said the driver, and I removed Rs 20 from my wallet and passed it over. I did not even realise that I had paid a bribe until about an hour later.

Towards the end, my grandfather’s genes had more or less given up on me. But I don’t consider the experiment a total failure. I think I advanced in little degrees. I became more aware of the little lies. For example, when there was again a call at hurry hour for my mother, I spoke the truth: she’s getting ready for office and can’t take the phone call. All concerned were satisfied. And if you want to stretch the point, partaking of the gravy is still better than not eating meat pieces: it is an advance of sorts. And as for the bribe, the fact that I became conscious of a misdemeanour is also progress. To be aware, to know, is a start.

In a book called On Writing, Stephen King says there are three kinds of writers. There’s the writer who is so bad that he will never write anything good. There’s the genius, who will write a couple of books and the language will never be the same again. And then there’s the vast majority in between, in which belong most of us. The bad writer will never become a better writer and the great writer does not have to be better. But those in the middle band can make journeys within the range: a not-so-good writer can, with due effort, become better.

I think this analogy holds for ethics. Among the many great men who built India, there was an engineer called M Visweswaraya. He belonged to an age when people worked by candlelight. Visweswaraya worked with two candles: one official, the other personal. When, in between official work he switched over to personal work, he would blow off the candle paid for by his office and light the one he’d paid for. He was soundly in the top ethical band, the category which you and I would drive ourselves nuts trying to aspire to. Then, of course, there’s the lower band, the ones who are ethically zero. Someone like Charles Sobhraj would fit into this category. Most of us are in the middle. We can make great journeys within our band.

But why should we? Is there a point to being ethical? I believe there is. For one thing, if you don’t kill or steal or lie, then the chances of your being put in jail are considerably lower. The Buddha had another answer: Sila (ethical principles: not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, not to indulge in sexual misconduct and not to take intoxicants) is not an end in itself. Sila is necessary because without it, your mind will never find its calm and; without it, you will never experience wisdom, the experience of the truth of suffering, impermanence and emptiness; you will never be liberated and will consequently always suffer.

There are equivalents in other religions but if they all test your reason, then let me give you a simpler alternative, the opinion of an almost ethical person: living by a code of ethics builds character and character is what takes you through when all that you rested your faith on betrays you and fortune twists, turns and takes a tumble. As happened to my grandfather.

ethical living