October 5 – Probably the day which most of us would not want
to remember – the death of a magician called “Steve Jobs”. This is definitely
not another obit. I was totally depressed the whole day, for the same reason,
thinking of one of the two people whom I have admired. The whole media was ushering the same news
over n over again, making me all the more depressed. Oct 6th was a
holiday for Newspapers, thanks to “Ayudha Pooja” festival. On Oct 7th,
as I received the newspaper, I knew what the front page news was, but what I didn’t
know was the article
which came on the page 4. Now I needed this bit to pull me off my
depression and provide some food for thought.
 |
| Steven.P.Jobs (1955 - 2011) |
Yes – Mathoor Krishnamurthi, a Sanskrit scholar who probably
did more than what life would have expected him to do. If my grandfather would
have been alive, he would have definitely been depressed; probably more than
what I was for Jobs. I remember seeing his programs explaining the essence of
Bhagavat Gita, every morning in a Kannada channel.
This must be a story around a few years ago (might be during
engineering; though not sure) – when I used stay at my granny’s place if I was
late from college or was just lazy to drive back home. I used to sleep in the hall
watching TV. At around 6:30am, my grandfather used to come down and switch on
the T.V for this program, where Mathoor Krishnamurthi used to explain verses of
Gita. I used to get irritated initially; but what caught my attention was –
this person had tears in his eyes whenever he was explaining few intense lines
of Gita. I am generally not awed at
people without testing them thoroughly (that’s probably one reason, I have had
only 2 persons whom I admired intensely); but frankly this person had absolutely
no reason to create a drama of crying on-screen, when his audience were few
(imagine at 6:30 am – should be only grandparents like mine); had established
credibility in the subject; TRP is out of question totally. Now this is what comes
closest to intense passion – quality which Steve also exhibited. I could see
truth in Mathoor’s eyes – it was just drops of true tears n not buckets of glycerine.
I later asked my grandparents about his credibility and stuff, and he turned
out to be absolutely spectacular – His life
was a worthy one.
 |
| Mathoor Krishnamurthi |
Now there was Jobs who was an excellent marketer, who had
amazing negotiation skills, probably the best the world has ever seen; and here
was Krishnamurthi, who grew from strength to strength in this life, but later
dedicated himself for spreading the essence of our culture across the world, effectively
he marketed our culture, spread the knowledge to alleviate poverty, made
Sanskrit an attractive form of poetry.
Offcourse, this news would have died under the Job’s one.
Nevertheless, here is a hats-off to the person who proved that you don’t need
to be a multi-millionaire to show off what you have achieved – you can just prove
to yourself that you are worth the space which you are consuming on this earth –
How many of us are really worth...??? Think about it...
P.S. Do read Sudha
Murthy’s comments here...
