One of the most well-known stories about Gautam Buddha involves how as Prince Siddhartha, he encountered disease, old age and death all in one night and decided to call it quits and become a sanyasi. In normal daily life, no one makes such a life-changing decision just because he saw someone sick or old or dead. Then why did he do so? Or is it a very simplistic story-fication of some complex transformation that happened within Prince Siddhartha?
The answer lies in the way he was brought up. His father King Suddhodhana’s idea of bringing up his son as a confirmed royal was to protect him from becoming of aware of anything adverse that will let him question the fundamentals of life. King Suddhodhana was convinced that he was doing the right thing because he loved his son.
If only King Suddhodhana’s did what most other kings did with their sons – send your children to a gurukul in the midst of a forest with no servants and no privilege during their formative years – the world would have probably never had a Gautam Buddha.
Today, when I look around the upper middle class Indian families (including mine – however we love to continue to call ourselves middle-class families), I see a strong Siddhartha syndrome taking roots in the minds of parents and therefore the children.
Today, most urban families have one or at the most two children. Which means, even if you are low income earning person, you devoted all your time and resources to that one child. The picture gets rosier if both parents work, (which seems to be the spreading trend). The only child and at best the two children never have to want anything. They are never allowed to face any difficulty or make do with what is available or even share.
Today, for the first time in most middle-income families, it is possible to raise individuals – not siblings. Every person in the family can have a separate life and we can afford it.
This is the basic way of life in the first world. There is no need to compete because everyone has everything.
The problem in India, however, is the wide disparity in growth, development and opportunities. While within families we have been able to avoid competition and sharing, when our children move out in the society for the first time, they demonstrate what I call the Siddhartha syndrome.
I see my own children refusing to use a public toilet or eat in any wayside dhabha if it doesn’t look sparkling clean. If they take one sip of “regular” water, they fall sick with diarrhoea. If they are asked to compete with a million other children for those few government seats, they don’t understand why it is to be done at all.
I know of neighbours whose children refused to take admission in a college because it had no garden or clean exteriors. They would rather have their parents pay huge fees to a private university with all these amenities than a run-down government college.
This, I call the Siddhartha Syndrome. It is fast taking roots in upper middle classes in India. I doubt if these modern-day Siddhartha’s will attain enlightenment the way the original Siddhartha did.
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