The Hero Worshippers

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Courtesy: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/

"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." Will Rogers

How often have we felt a sense of great satisfaction, a moment of grandeur when we read a column on our favourite hero. Be it a Mahatma Gandhi or an Albert Einstein or a Sachin Tendulkar or for that matter (in the more literal sense) Kamal Hassan. For some reason it makes us feel good about ourselves. This hero of ours is not necessarily confined to being a member of our community, our nation or our race. Ha, how the world celebrated the victory of Barack Obama. This is in essence the celebration of the Human Spirit. Every man rejoices his Hero because he knows that he too is capable of being that person. (He merely chooses not be.[;)]) Man always takes more pride in his potential than in his work.

Tell a child that he is not hardworking. He will probably shrug it off. Tell him that he is not intelligent. In the fascination of watching his nose turn crimson, you may miss the hardest , sharpest, meanest object around being hurled at you. DUCK.

Potential is extremely important because it is only this that gives rise to hope and what are we...,
without hope.

This is probably the reason the wise sages of India gave us heroes we can always look up to. RAMA, what a character. An Avatar unlike any other. An Avatar without any magical powers. An Avatar so very entirely human that we can completely relate to. A reference point for every action of ours. He is the touchstone of our purity. I once heard a wise scholar once while commenting on the Srimad Ramayana, saying that there is no Chapter so suffuse with Rama in the sacred book than the Sundara Kanda (A chapter which is entirely based on the exploits of Hanuman and that in which the character Rama hardly makes an appearance) because the chapter is full of the obstacles faced by Hanuman and how he overcomes it by thinking what his Lord Rama would have done.

You are now probably thinking, "Yeah, so in summary what seems to be said till now is that we should all have a hero and emulate him. Right, now where is the catch?"

The catch is this:

Our heroes are people and people are flawed. Don't let that taint the thing you love.

Randy K. Milholland, Midnight Macabre, 09-27-07

Very often we place our heroes on a very high pedestal for the simple reason that it gives us an inflated, you guessed it, illusion of grandeur. The hero being on that pedestal is so important for our own identity (say, a Krishna Devotee, a Beckham Fan) that we could go to any extent to protect him (or should I say 'it' for by this time the person has become the idea).

[It may disturb some of you that I am using the name of Gods in the same breath with that of Men but that is because I believe that the Avatars of God are to be seen as men, so as to be able to inspire and teach by example. Else we always have the excuse that He could do it because He is God. ]

Since our hero has now become an Idea, protecting him suddenly becomes a noble task and we plunge forward with gusto. Sage Ramana Maharishi used to joke thus,

"Lord Rama and Lord Shiva had a minor disagreement which they resolved soon after. However the Monkeys of Rama and the Ghosts of Shiva are found fighting to this day."

Some Monkeys - like this blogger, for instance - start worshiping heroes just for the thrill of this fight. (No, I am not implying that those who fight with me finally end as ghosts. Really, NO. I did not mean that at all.[;)]) I became a fan of Kamal Hassan because I had a bus mate (the wonderful hour long bus drives from our home to Engg. College) who was a fanatic of Rajini Kanth. I am becoming a fan of Sachin now because of another acquaintance who happens to be a Sachin-basher.


Let us make our Gods into our heros and not the other way, so that we can be inspired by them and yet be able to accept their limitations. We can always add disclaimers to our identity like, "I am a fan of Kamal, The Artist and not Kamal, The Person." Disclaimers have won more arguments than references. [;)]

Fine. What else?

The point I want to make is this. Let us not assume that we cannot be heroes. Let us not have such a strong faith in our frailty unless maybe if one can put it so beautifully in words like Ford Prefect (a character in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series),

"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre," Ford muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."

For we often do not know what we are capable of till the time that we are in a crisis which forces us to see for ourselves what we are capable of. In the moments where in adrenaline kicks in and the working mind takes precedence over the thinking mind, anything is possible. As Umberto Eco, summarised in the collection of essays, "Travels in Hyperreality"

"The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else."

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Courtesy: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/