By Malangba Bangormayum
There are hard questions. I remember two such questions from childhood. I was asked, `What do you want to be when you grow up`? There was another hard question, `Whom do you love more, your mother or father`? These questions are hard questions. By `hard`™ I mean questions to which we do not have an answer, or questions to which we might have answers but which, for one reason or another, we cannot answer.
The first question was often asked by relatives when they come to visit or we go visiting. The more learned, the more respectable or those amongst my relatives, who projected a sense of responsibility, were the ones who did not waste any opportunity to ask this question. I remember the question asked to me in the interview for my class one entrance. I replied as was expected of me. But I maintain that it is a hard question, notwithstanding the possibility of it being answered by a class one aspirant. It has taken many decades to realise that I might not have an answer as to what I want to be should. This fact should stand as adequate testimony that the question is hard. Do I want to be famous? Do I want to be liked? Do I want to be powerful? Do I want to be filthy rich? Shall I be an intellectual whose words are put on the pedestal, read and revered by those who matter? Or do I want to negate all of these? What shall I be? I still do not have an answer. It is indeed a hard question.
The second question is a terrible one for it could reduce a kid to tears. I have seen a kid reduced to tears when some grown-up girls from our locality teased him with that question. Why is it so hard? It is hard not because you might not have an answer; it is hard because you cannot answer that answer that you have.Such questions can come in many avatars. A friend when asked `Whom would you save: your mother or your wife if they are drowning and you are to save only one`? (This happened in college, when none of us were married. So, it was a purely hypothetical question but with some import and consequence). He replied: `If such a situation comes up, I would jump and drown myself`. We felt cheated with the answer, but perhaps, his was the best answer to this terrible question.
I was once in a seminar in which an artist from the state was asked by a renowned intellectual why that person was not making any work on the armed conflict in the state to which he belongs. The question was a hard question. See, if you say that he does not have an answer to the question that has been asked by the situation, then one can blame him for his insensitivity. If he replies that he has a creative answer to the question, the situation asks of him, but he refrains to answer, then he might not be a capable artist. Intellectuals do ask hard questions.
When we were kids, we used to play a version of Cops and Robbers. And we used to have blindfolded `Zorros` thrown in the play. The Zorros were interrogated and questioned. I don`™t know whether anyone remembers these games. I don`™t see any kids playing these games anymore. When we were kids, once we saw these many coloured papers coming down from the sky, we ran after them; caught them. It was magical. Such instances must be what the magical realists try to capture with their words. What could be more magical than clear skies raining papers of different colours? We asked the elders what they were. It seems they were asked hard questions for they never answered but only transmitted, exuded the smell of fear.
In a very famous Sermon, called the Sermon of the Flower or simply Flower Sermon, the Enlightened One answered life`™s hard questions with an answer. Stories tell of that wonderful sermon where, people from far and near assembled to hear the Enlightened One give answers to the hard questions. Everyone waited eagerly, reverentially, in that charged atmosphere for the One to utter his words. Instead, he picked up a white flowerwhich lay near his feet, and held it up. That was his answer. Only one person, a disciple of his, named Mahakashyapa smiled in acknowledgment. Indeed a hard answer to life`™s hard questions.
My son is going to school next year. For that he is being called for an `interview` this month. We are sure that he will be asked what his name is and such other questions. His mother has drilled him some responses to these questions. You might call it crazy, but I have been having this strong urge to secretly drill him to lift a white flower and held it up high, if he is ever asked `What do you want to be when you grow up`? I know, I have to do this secretly, if ever I succumb to the temptation, for his mother would hear nothing of it. I also know that his admission would be jeopardised. But you have to admit, what a swell moment it would be if he pulls that act out successfully.
