Standards

I am always very happy when its time to return home. When the office is over I want to be at home as soon as possible. If I didn’t need to earn may be I will never get out of my room. In one of my primary school classes, a teacher had told us story about a witch, her adoption of Hansel and Gretel. In between she told that in earlier days, in the remote areas and in the tribe people who do not come out of their home, shun the world was thought to be practicing black magic. I am pretty sure if one of the tribe men came to our home seeing me shut in my room always with book, uncombed hair, bulging eyes, will be afraid of me considering me as a practitioner of black magic.
As always on my way to home, I came across children playing in the heap of sand in the open ground. They were imitating a dance program that comes in TV. These unprivileged kids could not manage better seats for the judges who sat on the heap of sand, their legs crossed. The judges were relatively older kids while the young with running nose, dribbles were putting on some performance in the stage. The stage was the area inside a rectangle they had drawn with a stone on the ground. I couldn’t help stopping to watch them. A girl, with the flounce of her skirt torn at places and a dirty vest visible danced to a song which she sang herself. She finished the act and the other girl who was playing the anchor of the show asked the judges for their opinion. It was such an innocent and yet very real game. The first judge knitted the skin on her nose, giving her verdict, ‘it was good but not best, the lifting of the foot so high during the act was not needed’ since I had watched the dance of this girl from the beginning I knew she had no moves where she lifted her feet. She was not a good dancer and rarely shifted her position as if her foot were buried in the earth and how come the complain of her foot movement. May be the judges in the TV had commented thus. The stick that represented the mike was transferred to the other judge who was a clever looking fellow. He said the feet were really high because he could see the knickers of the dancer on which everyone laughed including the dancer. The third judge who looked intelligent said the performance could have been better if she had brought expression on her face. She got twenty marks in total. She bowed to the judges and the anchor replaced her while I walked on with a smile. I had seen the anchor blush finding I was watching them.
I wondered how even these little kids learn about standards. They say the hand movement should have been thus, the foot movement was preposterous, the facial expression was lacking. I know in their real life they struggle to be mould in the social standards. The rules, customs will chain them. In some way growing up is a process of getting accustomed with these standards and shaping oneself, one’s behavior on the basis of these norms. They will find these judges everywhere, who take special pleasure in directing others conduct, chiding them when they drift from the standards. They assume they are the standards themselves and they govern things to be done this way rather than that way, rebellion is unexpected, more likely rebel will be crushed. Standards have always existed, probably they define the state of civilization. A society is put against standards to measure its rank in the scale of civilization. Everyone has to abide by these standards. The judges take a great pleasure in deciding the fate of these performers. Most of them being so arrogant and proud that they assume themselves to be some sort of demigod. Standards are either what a majority believes or what a person in power can exercise. Once these standards are in conceived they are destined to be laid on the track of evolution. Darwin’s survival of fittest holds. There are social police who keep everyone under scrutiny to ensure the standards are being followed. There are standards everywhere in art, in music, in tradition, in society, in life. People take pride for possessing the power to ruin and glorify others fate, they are the epitome of standards. Whether its Van Gogh, Aristotle, Galileo everyone is tested against these standards and deviation is scorned. It feels so helpless that one has to live on the mercy of others but what can we do. I take pity on these standards, rather loathe them when they try to bind anyone within its periphery. I do not scorn every rules, every standards but I want leniency in creativity and fertility to differences. Listen to the rebels, convince them, exercise your logics do not take extreme measures at once. Throw your whips and come out of your images of demi-gods. Be lenient to revise the standards.