Even those who have not read Homer’s “Odyssey”, an account of the great seafaring Greek warrior and king of Ithaca, Ulysses, sea journey home would have heard of at least some adventures of him and his men. In a nutshell, the king and his men become lost in the sea for 10 years while returning home after the war in Troy over the “abduction”, or “elopement” if you prefer, of the famed Hellen from Sparta.
In one of the adventures, Ulysses and his men dock at a very interesting island where lived Cyclops and his tribe of one-eyed, man-eating monsters. The lost Greek warriors and their leader become the captives of Cyclops and the giant begins feeding on them one by one at every meal.
Ulysses hatches a plot and begins feeding the monster everyday with food and wine from his ship pretending servility. Pleased at this, Cyclops awards him with a great favour and promises to eat him last of all his men. This is a theme that has occurred in many fables from all over the world in all cultures. The normal storyline of these stories generally run thus: A monster arrives at a village and demands to be fed with a villager a day. In the village every family is made to supply the giant’s human fodder in turn, and this goes on until the village is either wiped off, or in the case of a very lucky few, a giant-killer in shining armour arrives and offers himself to be the giant’s food for the day, meets the giant and then kills him. Everybody lives happily ever after. In real life, everything is not so simple.
Unlike in the other fables, Cyclops’ promise to Ulysses is particularly interesting, and serves almost as an allegory to mark out the difference between cowardice and courage. It is such a peculiarly tragic irony to be promised life and death at the same time. It is a promise of life because Ulysses would not be killed immediately, but it is also a promise of death because he would be ultimately killed in a very finite period of time.
One can almost sense the claustrophobia of a closed space and time that define this terrible certainty – the certainty of death. The helplessness in avoiding the fate is simply nightmarish. But nimble Ulysses overcomes Cyclops’ terrible sentence, and it is his iron will and quicksilver wit which get him out of a predicament. One day he gets the Cyclops drunk and then together with his men, uses the trunk of a tree they had previously fashioned into an oversized spike, and stabs the one eyed giant to blind him. They then escape to the sea.
This is a predicament which in all practical sense, is universal. And it is because Ulysses showed such fates can be overcome that he has become such an endearing literary figure to all humanity through the ages ever since Homer created him. Everybody in this world has faced or are facing this predicament in its different manifestation in practically every age. It is another story that not everybody is able to live up to the challenge as Ulysses and his men did.
Manipur’s despairing predicament today provokes thoughts of Ulysses and the Cyclops’ promise in a profound way. Our fates seem sealed and there seem to be no easy way out. Everybody has either lost the courage to speak his or her mind, or else have convinced themselves that there is nothing as independent thinking. All these is happening because of a state of universal petrification resulting directly out of the establishment’s abject inability to guarantee a sense of security to its subjects.
Everybody’s immediate concern today is to literally buy themselves their private peace even though each one understands it fully well that it is just a matter of pleading to be eaten last. It is not a question of tolerance either. Tolerance is about acknowledging differences and then showing willingness to find common grounds on which all can stand together regardless of their differences. However, when it is a question of shying away from speaking up against an oppressive atmosphere in the name of tolerance, it is no more than a facade to hide unforgiving impotence. For only a fool will not know that the present lawlessness that has enveloped the entire state will ultimately consume us all.
Like it or not, directly or indirectly, everybody’s free will has been strangulated or else is undergoing strangulation. The way we live our lives have today come to be watched and dictated at every turn. Sadly, it can be by students who have no interest in studying anymore; by the civic organizations which have no civic senses; by law-keepers who break the law at their whims; by lawbreakers who claim to be the law; by street-fighters with self-assumed peacekeeping missions; by leaders who would rather follow than lead and so on.
Most atrociously, all these roles are self-proclaimed with patriotic pretensions as done in the interest of the people. As to how any of them managed to receive this mandate of the people is a mystery nobody will bother or dare to probe either. Nobody wants to confront the situation although it is everybody’s knowledge that taking the bull by the horns is their only way to salvation in the current circumstance. Nobody however wants to confront it because in their silent panic, all have convinced themselves that it is a great favour to be eaten last.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
