Where Have All The Heroes Gone?

Aam aadmi may lead his family by example and may lead a couple of juniors at work. But by and large, aam aadmi is a follower. As a follower, he needs heroes to look up to in case of self-doubts. Growing up, we had many heroes. Bhagat Singh, Azad, Bose, Sardar Patel, Gandhi, Nehru et. al. When we grew up, we started to find out things about these heroes and we began to question their infallibility. The group of heroes start to get smaller and smaller. Ones we really looked up to are all gone. So we start to look up to political leaders and immediately realize our mistake. We start to look up to our teachers and as usual we find out that only some of them are really worthy of hero worship. We start looking up to our sports heroes. Then we find out about match fixings. We start to look up to men guarding our border and we find the real heroes. Heroes who match up toe to toe with likes of Bhagat Singh and Azad. Of course as luck would have it for us Indians, even that did not last too long. We started to find out about Army officers abusing their power for money for land, flats, money and even a bottle of scotch! Can our battered hearts take it any more? Probably not. But then I read a quote by Randy K Milholland who wrote in Midnight Macabre: Our heroes are people and people are flawed. Don't let that taint the thing you love.

It is the army top brass, which let us down not the jawans and the NCOs. Those guys are still staring at mortal danger in the face every day and coming out on top! Those men really are heroes and deserve our undying respect.

Upon thinking more on the topic, we should look for heroes in all walks of life. The farmer who gets up every day and braves the elements, the mill worker who goes through the grind on a daily basis, small business men and women who are trying to make their vision come true and creating jobs, doctors who are curing diseases without padding their bills and the list does go on. India has come a long way and will go on long after we are gone. It will be due to the nameless soldiers, workers, farmers, businessmen and not due to some family or a political leader. Jai Jawan Jai Kisan is an old but very pithy statement. Even an unfortunate country like ours is not bereft of heroes. We just have to look for them.

Anyway, the article which spurred my rant, is posted for your perusal below.

Scam takes shine off India's top brass
By Sudha Ramachandran
The involvement of India's top generals in a corrupt building deal worth millions of dollars has shattered the relatively clean image of the military. The armed forces, arguably the most respected institution in the country, now seem to be taking the same path as other corruption-plagued spheres of influence just as the military prepares for a vast procurement spree.
The article can be read at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LK19Df02.html