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Articles: My Thoughts | The Rut
- Prof. Narasimham Brahmandam
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An old Sanskrit proverb says that the world runs after the past. If there is a God, instead of involving himself in every little event in the universe, He seems to have made just a few rules and allowed matter and energy to interact with full freedom in all possible manners in accordance with his rules. If that is true, I am sure, one of His rules is to fall into the groove or the rut.
Electrons orbit round the nucleus of the atom in their tracks. Even if you dislodge one of them by force, it falls back into its orbit as soon as the energy is spent. Electrons in the countless atoms in the universe have made innumerable revolutions during the trillions of years since creation. But few run out of their tracks.
In living cells, there is the DNA that carries the code of inheritance. In every division, DNA reproduces itself faithfully, i.e., a new strand is produced in the old mould. The preservation of species characters depends on such faithful duplication trillions of times without deviation.
It is not, therefore, surprising that things made up of such physical and biological units also possess this trait of falling into a groove. A folded paper tears along the fold line. Even machines run better after a few runs. Ants walking in a row, sheep ducks and cattle in disciplined herds display this trait. Animals learn by making them repeat an act. We too learn only by repetition. What we do clumsily at the first attempt is done perfectly after a few repetitions. Repetition is falling into rut. As the typist looks at the script, his fingers press the relevant keys even without his thinking because they have fallen into the rut. ‘Practice makes a man perfect’ is a familiar saying that acknowledges this fact.
The basis of appreciation of poetry is said to be recollection of an earlier experience. (rasah puurva smritih). If the lip of a lady is described as resembling a coccinia fruit, the simile falls flat on a person who has not seen the fruit before, while he who has seen it gets into the memory tracks and is enchanted. Recollection is getting into the rut. One attends a great music performance. When, by chance, the musician sings a composition he has heard before, he is perceptibly pleased. Another sends a request slip asking for a song that he has heard earlier from his wife or sister. He is happier when he retraces the old rut than when he has to traverse new ground. Like a wanderer in a forest who looks for a footpath, the mind is in search of a track and feels immensely happy when it finds it.
Man is unhappy with the monotony of the unidirectional flow of time. What has passed never returns and he does not know what will come. It is, probably, to get out of this monotony and inability to tread over the past again, man has invented rhythm. He divides the endless straight line of time into small bits of equal length and imagines the dividing points as repetitive events of the ‘cycle’ of time. That gives him a reprieve from the desolate feeling of loss forever. That is why rhythm has become an important feature of arts. Not only in music, dance and poetry where rhythm is patently practiced but also in other static arts like drawing, architecture and landscaping, man divides space into repetitive bits to achieve rhythm. Repetition is a form of rut. A kaleidoscope has three mirrors arranged as an equilateral triangular prism and a few colored stones thrown in the middle. The stones themselves have no form or charm about them. But in every position, they have three reflections that make it a pleasing pattern. It is beautiful because, each stone forms the rut for the three reflections.
The beaten track is hardly concealed in styles of art forms. We have in India the Karnatic and Hindustani styles and many minor styles called gharaanas or baanis. In dance, Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam, Kathakkali, Kathak, Odissi and Manipuri etc. are well known. In art and poetry also there are many schools. They maintain their identities by strictly keeping to their tracks. Tradition is almost a synonym for rut. From Valmiki, the first poet, to the latest poet today, there is hardly anyone who has not compared the face of a lady with anything other than the moon or the lotus. And, talking of poetry, rhyme quenches the thirst for rut and there is a lot of poetry these days whose only merit is rhyme, however laboriously or nonsensically achieved.
Imitation is an obvious run in the rut. If tight pants are worn in spite of, often embarrassing, inconvenience, it is due to the greater pleasure of running in the rut (of fashion) than bodily comfort. The innumerable western ruts we follow in social behavior are too familiar to the ‘civilized’ society to need mention. School dresses, educational patterns, identification of disciplines, and syllabuses are all ruts in the educational field. In fact, uniformity is a rut, a subordination of originality to custom. The political expressions and slogans are ruts. The imported ruts of political philosophy are called isms and their entire jargon is a rut.
Even in religion, rut reigns supreme. In fact, some moderns believe that there is nothing in religion other than a rut. People would not fight for God as ferociously as for the custom. There were great devotees who had gone to the Supreme Court to decide whether the vertical line under the naamam on the temple Elephant should or should not be there. That is because it is easier to fall into the rut of the custom than into the rut of philosophical thought. The ‘heads’ of religions seem to have known this too well when hey prescribed the insignia of religions and forms of worship.
Persons who can use for their selfish ends this trait of common men of following set tracks are called leaders. These leaders are in the fore front for some time and when the atmosphere warms up and sacrifice of life appears imminent, they cleverly slip back leaving the slogans to the masses – slogans like, ‘our country’, ‘our state’, ‘our religion’, ‘our caste’, ‘or farmers’, ‘our labor’, ‘our poor’ and ‘our democracy’. Innocent followers run after them till they reach the universal goal beyond all these problems – death. Are the paths shown by the leaders new? No. they are also old ruts. Whatever the agitation is for, the same procession, bunds, burning buses, blocking transport, looting shops, killing the weak and molesting women. Whether the agitators are illiterates, organized labor or educated graduates, the modus operandi remains the same.
It is fallacious to assume that the educated do not seek the rut. After independence, we wanted to have a new educational system. Till then we were following the British rut. In August 1947 we decided to throw it out. There was a vacuum till the American model took its place. After importing the American model, the hands of our educationists were full copying the trimesters, semesters, grades, grade points, and the Assistant Professors and Associate Professors ( to replace the much discredited lecturers and readers, names too easy to pronounce). Along with their educational pattern came their jargon, accent, gestures – all of which became our models and symbols of elitism. We have been happy ever since, progressing along the rut.
We needed a constitution. The rustic patriots, who never had been abroad, often complain that constitutions of the world over were studied for models but not the conditions in India. It is not an accident that most statesmen are students of history. They have a number of past models before them from which they can choose one for the occasion. When one locates an earlier decision, he feels that half the responsibility for the decision is shared by the maker of the earlier decision. That happiness is only experienced by a judge who is able to lay his hands on an earlier high court decision. That is why, judges cite earlier judgments in most judgments.
Many an erudite speaker quotes authors for every statement he makes, to reassure his audience that he is not guilty of originality.
If the rut plays such a pre-eminent role in highly learned men, it is no cause for surprise to find it in Government offices. If you want a communication from the Government about a request you have made, it usually takes about a year. There are many reasons for it. One of hem, however, is the search for a precedent. ‘Has a similar request been made before? If so, what were the orders passed on it?’ If you can yourself cite the precedent, you can save at least six months.
Fear is natural for all living beings and man is no exception. This fear lies in the subconscious as a vague fear. Loneliness increases fear and company mitigates it. Rut fulfills this need for company. If there is a rut, it assures him that someone has already trodden that path. The path thus becomes a ‘known’ one. The unknown causes fear and knowledge dispels it. Rut is, therefore, a basic need for man. The urge for security is more in those who have been brought up in an atmosphere of security. It is more in the middle classes than in the rich or the poor. The slavery to rut is more in government employees than in those employed in private establishments, more in the propertied than in the pauper, more in white-collar employees than in labors, more in the old than in the young.
Events that stick to the rut for long periods, occasionally fall out of the rut. DNA duplicates itself faithfully billions of times. But most rarely, it does miss a bit. Then a new trait is born. Thereafter, the new DNA again duplicates the changed form a number of times. Similarly millions of common men are born before, as an exception, a great man is born who lays a new path. So too may an arch criminal be born once in a way. He too lays a new path which may be more attractive than that laid by the great man. Barring these two rare classes of path layers, the rest of humanity are only path seekers.
It is thus evident that to go along a rut is natural to man. Using this natural trait properly is in our hands. Good ruts take us to good goals and bad ruts take us to bad goals. Discriminating the former from the latter is wisdom. One who possesses it is human. One who does not, is a sheep.
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