For Whom the Bell Tolls !

It is amazing, how one thing leads to another. In college, I was an ardent reader of Ernest Hemingway. I never missed any of his books, or any movie based on his novels. So it was that I started reading his novel, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'. Published in 1940, the book is set in the Spain of 30s and based on Hemingway's real life experience of the Spanish Civil war and the guerilla warfare from both sides. The main protagonists, (Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, in the movie) and all their fellow guerillas are sure, that they will all die, in the course of their mission - to blow up a bridge. The specter of certain death in the very near future, builds a sometimes warm and sometimes a bizarre camaraderie between them. A closely bound family, nevertheless! Anyway, this article is not about the novel!

When I opened the cover of the book, on the very first blank page was a quote:

"And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne

I tried to trace the source of this quote. This was a meditation by John Donne, an English mystic poet (1572-1631), written in archaic English. Later transcribed thus:

No Man is an Island

No Man is an Island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent
.......any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved with mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
The bell tolls; it tolls for thee!

Come to think of it, do we at all think in these terms, that 'any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind'? The ancient Indians, in probably the world's first 'oral books', the Vedas said it all: so pithily in just two words: 'vasudev kutumbakam' - All living beings on Earth and the Earth are one family! Throughout the ages, the mystics have emphasized the interconnected of the entire cosmos. But we prefer to see things in isolated and highly compartmentalized manner. We forget that existence is like an air mattress. You depress it here, it bumps up somewhere else!

In the 60s, the Canadian educator philosopher Marshall McLuhan, with prescience coined the word - 'Global Village', when globalization and internet etc. were no where in sight. Already he was talking about the interconnectedness of the entire globe. Any thing which happens any where in the world impacts all of us, no matter how far away we are from the activating event! The 'cause and effect' not always being so obvious. At that time the global impact of a local ecological disaster, was also not so widely understood. But now we know! Hundreds of hectares of Amazon forests being felled every day, by the timber mafia with the blessings of the corrupt officials in Brazil, affect climate changes, which may lead to extreme disasters, on the other side of the globe. This is at cost of human lives, their livelihoods and dreams, just because of the greed of a few, thousand of miles away. The culprits themselves may escape the law, but nature has its own way of subtly settling the score.

In India, communal riots are incited under the benign gaze of politicians, who have only vote bank politics in mind. If others are being raped, killed or their houses burnt, it's only happening to 'them', and not to 'us'! But its consequences, of instilling hatred will tell on the same perpetrators and their progeny, some time, somewhere. This they do not realize. Nature always has a way of boomeranging on the wrong doer, when we least expect it! In Iraq thousands of innocent men, women and children have died. Husbands, mothers, bread winners and loved ones gone or maimed for life! Their only crime was that they were simple folk like you and me, living in a country ruled by tyrant, who in no way was a threat to the United States. Acts such as these from distant past have cumulatively produced an international and technically savvy band of terrorists, who are hard to spot and neutralize. Hatred continues to breed.

While we cannot change the world, we must remember that we are always a 'majority of one', and we can at least in our own small way, take the first steps to towards establishing 'the family of Man', in our own small world. When we identify with the trials and tribulations of others, as our very own - then we can truly say, 'any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind'!