Some incidents of life are never forgotten.

 

I was in the initial years of my professional life when our company managed to get an industry veteran on board who we had been chasing for a long time. It was sort of a coup for our company to make him join us. We already had few of his colleagues from the previous company working with us who used to speak very highly of him and literally worshipped him. It so happened that within few months of his joining us he became my boss. I found him quite learned, clear about the concepts and aggressive. Even then, I could see some serious fault lines. But with his reputation there was no one around with whom I could discuss the issues that were bothering me. As time went past those fault lines became more visible to me but environment was still under awe of him – and here was me, a greenhorn, who was looking at the faults of an industry veteran.  Then suddenly I came to know that a woman HR manager was joining us from the same company. I guess she was the same batch as me so far as management class was concerned. She is one of the finest HR managers I’ve come across, who even at that young age was very mature and had the courage to call a spade a spade.   I finally got someone who was quite mature, my age group, more a friend but still a professional and who had known this gentleman for last few years. She said just one line, ‘Sanjay, I don’t know why people treated him there like a demi-God. I find him to be an ordinary person who now has bloated ego due to this image’. We never discussed this issue again, but now I knew that my thoughts were not misplaced. Having said that, my objective of writing this is neither to prove someone wrong nor myself right. Issue here is bigger which we shall soon see. We subsequently spent many years together and I observed that over period of time his fan following started diminishing. Not only this, many of this erstwhile followers were now openly critical of him. Today when we old colleagues meet I find almost everyone critical of him. We may have worked with many people in our professional lives and may not have liked many people, but I don’t find anyone else who was first worshipped and then disliked so intensely.  Today, when I reflect I feel that like anyone else this person was a human being with his strengths and weaknesses. But since we made him a ‘demi-God’, all his faults got magnified and then his fall from grace was not too far away.

 

This has remained as a lesson with me since then. Despite this, I have not been able to remain unscathed from this phenomenon. I’ve had my share of admirers for whom almost every word that I spoke was a gospel truth and who saw me as a role model. But then, as time passes, these admirers start having expectations from you. Not of a material kind, but something which is far difficult and sinister. They develop expectations from you in terms of your conduct, your successes, your responses to situations and your behaviour with them. Now this is a tall order for any human being. Unknowingly, these people in their own minds put their role models on a very high pedestal, where everything must be right and that also as per the definition of the beholder.  And like with any human being, a day comes when you do something that is contrary to the expectation that they may have from you. Oh!!! it becomes a sad day as falling from a high perch is painful and quick. Since everything has happened in the eyes of the beholder, with the person who has fallen being largely unaware, greater pain is felt by him only. Result is that while till a particular time someone was a demi-God, one incident makes the same person a villain.

 

Few years ago I was speaking with a cricket enthusiast friend.  He told me in a matter of fact way, look, Sachin is like a God to cricket. I was amused but kept quite. No one in his right senses can cast any doubt on the abilities of Sachin when it comes to cricket. Within next few months of that discussion there was a series when Sachin was not in a good form and he couldn’t perform well.  It so happened that I bumped into the same friend again. To tease him I asked him if he still considered Sachin to be the God of cricket. Wow!! This guy came down heavily on his God. How could Sachin behave so irresponsibly? He singlehandedly ensured that we lose the series. Not only he was speaking harsh words for his God, I could see the pain in his eyes. Poor Sachin, he had no clue that my friend treated him like his God and just because he couldn’t perform well in one series he has fallen from grace and was longer God but an ordinary human being.

 

We Indians have a tendency to treat our parent or parents as our heroes. Generally girls are attached to their fathers and boys to mothers. On the lighter vein, after marriage this love becomes more intense and slowly gets converted to hero worshipping. So, many a woman won’t accept that their fathers can ever be wrong and likewise many a man can never believe that their mothers can be wrong. This often becomes a reason for perpetual friction in the household. But on the serious note, this tendency of treating even your own parents as demi-Gods by crossing the limits of love and respect, results in infirmities setting in that relationship and our own conduct. First of all, right from the tender age we believe that whatever our parents do is right. Over a period of time some or many of their shortcomings get internalized in us and we start treating them as our strengths instead of weaknesses. Just to give an example, I know of a woman who had always seen her father being very strict and reserved with youngsters, house helps and his juniors in the office. She got married to a very jovial person who was always cracking jokes and was polite and courteous with everyone around him, including his subordinates at office. This in her eyes was a deviant conduct since her God behaved in a different way. It was amazing to see the effort she made to make her husband more ‘firm and strict’ like her father, but to no avail. Outcome in such a scenario is quite expected. In this situation of hero worship and treating parents as demi-Gods, we sometime spoil a very important relationship between spouses. Even this doesn’t guarantee falling of the God from the high pedestal. Sometimes we actually see people realizing that what they considered strength till now was actually weakness. And sometimes, the Gods are proven that they are petty humans. Imagine a daughter who was always taught about the virtues of honesty, truth and rule of law finding her father caught in a corruption case. In an instant her God becomes a human.

 

As the examples above show, there are two sets of potential demi-Gods. One, the leaders, actors, players etc. who we mostly see at a distance and two, our teachers, family elders, bosses, doctors etc., the people who we deal with directly in our lives.

 

The first category people, the distant ones, many times suffer the ignominy of becoming humans from demi-Gods. In this ‘instant justice’ age they suffer the consequences fast. Politicians win and lose elections quickly, players get treated like Sachin and actors are awarded instant justice by their fans and some of the good films also run a risk of getting bombed at the box office.   Recent controversies related to Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan may give an idea about the same.

 

But it is the second category demi-Gods who have a larger impact on us in our daily lives. A boss who is hero worshipped by his team members also runs a higher risk of being dumped at the slightest of the error made by him. There’s another perspective also to this demi-God situation, which is that the followers continue to have unflinching faith in the righteousness of their God, even when he is wrong or outdated in the changed circumstances. Corporate world is full of many such stories. I’m reminded of the iconic names likes Russi Mody, Darbari Seth or in the recent days Cyrus Mistry. Till a period of time they were treated like Gods and suddenly fall from the grace is so steep that they become villains. Reason I’m taking these names is because they are known to most people. But in real life we have countless bosses, teachers and elders who suffer the fate of being treated like demi-Gods for a long time and suddenly, one fine day, becoming most hated just because their human side got exposed, they made some human error or said something which we thought was inappropriate. Sometimes, Gods also misuse their position knowingly. We do read stories about some teachers or bosses using their relationships with their women students or subordinates for ulterior objectives.

 

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that we all can sometimes treat others as demi-Gods and sometimes become demi-Gods for others, which often does more harm than good. After all, it is God only who we fight the most in our real lives. We never seem to be happy with whatever He has given us and expect Him to give us only good and be only good with us. If God himself cannot come up to our expectations resulting in our fighting with Him, how can His children do better than Him? How can they be faultless? How can they always behave in a way that we approve of? If this can’t happen, then it is but natural that we will fight with them the way we love to fight with God. Instead of treating anybody else as a demi-God, we must always see the strengths and positives in a person but also believe that as a human being he will have his shortcomings. By doing this we can keep many relationships healthy and prevent them from breaking down. Also, the moment we see first signals of someone else treating us as demi-Gods, it becomes essential the clear the issue and tell him that his opinion might be misplaced. Demi-Gods, after all will become humans one day. It is never a question of if, but when. And when that ‘when’ happens the fall is sudden, steep and damaging. Demi-Gods are like a clean white sheet. Slightest of the dirty mark will not only be seen but will appear to be magnified. And in real world humans can’t be like white sheets. It is said that even moon also has marks on it.

 

To my friends and readers I wish a greater ability to remain humans and treat others as humans without converting our heroes into demi-Gods.