Parimala and the art of humility

The best way to live is to live humbly, being who you are and enjoying who you are!

Parimala Srinivasan

I read a story in today’s Hindu, on someone we knew closely, Parimala Srinivasan, who had passed away, at 81, earlier this week. Chennai historian and columnist V.Sriram has penned the beautiful tribute to Parimala, who he calls “an ardent aficionado” of Carnatic Music. While my wife and I have known Parimala for 20 years now, Sriram’s piece surprised us – we discovered so many unique aspects about her Life that we ended up wondering if we at all knew the “real” Parimala. To us Parimala was the simple, doting mother and grandmother with the ever-benign smile. She was the epitome of warmth, compassion and enthusiasm. The only line in Sriram’s piece I could relate to instantaneously, for instance, is this: “To her, Life was an extraordinary celebration.” Until I read Sriram’s piece this morning, I didn’t know that Parimala was taught music by the legendary Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar; I didn’t know that the other maestro of Carnatic music G.N.Balasubramaniam was her mentor and guide; I didn’t know that ace violinist T.N.Krishnan was more than just a musician-friend – he called himself her family member; I did not know that she held a record for attending concerts as a rasika for over 58 years at the Music Academy during the annual Madras Marghazi season; and I didn’t know that she ran an all-women sabha called Raga Tharangini for over 40 years. How would I know all this about Parimala unless she told us any of this? The truth is, she never spoke about herself. She was always in awe and admiration of people, Life and events around her. And so this is my key takeaway from this wonderful lady’s Life – stay humble and simply enjoy who you are!

I come from a family where bragging over hollow achievements is a favorite pastime. In fact my awakening to remain modest was spurred my utter distaste for some of family members’ tendency to insensitively blow their own trumpets. So, when I discover now that the lady we were so close to, was not just a doyen among Carnatic music rasikas, but was a celebrity in her own right, I feel so blessed. I remember the day, two Decembers ago, when I delivered my “Fall Like A Rose Petal” Talk (based, like my Book of the same name, on the lessons that my wife and I learned from a Life-changing experience – a bankruptcy!) Parimala was in the audience that evening. When I finished my Talk, she called out to me and my wife. She held our hands and said, “The greatest joy in Life is to be able to live and face it together. You both are blessed to have each other. You will overcome your problems and come out of this crisis soon.”  She had tears of love in her eyes as she touched our heads in a blessing.    

To stay humble is an art. Because even if you want to stay humble, your mind will push you to believe that you are causing all your achievements. Only a truly evolved person can, craftily, dismiss the mind’s seemingly well-reasoned claims and simply be. Simply being means to continuously look at Life with amazement and wonder. It means to know that whatever good is happening to you, whoever is praising you, whoever is flocking to you – everything and everyone is transient. (To be sure, the opposite is also true – and is transient again.) Simply being means choosing to be unmoved by Life’s colors and flavors. Parimala, to me, personified humility – a trait that all of us can aspire for, and someday soon, with inspiration and blessings from her, possess.

Stop wanting to have, simply be!

There is no method to living intelligently. The key is to live, fully, simply “being”.   

There are two ways you can live. Either you can live “possessing” or you can live “being”. Most of us are the “possessing” kind – we are constantly in search of having this or having that. All our having is about having worldly things. It’s focused on material wealth – money, house, car and such. But when you have all the things, chances are you could still be seeking “something” and feeling “empty”. Your Life is full of things, yet you feel an emptiness, a void. But the one who lives “being” – loving what is, being content with what he or she has, that person, feels inner peace and joy. That person understands himself or herself, the true Self, and is possessed by nothing.

A statue of Diogenes and Alexander
in modern-day Corinth, Greece

There’s a story of a meeting between Diogenes (404 BCE ~ 323 BCE), the Greek philosopher, and Alexander the Great (356 BCE ~ 323 BCE). It is said that Diogenes, in his quest for inner peace, had renounced everything. He was like a “fakir” – possessing nothing, except a bowl for drinking water. Then one day he saw a dog drinking water from the river and threw away even his bowl, saying he didn’t even need it from then on!

Alexander came to meet him one day, when Diogenes was bathing in the sunshine by the riverside, and asked him if he, as an Emperor, could do anything for him.

Diogenes said, “Yes! Please step out of the way of the sunshine that is bathing me. Thank You!”

Alexander asked Diogenes what was the point behind doing whatever he was doing.

Diogenes asked him the same question: “Why are you doing what you are doing – conquering the world?”

Alexander replied: “So that, when I become the world’s ruler, when I have the world at my feet, I can rest by a riverside just like you – in peace”.

Diogenes laughed. He said, “That you can do right away. You don’t need to conquer the world for you to do that. Look, this riverbank is wide enough. You can share it with me. And be peaceful. I find your idea stupid that you want to conquer the world and then rest in peace. Look at me, I have conquered no world and I am at peace. So can you!”

In that nanosecond, Alexander, being the intelligent person that he was, grasped the essence of intelligent living. He said, “I agree. But I have come this far in Life. Now, I can’t go back without conquering the rest of the world.”

At least Alexander had the humility to accept the futility behind all his conquests. And before he died, his “awakening” – thanks to his encounter with Diogenes – led him to tell his ministers that his hands should be kept out of his coffin so that people could see that “Alexander the Great came empty-handed and went empty-handed”.

By interpretation, Diogenes is telling you – and me – too that to be clinging on to possessions, to be possessed by what you have – whether it is knowledge or ego or humility or wealth – is futile. You can be absolutely free when you simply be. You may have nothing worldly, but you will have an aura that can touch and energize everyone around you. That kind of energy comes from within. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “The Kingdom of God is within you”. The power of such a person does not come from things. Those who are driven by things and accumulating – power, position, property, titles – are, logically, powerless without them. But, as Diogenes’s story teaches us, the one who has nothing, commands great respect and has a great power, to even transform the Greatest Emperor!

You and I don’t have to renounce what we have. We don’t have to be another Diogenes. Let us be ourselves. But let us also stop wanting to have more and more. Instead, let us learn to simply be – happy and content with what is. That’s when we too will be soaked in inner peace!