Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 3

Dear Gandhi

Have you heard about the three bricklayers? Before I tell you their story, let me give you the context on why I am writing about these buggers to you. I guess you might have experienced the thing that I am sharing while you were leading these humans’ freedom movement. I am observing the working of a social organisation from the inside for the past few months now and there is this one interesting thing about the place that I am using for the mental masturbation of my mind. It’s pretty big, in the sense that we work at the national level and the thing that is interesting is how the mission statement of a project changes as we go down the hierarchy. Different people have different ideas about it and different motives that drive them. Here is how the people at different levels seem to look at the same project.

Leader (from whose mind this idea originated) – Means to reduce rural-urban disparities
Top management (the ones who brainstorm over the idea) – Means to uplift the rural region
Mid-level management (the planners) – Means to generate more profit for the firm
Block coordinator (district level heads in the organization) – Another project for our region’s development
Branch coordinator – Action in my branch
Field officer – Job safety for a few more months

I guess this was the case with your freedom movement as well. Like how your mission for this species was their self-realization and liberation of their souls, and their mission was political freedom; the reason why you called-off the non-cooperation movement. Is that why you left the congress and spoke to the villagers directly later? Anyways, coming back to the story that I was talking about. So, there are these three bricklayers – G, S, M; working in the construction of a school. Someone goes up to them and asks, “what are you doing?”

G says, “I’m laying a brick in this wall.”
S says, “I’m building a wall.”
M says, “I’m building a school where students will come and receive knowledge.”

Some say M is the ideal bricklayer because he is attached to the bigger mission. Some say G is the ideal one because he is focused only on his job. And some say, all of them are fine as long as they are laying bricks and not sitting idle thinking about who is the ideal one. But where is the fun in doing things without thinking about why you do it.

There is anyway no point in doing anything, is there?