Raju Korti
Politics is a 24X7 calling that thrives on personal high and perpetual adrenaline. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, does not need those qualifications. He has hordes of antiquated Congressmen who will fall over themselves to do his bidding.
The young man who has been a butt of derisive sneers all through his gaffe-ridden tenure, afforded himself an expansive 56-day sabbatical in Yangon, Myanmar when one seriously wonders what could be the propriety of such a break when his party was providing him that perk with its trade-mark sycophancy.
The very idea of Rahul Gandhi seeking a sabbatical is redundant. The son, grandson and great grandson of Indian Prime Ministers had already lost sheen before embarking upon a leave of absence prior to the budget session of the Parliament. The party had handed his detractors in the ruling dispensation enough ammo to hit back and say "Go and find Rahul first" each time it sought to criticize them. After all the brouhaha, it now transpires that the young man whose public appearances are largely limited to clumsily drafted orchestrated speeches, chose the south-east Asian country to find solace in "meditation".
While the Media continues to beat chest on not being able to locate his whereabouts all through the two months, I have been creaking my brains as to why did he have to leave the shores of the country to perform a chore as simple as meditation unless he was living it up there; far from prying eyes and trying to get over the electoral loss of face.
As someone who has practiced infrequent meditation to fight the unending blues of life, I can vouch that there is distraction when there are nagging thoughts and meditation happens only when there are no thoughts and a sense of detachment. Rahul has far too much baggage to have gotten into meditation and if he has still managed to take his mind off the debilitating times that he and his party have gone through, it should really serve him right. The first recipe for contentment is to avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. 56 days is not exactly a short span of time. It is long enough to gloss over all the failures of your life. Quite rightly, baiters in the party have a point when they say he should be more hands-on and lead from the front. And if a section of the party is to be believed, the party is still struggling to make a choice between Rahul and Priyanka. Whatever their leadership caliber, one still cannot see what difference it will make to bring the party out of the quagmire it is stuck in.
Just how much inner enlightenment Rahul has found in his two-month sojourn will become evident when he dons the mantle afresh ahead of the second phase of the budget session. The party should also clarify whether the sabbatical was an exercise in introspection or meditation. In either case, it is in tune with the party's culture of only the Gandhis calling the shots. If Rahul was sulking that some party men were baying for his ouster and chose foreign climes to shrug them off, the meditation and introspection theories go for a toss. Rahul himself hasn't come clean on his sabbatical and to be fair to him, he should be given his right of privacy. That, however, becomes difficult given the circumstances that surround his unexplained break.
Contemplation is the only luxury that costs nothing. Hope Rahul has had that enlightenment in his luxurious sabbatical.
The young man who has been a butt of derisive sneers all through his gaffe-ridden tenure, afforded himself an expansive 56-day sabbatical in Yangon, Myanmar when one seriously wonders what could be the propriety of such a break when his party was providing him that perk with its trade-mark sycophancy.
The very idea of Rahul Gandhi seeking a sabbatical is redundant. The son, grandson and great grandson of Indian Prime Ministers had already lost sheen before embarking upon a leave of absence prior to the budget session of the Parliament. The party had handed his detractors in the ruling dispensation enough ammo to hit back and say "Go and find Rahul first" each time it sought to criticize them. After all the brouhaha, it now transpires that the young man whose public appearances are largely limited to clumsily drafted orchestrated speeches, chose the south-east Asian country to find solace in "meditation".
While the Media continues to beat chest on not being able to locate his whereabouts all through the two months, I have been creaking my brains as to why did he have to leave the shores of the country to perform a chore as simple as meditation unless he was living it up there; far from prying eyes and trying to get over the electoral loss of face.
As someone who has practiced infrequent meditation to fight the unending blues of life, I can vouch that there is distraction when there are nagging thoughts and meditation happens only when there are no thoughts and a sense of detachment. Rahul has far too much baggage to have gotten into meditation and if he has still managed to take his mind off the debilitating times that he and his party have gone through, it should really serve him right. The first recipe for contentment is to avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. 56 days is not exactly a short span of time. It is long enough to gloss over all the failures of your life. Quite rightly, baiters in the party have a point when they say he should be more hands-on and lead from the front. And if a section of the party is to be believed, the party is still struggling to make a choice between Rahul and Priyanka. Whatever their leadership caliber, one still cannot see what difference it will make to bring the party out of the quagmire it is stuck in.
Just how much inner enlightenment Rahul has found in his two-month sojourn will become evident when he dons the mantle afresh ahead of the second phase of the budget session. The party should also clarify whether the sabbatical was an exercise in introspection or meditation. In either case, it is in tune with the party's culture of only the Gandhis calling the shots. If Rahul was sulking that some party men were baying for his ouster and chose foreign climes to shrug them off, the meditation and introspection theories go for a toss. Rahul himself hasn't come clean on his sabbatical and to be fair to him, he should be given his right of privacy. That, however, becomes difficult given the circumstances that surround his unexplained break.
Contemplation is the only luxury that costs nothing. Hope Rahul has had that enlightenment in his luxurious sabbatical.
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