Tarun Tejpal, what a spectacular fall from grace! The media-god of righteous indignation one moment and in the next, the vilest violator of all taboo behaviors. While Netizens and citizens debate “framed or guilty” and most people out to get his blood, my own initial outrage has now worn off. To be replaced by a recognition of an all too familiar drama that gets played out in the human psyche time and again. 
To elucidate this, I must share a wonderful story from the Indian mythology, probably one known to most of the older generation. When the gods had churned the ocean for the Amrita or the nectar of immortality, A demon by name Vipra-chitthi had disguised himself like one of the gods and drank a portion. But the Sun and Moon revealed the fraud to Vishnu, who cut off the demon’s head, which thereupon became fixed in the stellar sphere polar opposite to his severed body. The head is called Rahu while the body was called Ketu. Never the two shall meet. As a result of Rahu’s wildness, ketu is forced to gaze with eternally unsatisfied longing at his dear severed partner. They have ever since wreaked their vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them.
Now this is a common enough story if you attribute it to the physical universe. But if you see it as something that gets played out in the mental universe, then in my opinion, this is one of the most fascinating. Here Rahu is the obsessive desire, and the tendency to achieve the desire through illicit means while ketu is chronic detachment. The Sun and the moon represent the mind and soul.
Dwell carefully on the character sketch of Rahu! Rahu is an interloper, a fraud, and a poseur. Rahu wants to be included in the world of the gods. But, Rahu is not a real deity, he hasn’t done the penance to gain that honour. But he feels entitled and he sneaks in through trickery. And just as he is about to reach his goal he is slain and has to endure the agony of never being whole again.
You may ask what has this got to Tarun Tejpal! Well, the insatiable hunger to be recognized as the noble one, the winner, the exalted one and the sense of entitlement that accompanies that feeling. The wanting to have ‘something’ which, one materially cannot have and morally should not have. But his desire is impatient(elevator, of all places) and he feels entitled to resort to practices that are taboo in our culture to gain his goal and can even justify sex with his daughter’s friend as consensual! The clouding of the mind with desire, the inner lunar eclipse.
This streak is not limited to this incident alone. From what his friends say of his career the obsession to be recognized as a great personality seems to be the only fueling force that has spear-headed him to be an international celebrity from his humble station at birth. But as is typical, whatever distinction he obtains in the hungry quest for privileges accorded to a great personality, this one can never be satisfied. Immediately upon obtaining the object of desire, he again yearns for more, better, different privileges. Every day starts a new battle for him, as he leaps upward toward this ephemeral prize.
A friend asked me this question a few days back on Facebook “What puzzles me is why did this guy, equipped with language and charm, .. allow alcohol to get the better of him when it came to that girl?” And I could only think of Rahu, the Rakshas. Rahu is never satisfied. Rahu is always scheming a new approach toward getting what He is not entitled to have. His methods are devious and surreptitious. He is driven by a deep hunger for validation via the experience of Possession of Empowerments, which hunger can never be satisfied.
Just being a simple, coherent single human person is not enough for Tejpal. He has to compensate for a profound sense of personal insufficiency via compulsive struggle to be desirable. He had become a legend in his own mind and of course any risk is OK to feel that.
Is Tejpal guilty? Is he framed? I don’t know. What damns Tejpal in my mind is not the actual facts of the case. Its his word against her word until proven beyond doubt. What damns him is not even his inner desire. After all the human brain is a computer it can spew out any thought. But what actually damns him at this point is his sense of entitlement and the subsequent approach to have sex with his daughter’s friend and call it ‘consensual’.
And this was only the second step. The first step was the obsession. The insatiable thirst! Rahu! Tejpal had so much going for him, yet he threw it all away in the pursuit of the next. Here I stop dissecting Tejpal’s psyche and would like to discuss something else, the orginal purpose of this blog.
If I am honest, this craving that can eclipse the soul is present in a lesser or greater degree in me. And If I am right, every human ever born, with a working mind, will have a bit of this obsession. Agreed, you and I may not pounce on a girl in the elevator. Our obsession need not be as dramatic as that one. Our obsession could be a job, or project, or knowledge, or health, or children, or spouse or an extra-marietal relationship, societal status or a friendship or fame and so on.
Sometimes we all can focus rather relentlessly on precisely what we don’t have, blinding our awareness to the tremendous grace and value that we do have. As soon as we get what we so intensely, fervently desired, we abandon interest in that thing (or project, or belief, or job, or relationship) and surge with desire for the next thing.
And as I see more of life, I try to remember if I can, in the frenzy of obsession to reach that level that is “just immediately above” that, Rahu is a fraud and a deluder. That which hypnotises me into thinking that I will be whole if I have that far away thing is a mirage. That really, things are exactly what they are, and there is nothing wrong in the least with my life now. That I dare not allow Rahu the rogue to seduce me into the mental delusion of discontent and let my passions to be my master.
Disclaimers:
1. I am not saying that one must not reach above. After all, many of the current progress of humanity would not have been possible if we chose to be satisfied in a cave. I am talking about the psychological universe. not the physical one.
2. If you possess a fast mind and are just skimming through the blog, then you might jump to a conclusion that I am attributing Tejpal’s actions to Rahu and rage at me. ‘Rahu’ is a term that I have borrowed from Hindu Mythology to symbolise obsessions and that only means that I am blaming no external agency, but only Tejpal’s obsessions. So you and I are in the same page only.
3.The intent of this blog is not to preach its just an observation of how the human mind functions sometimes. Hence I have stuck to the psychological perspective without going into the much discussed actual facts of the crime.
