Forever Young

A reviewer of children’s books in The Times of India once wrote: “As a child I always valued Anderson’s story of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

I revered the child-hero in the story who, unlike the Emperor’s adult subjects, was not afraid to call a spade a spade.

However, I did think poorly of the adults because none of them had the courage to tell the emperor that he hadn’t a stitch of clothing on his blue-blooded body. Children are the most exciting of all critics. They aren’t inhibited by the protocols of tact or hypocrisy that adults learn to adhere to in society.”

There’s another powerful fable in Hans Anderson’s Fairy Tales, The Ugly Duckling. A swan born amongst ducklings finds itself in trouble because other ducklings find it different and therefore consider it to be ugly.

One day, standing at the edge of a pond, it looks at its own reflection in the clear water and finds that it’s not a duckling but a swan — a beautiful swan! This makes it aware that it’s different from ducklings and that makes the difference. It’s an excellent story conveying the meaning of self-awareness and finding one’s own identity and uniqueness.

In an interview published in a business daily five years ago, Jayant Raj Kochar, then managing director of Lacoste said: “I have made it a point to read The Little Prince written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery once in a year for the last 15 odd years.

As we grow up we tend to retain child-like qualities but lose out on the innocent simplicities of life... It has taught me not to get perplexed by the apparent, that life is simple and we tend to complicate it ourselves.”

Right in the beginning of this fairy tale, the Little Prince draws the picture of a boa constrictor swallowing its prey in one go.

He then shows it to grown-ups and asks them if the drawing frightens them, and feels, grown-ups never understand anything by themselves and it’s tiresome for children to be always explaining things to them. If he talks to them about bridge, golf or politics and neckties, they would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

Later in the story, the Little Prince goes on a journey through different planets. There he meets different types of people such as a king, a conceited man, a tippler and a businessman and finds them all looking at life in their own biased ways.

On the fifth planet he meets a lamp lighter who is all the time busy lighting a street lamp again and again as day and night follow each other in quick succession and reflects: “It may well be that this man is absurd.

But he isn’t so absurd as the king, the conceited man, the tippler and the businessman, for at least his work has some meaning. Perhaps that’s because he is thinking of something else besides himself.”

The book covers many pathological symptoms of conditioned mind of adults: such as self-centredness, envy, jealousy, prejudice, pride, greed and so on.

The Little Prince says, “Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never ask you what does his voice sound like? What games does he play?

Does he collect butterflies? Instead they demand: How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father earn?”

The head and the heart

The first part of the fairy tale is focused on the head or the reason, whereas the other half is focused on the heart or the feeling. The latter comes up very clearly when the Little Prince meets the fox and invites it to play with him.

The fox says, “I cannot play with you: I’m not tamed.” The Little Prince asks: “What does that mean: ‘tamed’? The fox replies: “It’s an act too often neglected; it means to establish ties.”

Later the fox says: “My life is monotonous. I hunt chickens, and men hunt me. All the chickens are alike and all men are alike and consequentially I’m a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.”

The fox later says one only understands the things that one tames; men have no more time to understand anything, they buy things already made at the shops, but there’s no shop anywhere that can sell friendship, and so men have no friends anymore.

The Little Prince asks: “What must I do to tame you?” The fox says: “Sit down at a little distance from me and I shall look at you from the corner of my eye and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings.

You will sit a little closer to me everyday and I shall feel happier and happier. It’s only with the heart that one can see rightly; what’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

The more one meditates on this book the more one is likely to experience that its major theme is love and the feeling for others and everything around. This is what can give meaning to life and work: a balance between interests and values.