Few days ago I was watching the response of our Minister of State for external affairs Gen. V. K. Singh (Retd.) on TV after he had finished the rescue operation from Yemen. He narrated an incident when he found a new born baby and his mother who had to be brought back. Baby was suffering from severe jaundice and was not in a condition to be flown back and no doctor was willing to go to get them from the trouble spot from the safe zone. He said that he found a lady doctor. Though she had done her medicine course from AFMC Pune she was a civilian now. He approached her and appealed that since she had earned her degree from the college of armed forces she had a duty for the country. In his own words, he said – Ye ek acchha mauka hai aapke liye fauj ka karz chukane ka. It worked – the doctor went with him and the baby and his mother came to India safely.

This took me many years back when I was a child. The culture, atmosphere and belief systems of people were different then. Best and brightest used to join noble professions like teaching, defence services, civil services, medicine etc. Decision making criteria was not the money and career alone but the respect that the profession commanded. I remember, many people when asked about where they are going used to say that they are going for ‘duty’. Work for them was ‘duty’ and never a job which they did for getting paid. Here I’m not speaking about the people who served in defence forces alone. I’m speaking about ordinary folks for whom job was ‘duty’ first and end of the month salary was something that was essential for survival. Despite our criticism today for many of the government and public sector organizations, giant organizations have been created because of sense of duty of the people then.

Today we are in a rat race. If a person like me had forgotten the word ‘duty’, I can well imagine the state of affairs with our younger generation. Even as we were doing our graduation, universities had stopped getting good professors due to poor remuneration on comparative basis. Graduating doctors today try to do more lucrative post-graduation studies resulting vanishing concept of family doctors for normal ailments and no doctor is willing to serve in rural India. In defence services most children of officers try not to join the forces and it is the children of jawans who become officers and reach the highest levels there (best example is our current army chief). Even today majority of IIT engineers either go abroad or do MBA since these are supposed to be more paying. Bright people joining research, teaching, production, drilling etc is getting reduced simply because of a perception that these ‘jobs’ don’t pay much. There is no concept of ‘duty’ outside the defence forces.

Hindu philosophy has always had the concept of ‘dharma’. I’m neither a philosopher nor an authority on religion. So I’ll not get into the territory that doesn’t belong to me. I’ve mentioned ‘dharma’ here in the context of ‘duty’. In real sense the meaning of the word ‘dharma’ is not religion but ‘duty’. India therefore always had the concept of duty-dharma ahead of personal gains. So, a new physician has to take ‘Hippocratic oath’ making him swear that he will maintain highest levels of ethical standards. But it has become hypocrisy because the concept of ‘duty-dharma’ has got diluted significantly today. Many other roles have the concept of taking oath to uphold the highest levels of ethics in the line of duty like those of ministers and judges. There’s an erosion of concept of duty there also. One institution that has significantly maintained this concept is our armed forces, where the oath that they take to protect their troops, country, people and flag continues to remain important for them, often many years after these soldiers leave the service. This is what was leveraged by Gen. Singh to get a difficult job accomplished.

Does it mean that ‘dharma’ is applicable to few such professions alone? If that was the case then this word wouldn’t have any meaning. In every walk of life, in every profession, in every strata of society every human being has a duty to fulfil. Very few people fulfil these duties knowingly, some do the same to an extent but unknowingly, but most of us are so busy in our day to day life and chasing that elusive happiness in material things that we have no clue of our duties. Even if sometime we remember this we either throw away the thought or weigh our duty in terms of money that can buy us our ‘dharma’. So we have a situation of pilot at the airport who has a duty to ferry passengers but that will exceed his working hours by another hour. He creates a scene there, decides not to fly unless given hefty overtime and causes inconvenience to the flying public for no fault of theirs. A new mother has a duty to feed the child but she worries for her figure and puts the child in the care of a care taker. A son has a duty to take care of his old and ailing parents and he sends them money to get a nurse. A CEO has a duty towards his shareholders, lenders, employees etc but he stays more concerned about retaining his position by taking short term and unhealthy decisions. A doctor has a duty for his patient first but refuses to operate a patient unless assured of fee in advance or since his work hours are over. Such examples can be many where we work in our day to life for anything but our duty. Except a select few, most of whom are in public service. So sometime we hear about heroic tales of ordinary people who remembered their ‘dharma’, their ‘duty’. I’m sure everybody will remember many cases during Mumbai carnage on 26/11/2008 when the staffers of Taj Hotel and Trident Hotel went out their way to keep their guests safe and comfortable to the extent of losing their own lives. The General Manager of Taj Mahal Hotel, Karambir Kang, lost his two sons and wife while he was taking care of the guests. Or for that matter, Tukaram Omble, who gave his life in the line of duty to ensure that we get Ajmal Kasab alive.

But in general, in the rat race of today, people keep running after their rights, jobs and higher paying jobs, money, pleasure, assets, fame and many other things that this world has to offer. I have no case here to say that it is wrong. These things are essential for not only modern day living, but also for the progress of the society. Unless people aspire for betterment of their lives society won’t progress. We must protect our rights, we must strive for better pay and better jobs, we must enjoy life, we must create assets. So where’s the disconnect? Disconnect is that when we strive for all these things, we often forget our ‘duty’, our ‘dharma’. Achievement of all the above at the cost of forgetting our ‘dharma’ may give pleasure but it’ll be fleeting, short-lived.

Some of my friends and readers may think that today I’m trying to become a preacher, a philosopher though I’m not intellectually equipped for the same. No, I’m not attempting to do that. I remain a contemporary individual who’s beset with all the weaknesses that we all have. Therefore, the objective of writing this is purely selfish and self-serving. I believe that we must remember our ‘duty’ not for the sake of duty but for our own happiness. Let me tell you how. I shall give few examples here:
1. As a sales manager a person’s ‘dharma’ is to achieve his targets. If he does that he gets immense self-satisfaction, which is the first source of his happiness. If on top of that he gets a good appraisal and salary increase, it becomes second reason to be happy that is accompanied with pride in doing a good job that has got acknowledged. But if he doesn’t get desired annual appraisal, no one has the power to take away the happiness he derives out of doing his job well. That’s the real happiness which is genuine and durable compared to a situation where the person doesn’t perform well but still gets good appraisal due to his skills of boss management. In first case the pride, self-respect and happiness will be genuine and healthy.
2. If a mother feeds the child instead of giving the child in the care of a care taker, she ensures a healthy child, happy child, healthy mother – feeding is good for the mother too and a very special bond of love gets created between the mother and child. This is something that no amount of money can ever buy.
3. A son or a daughter when they take care of happiness of their parents may be doing their duty, but in doing so they also get enormous happiness and satisfaction themselves. If anyone has a doubt he may ask the real feeling of someone who just used to send money to his parents from USA but was never around when they needed him most. Chances are that the person will take this guilt with him to his grave.
4. If we conduct a survey of few retired CEOs of the companies, all of whom did well for themselves but half of them created institutions and took care of shareholders, employees and other stakeholders and other half only took care of themselves, chances are that the people who created institutions will be a much happier lot. While you are in the position you may have short term and self-serving goals, but when you demit the office the only thing that will give you happiness is the work that you have done and the acknowledgement that you get.
5. As I’m writing today, there’s a massive earthquake in Nepal and parts of India. Damage is huge in terms of human lives and suffering and material cost. There are many people who are involved in relief work due to sheer sense of ‘duty’, their ‘dharma’. Some of them may be deputed by the governments and some may be doing it voluntarily. But in either of the case these people wouldn’t be expecting a material reward, with only reward being the ‘duty’ well done. This reward and inner happiness is something that can’t ever be bought with any amount of money.
6. If you ever meet a doctor and ask about his feeling when he conducted a tough operation beyond the call of his duty to save a life, he will most likely say that he did his duty well, but the satisfaction he got was not something that money could ever buy.

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that we as human beings have a ‘duty’ to remember our ‘dharma’ at all times. Not in the spiritual sense alone, but more for selfish and mundane reason of getting genuine and lasting happiness and guilt free life. As Gen. V.K.Singh had remarked, ‘kuch karz abhi chukane hain’, if we remember our dues towards our society, motherland, parents, teachers, employers, children etc, we will stop looking for reward in everything we do. This will reduce or remove the resistance in our mind for doing our ‘duty’ and following our ‘dharma’ without expectations of reward. But we shall still get the reward in terms of unalloyed happiness and bliss and a sense of achievement and ‘job well done’. I’m sure that people would agree with me when I say that any act which is done purely out of sense of duty without expectations of a reward normally gives better output.

To my dear friends and readers I wish a life of happiness and bliss by following their ‘dharma’ and remembering all the ‘karz’ that they owe.