Two men were out on the ocean in a boat. One of them began drilling in the bottom of the boat, and the other, aghast said "What are you doing? Stop drilling!” And the first man replied: "It's all right. I'm only drilling on my side." Just like this man in the boat, many people are used to drilling their sides, in the disguise of religion, politics, science, culture, cast, gender, tradition etc. It is hard for such people to admit the damage they cause to the society in which they live. Such people insist on a ‘monkey hold’ everywhere, assuming that they have only that option. Prompted by an instinctive urge, monkeys catch snakes by its neck for fear of being bitten. Monkeys know that snakes are dangerous and it never take the risk of letting any snake they encounter, free. But the problem with it is that it neither squeezes the snake’s neck to kill it nor it ever releases the snake from its outstretched fist. The monkey thus decides its own destiny of dying starved, unmoved.
I am reminded the story of a realist. He was always a headache to the drama troop manager. He always insisted reality everywhere. He was not ready to compromise with water in drinking scenes or with fake swords in fighting scenes. People loved his performance; there was great applause always. It so happened that in the new drama the hero had to drink poison and the manager insisted on real poison. The actor was in a fix; he realised his mistakes. As part of the universe, we are destined to play exactly the role assigned to us, sometimes with fake tools and sometimes with the real. Anyway, how efficiently we carry out our assigned role determines how much we could evolve.
