Breaking Down

A few days ago, ‘The Economic Times’ carried a write up, in its front page, headlined ‘Breaking Down News”

Used, as most of us are, to ‘breaking news’ in the TV channels (that is an intriguing tag line – almost all news channels claim that they were the first to break news – the fact of the matter is that the event reported upon does not happen separately for each of the channels and all the reporters and the photographers happen to be accidentally at the ‘happening’ place), this head line intrigued me.

(Remember the recently departed cricket commentator and former captain of the England cricket team Tony Greig oft stated quote  - ‘It is all happening out there’ – Tony was merely commenting on the happenings in a cricket field but could bring lot of excitement in that simple statement. You felt you were part of the happenings on the field).

I lost the trail – Back to breaking down!

Rahul Gandhi, the press and the party to which he belongs would have us believe, had touched the hearts of everyone with his speech (the cause of breaking down) on being anointed the number two of his party; in my view it was only a formal recognition of what in fact was the ‘de facto’ situation. I do not propose to talk about his talk!

When I saw the head line ‘breaking down’ and the list and moments of those who had ‘broken down’ – there were 11 such moments listed – my mind, cynical occasionally, started wondering if this is great news. Every one of us has, at some time or other, broken down. It is normal and natural. We cry when we are happy! We cry when we are unhappy!  We laugh and cry; we cry and laugh!

As the famous Tamil lyricist Kannadasan said – ‘silar sirippar, silar azhuvar, silar sirithukonde azhuvar!

(Roughly translates to ‘some people laugh, some people cry, some people laughingly cry”)

Yet it is the emotion of the moment that makes us cry or laugh or break down. The only reason we are not seen to be breaking down is that over the years we have been schooled to believe  that it is not correct to publicly exhibit our emotions (particularly men – crying is seen as a trait of  the weak!). We, therefore, control our emotions in public and may cry in private.

But there are moments in one’s life when one can’t control – how many of us can resist crying when our mother is no more, our father is no more, our near and dear ones are no more. It is the human thing to grieve and cry – in fact often times we have heard people say ‘let him/her cry and get over it’.

So is it anything great if the VIPs break down. They are also human beings and are entitled to emotions.

Let us cry when we need to. Let us not increase our BP by bottling up our emotions.  The Good Lord will understand why we cry and give us solace.