What does Consuming Pesticide Reveal of Human Existence?

On 16th July 2020, many Newspapers flashed the news of a 'Dalit couple' consuming pesticide in Guna district in Madhya Pradesh. The couple - Rajkumar Ahirwar and wife Savitri made an attempt at ending their life when they saw the 45 bigha plot with soyabean cultivation on it being destroyed by the bulldozers sent by the anti-encroachment team. It was indeed heartbreaking when they saw all their investment lost. This incident kept me thinking about Human existence and what it would possibly reveal.

Human Existence reveals conflict and Struggle 

 

Existence is struggle and conflict ridden. With Darwinian theory of natural selection and survival, we now understand that 'fitness' is what matters today. We have heard about 'survival of the fittest'. We also hear in the corporate world about the 'survival of the fastest and the efficient' and fitness is not what ultimately counts. In the natural world, for a lion to survive, it needs to prey upon other animals. Those animals that are preyed upon live in an apparent conflict-ridden world. Of course, human beings do not live preying upon other human beings. However, it can happen that human beings can manifest predatory instincts in varied ways. Mr. Gabbu Pardhi who leased the land that does not belong to him for money cheated the couple. No one willfully wishes to be cheated. It is a classic case of cheating the vulnerable persons for gain. Can we not say that the couple had purity of intention rather than encroaching on a land that did not belong to them. The intention of the couple was perhaps a temporary relief from their struggle through cultivation. However, the conflict widened when they realized that they had encroached a government land cut out for a government college. Who understands their struggle to maintain a family of eight members (parents and six children)? Could the anti-encroachment team wait till the harvest was done as the couple requested? What was the hurry in beginning the work of a college during lockdown days? The sweat of the poor is always tinged with the cry of struggle. Perhaps the couple lived in a constant struggle. But they could not handle the conflict when they realized that they have reached the end of the rope. When the bulldozers rolled in, Savitri went in and consumed pesticide, the husband followed her. Succumbing to helplessness is the result of a felt inability to face the predatory giants of corrupted humanity.

Human Existence reveals the innate beauty of the dignity of being human

As it can be gauged, the couple bore the burden of being landless, poverty-stricken. However, they mustered courage to do something worthy of human dignity (cultivation: to eat from the sweat of their brow rather than stealing or engaging in any act of easy money). They even took a loan to do such an act (as the neighbors suggest). They accepted the struggles of life and moved on amidst difficulties. That's the innate beauty of being human.

The cry of children tell us a bold truth "we are dependent on each other for survival". Just as the nature has an ecosystem, the family has an ecosystem of dependence. No man is an island. No human institution stands alone. We need each other. The cries of children tell us that the human values are on the verge of extinction.

What is in 'Sufiyum Sujathayum'?

We need to engage with the popular form of arts as you find the seeds of the word scattered all over. Young watch movies. Don Bosco said, “Love what the young love.” So, I watched the newly released Malayalam movie, “Sufiyum Sujathayum” on Amazon Prime. I find snippets of the movie being posted on the Whatsapp status of my contacts. I thought I should write my impressions of the movie. 

Alasdair MacIntyre, a Scottish Philosopher seems to have said, “If we want to know what to do, we must first determine the story to which we belong.” As a catholic priest, I belong to Christ, and to the story, He is unfolding. Having said this, the movie bases itself on the story of Sujatha falling in love with Sufi. She is enchanted by Sufi, falls in love, decides to live with him, interrupted by parents, and suffers separation. I think that this particular story fits in with the larger story of the journey of a soul to God. It tells of an unfulfilled longing of a soul for God in this life.  

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard spoke of three stages that a human being passes through on the way to spiritual maturity. They are the aesthetic stage characterized by the preoccupation with the sensual; second is the ethical stage in which one transcends the sensual and accepts the moral obligation to tie up one’s life in love to another person as often happens in marriage; third, the religious stage, in which a person falls in love with God. This love is unconditional in the sense that one finds the infinite object that alone corresponds to the infinite longing of one’s heart. This resonates well with the movie.

Some quick insights from the movie.

1. Everything is a pointer to something greater: The film has the scenes of doves. The song, “വാതുക്കല് വെള്ളരി പ്രാവ്” Dove is a symbol of innocence and love, a symbol of something pure. At the death of Sufi, there is an image of a dove. At the beginning of the movie, Muezzin in conversation with Sufi tells him about the doves that stay in the attic. When renovation takes place, they will be taken care of by the almighty and then he says this heart touching words, “It is deceased that needs space.” What could be that space? When Sufi suddenly dies and is buried, he definitely gets a bit of earth to bury his body, but the space that he created in the heart of Sujata is not limited to the earthly space. It is vast. Love has no boundaries – boundary of religion, the boundary of societal norms (a Hindu girl should not marry a Muslim, or a Sufi priest involved in the things of God should not love a girl or marry), the boundary of an established marriage, etc.
2. You cannot sufficiently express what is Real! The fact that the heroine is a dumb girl who truly loves is a point in place to explain that one cannot sufficiently express in words what is real. You can only attentively hear, notice, experience, and feel. The title song has words that are flavored with a tinge of mysticism = “the doves knocking with words,” “the breeze that whirls around, kissing between my eyes,” “the parrots that chant prayers”… all these are slices of love; “the radiance of love turns even pain into honey drops”, yet that’s only a page, not the whole book, it’s only a chapter, not the entire story.
3. What can make you happy? It’s following the rhythm of your heart that makes you happy. Any number of arrangements, adjustments, and toleration will not make you happy. Just consider the conversations in the movie. “Don’t leave, you know what a joy it is to see you.” (Sufi tells to Sujatha). If we put this conversation against, Dr. VR Rajeev, the NRI, He tells the parents of Sujatha, “isn’t it natural for couples to have some minor quarrels? When the concern for the husband is missing, they tend to be louder….. I have never been happy in my married life. Attachments do not make you happy but an absolute surrender to the divine will give you the serenity to accept life as it is.
4. A Question: can you really forget true love? No. death cannot separate. Absence cannot separate. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, says, “For I am convinced that neither death, not life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38,39).

The Punch lines in the film that I liked:    

1. Sufi: Come, I am your redemption and salvation.
2. Prayer is better than sleep….
3. Aboob to Sujatha: Sleep well.  When you’re in deep slumber, only the almighty will be with you. God is what you breathe. Do you snore? They say Satan resides in the nose tip of those who snore. Be it Satan, demon, or angel, it can enter your mind only after you wake up. So you must get some deep sleep. It’s only when they are awake, people remember their own names. There is no untouchability when you sleep. Do you think about caste, religion, anger, sorrow or hate in your sleep? Not at all. Only the Almighty…all these are mere illusions. Illusions of the sleepless folk. Sufi’s musical prayer call was an illusion. The world is enormous. You can hear him from wherever you are. That’s enough. That’s enough, Sujatha….
   

I enjoyed the music, the sound, and the concept. However, at the end of the movie, I got a gnawing dissatisfaction and got me thinking. What is this life about? Do we long for what we do not get in this life? How did I lose my love life? Am I to live with the “givenness” of every situation and instances of life? The answer could be just two words = ‘love’, ‘Surrender’. In the forward of the spiritual classic “Abandonment to Divine Providence” written by Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Fr. Vincent writes: “the creator of the human heart knows there is no such thing as a “yokeless” life. The choice each of us faces is not, “should I place a yoke upon myself or not?” but rather, “Under whose yoke am I going to live? Whom shall I serve?” As we find that Sujatha never danced or could happily live with her husband, she finally gives away the rosary that was gifted to her by Sufi. That frees her. She gets on with life. Rajeev now understands his wife, without many words he takes her hand and Sujatha leans on her husband. In life things often do not move as per our perceived or planned interventions. But acceptance, love, and, surrender can take us off to a different level of existence.