I was posted as Collector of Basti in 1982. It was my first (and the only one) posting as Collector. At that time, Basti used to be the biggest district of U.P. with 32 development blocks. It was predominantly a rural district and the rural population was also the highest in the State. The district had great potential for development. Overall the posting provided an excellent opportunity to serve its people. I tried to take full advantage of this opportunity and derived great satisfaction from it. The people of Basti gave me a lot of affection and goodwill. I still feel very close to them and consider it as one of the most valuable earnings of my life.
However, there was another aspect of the posting. I had a big house with about 10 acres of cultivable land. There was a lot of manpower to look after everything. I had tremendous resources at my command. Lots of people would come to see me every day and most of them gave the impression as if I was the best collector, the district had had till then with one or two exceptions. Almost every office in the district seeks instructions/guidance from the collector at one time or another. Overall it made one feel at the top of the world as if everything really belonged to him.
Fortunately, I had the grace of God and the power never went to my head (at least to my knowledge). Though one did not find much time for leisure in a posting like this, still I used to spend sometime in the back lawns sitting alone or with the family. During one such day, I was thinking about all the opportunities, perks and facilities the post provided to me and that one day all these things would go. It shocked me for a moment because inadvertently, perhaps, I had also developed a feeling of belonging to all these things. Then my thought went to a coolie who quite often carries boxes/packets containing expensive things fully knowing that nothing belonged to him. He was concerned only with the wages after taking the load to its destination. Am I not like a coolie? said my inner voice;”Carrying expensive load on my head, may be a box containing gold, which does not belong to me”. Why should then there be any sense of belonging? The only thing expected was more care and sincerity when the coolie knew that the load was expensive. But if during the course of carrying the load, he developed a feeling of belonging and refused to part away with the load, the consequence was obvious. This thought process cleansed my mind of all the ego, which developed inadvertently and I could serve the district with much more dedication and detachment during the remaining tenure.
This analogy can be extended to all of us. It appears more obvious in transferable jobs where one starts understanding the temporariness of things rather early. But in other cases also, it is a matter of time only, the time during which the coolie carries the load. One may carry a load up to platform number one and another up to platform number nine. The separation of load and the coolie is a foregone conclusion. All the world, we see around us with a sense of belonging is like the load on the head of a coolie. Those who have good world around them develop a sense of belonging to it (like expensive load) and feel great pain when the time of separation comes. Is it not wise to understand the reality right in the beginning? And the best way is to realise as early as possible that “WE ALL ARE COOLIES” and the load does not belong to us.
Detachment from the world of objects is not possible without attaching ourselves with something nobler and divine.
