Rules

Rebellion is intrinsic to human nature, in whatever measure. There's a charm of its own in breaking rules, a thrill, an attraction. It's not really proportional to how often you actually break them which really varies from person to person but the desire for anarchy, for self-rule, for breaking all laws in nearly omnipresent. But what happens when you are on the other side...when you are the one who's made the rules or is in the business of upkeeping them. It is then that obedience and rebellion acquires a whole new meaning. Law-makers and law-protectors CANNOT be rule-breakers or else their rules and their institution entirely loses all respect and meaning. Parents cannot make the same mistakes they punish children for. Policemen and judges cannot be murderers and thieves.

But unfortunately, in the real world such moral blasphemies happen everywhere. People in position of power misuse it all the time, and 'every rule can be bent' seems to be a universal rule nobody finds comfortable to break. In recent times, I've been in a number of such situations where I either saw rules being twisted, or was ask to twist them. Rebel that I am no matter, I still find it uncomfortable and totally unethical to be "unjust" just because I 'can', at that point of time. And the rhetorical reasoning that people use to convince/console me simply goes "Everybody does it honey!". Now I know I've created for myself several grudges and judgements by refusing to budge at times, but somehow I feel worse about the times when I've seen injustice and kept silent about it, simply distancing myself from the proceedings because I had little say or power in those matters. With people senior to me taking the decision I could do no more than a meek protest and maybe at some level this silence makes me a hypocrite at times when I fight and argue to maintain my stand. Sometimes I feel happy for myself for sticking to the right, sometimes I feel so alone. Because when I look around, that's all I see. How can the IIT administration expect us to follow the often unreasonable rules they make when the staff, the professors and the deans themselves are seen to do out-of-the-way things. I don't want to take names here but I've seen with my own eyes some examples of rule-bending and unfair advantage. It may have been small in absolute size in those instances but it's question of integrity and the moral right to enforce the rules on others.

Power seems to do everything in this world, and that is sad. The power to give a wrong decision and change the course of a game, the power to cheat, the power to alter a rule for a friend, the power to flunk a student, the power to give someone an award they do not deserve, the power to keep merit out of the race, the power to be blindly selfish and get away with it. I have found myself in the middle of arguments and sticky situations with friends and colleagues in recent times when I refused to budge from my stance simply because it was my duty to implement a rule fairly for everyone and I wouldn't do anything but that. There was a possibility that someone would have got a job if I didn't stand in the way, but it was unfair to so many others who were denied a chance because they didnt argue long enough with me or werent there at that moment. But then, a few days ago, I stayed silent to manipulations and favours in another field (with much lesser at stake) and someone deserving didn't get a chance. From outside, it would have been so easy to be morally upright, to criticise and to recommend the middle path, but inside, that middle path is a very very thin line.