Advice for the desperate

Let me retell a delightful animal story. It’s a folk tale, probably from Akbar’s court. I’ll be surprised if you haven’t heard it as a child.

Once upon a time there were two good friends, a fox and a turtle. One day, while they were chatting on the bank of a river, a leopard suddenly appeared in front of them. The fox fled the scene like and arrow. But the turtle was very slow, and naturally the leopard caught it easily. Unable to do confront the agile attacker, the turtle drew himself deep into the shell.

The leopard tried his best to get at the turtle’s flesh, but the shell was so hard that he couldn’t crack it open. While he was struggling with the turtle shell and getting frustrated, the fox returned to the scene to find out what happened to his friend. From a safe distance he called out to the leopard and said, “Hey, you want to crack that shell? It’s simple. Just throw it into the river. You can easily rip it open once water makes it soft.”

The leopard was grateful to the fox for giving him such a valuable and timely piece of advice. He kicked the turtle into the river. Of course, the turtle quickly swam away, leaving the leopard hungry and fuming. The friendly fox also vanished from the scene.

The leopard didn’t ask why the fox was giving him advice. The leopard didn’t ask what made the fox an expert at shell-cracking. The leopard didn’t ask anything, didn’t think anything. He was so fed up with his failure to get at the turtle’s flesh, he just followed the fox’s advice.

This is an excellent illustration of the way many of us get persuaded by assorted ‘experts’ to do various things. When we become frustrated with our failures and buffeted by our insecurities, we turn to quacks and charlatans who oblige us. Their agents spread yarns that create an aura around them and confirm their power. We become willing putty in their hands. We stop being critical in certain departments of our life.

From time to time we hear about perfectly intelligent and highly knowledgeable people doing silly things for no better reason than their guru’s advice. Unfortunately, we are all among those perfectly intelligent and highly knowledgeable people. We can laugh at the leopard throwing away succulent turtle flesh by blindly following a wily fox’s advice. But we are unable to look at ourselves and see the leopard in us.

We may suppress a smirk when we see a highly successful doctor hanging half a dozen mirrors in his garden to ward off cosmic evil influences and any bad vibes coming from the neighbourhood. Seldom do we realise that we behave along the same lines when we are desperate. We may not hang mirrors, we may not sacrifice virgins, but if we look within our cupboard we are almost certain to find bottles of snake oil that we have bought with great faith.

There’s a saying that a drowning man will clutch even at a blade of grass. Persuasion works effortlessly when the target is desperate. And despair can come as easily from pimples or a few strands of grey hair as from a malignant tumour in the brain.