Dear Privileged Child,
The problem isn’t that you are an Arjun, or an Abhishek, or an Akash (and before him, Mukesh), or a Zakir, or a Rahul (and before him, Rajiv, and even before him, Indira). You were born in privilege and have reaped the advantages of it, as well as gained (unfairly, for others without the same) from the training it provides from an early age (not to mention the genetic lottery which you have won simply by being born from the right womb). On the flip side, you will, of course, have to suffer the torment of living in constant limelight and with severe, and many-a-times unfair, criticism, being compared to your forefathers and ancestors, and having to compete with the ghosts of people who were giants (some even defining the very space) in your field even before your entry into this world, while battling expectations that would put any ordinary mortal (which you most certainly are) under crushing pressure.
But as I said, that is not the problem. For your birth and your ancestors’ accomplishments are not in your control. And no one should grudge you the enjoyment of what fate has handed you. You did not ask to be born there and you cannot control the circumstances of your birth or lineage, or wealth and privilege, nor can you control the media or others holding you to standards you did not ask for nor set yourself up to emulate.
Like every other mortal, you do not control your circumstances to a large degree. And as a privileged child, you control them even lesser than those who are not constantly under the microscope and burdened with hope(s).
It is how you deal with them that will eventually be your identity.
And you, Rahul, are building yours splendidly.
The way you are going about it, no one, citing your privilege or their lack of it, can take that away from you. That is yours and yours only. Earned the way your larger-than-life ancestors supposedly earned theirs: through constant practice of that something unsaid and unsayable that makes for, and has always made for, greatness, regardless of its immediate perceived impact on history. It is something that cannot be touched, erased, sullied, or defiled, and goes beyond plain intent or opinion.
It can be seen in the eyes but cannot be shown, felt in the touch but cannot be described, heard in words but cannot be told; a quality my father would call ‘Officer Like Quality’ or OLQ. It is unexplainable. But when it exists in a person, everyone can see it, whether across the room or around the world, even when you are not doing absolutely anything.
And it is that pure something that makes you unmistakably you. You are not your great grandfather, nor your grandmother or your equally swashbuckling grandfather, nor your father, nor anyone who keeps parroting the ‘Gandhi-Nehru Khaandaan’ mantra can even begin to commence to start to try to understand. You are you, and the more I see you being you, the more I am convinced that should we Indians be lucky enough to have you at the table of power, not necessarily at the head, but perhaps even there, it wouldn’t be the worse thing we’d have wished upon this country.
That would be Narendra Damodardas Modi and Amit Anilchandra Shah.
With the warmest,
Kedar
Pune, India
19 February 2021
