Lage raho, Maamu!

To win some, you gotta lose some. And that's not just the moral of Munnabhai's story.
Bole to, apun ke ghar mein ek Maamu hai! Big deal, you say – Hamare yahan bhi hai. I know. But today, I want to share something about him with you. Now, why would you be interested – I ask myself and especially on a public forum like this one? Obviously, there is a reason why.
When he took me (fighting and kicking to boot) under his wing 16 years ago, little did I know that he would completely and irrevocably change the way I saw the world. One was you see, this typical, recalcitrant Ms Know All until Maamu walked in.
I was an atheist (for whom God was a persona non grata) with loads of attitude and invariably came to the table with the belief that I had committed no wrong and that my views were the final word on any matter – including rubbishing my country whenever I got a word in edgeways. Repartee was more important than response.
But bit by bit, chip by chip Maamu worked tirelessly on the rough edges. He yelled, cajoled, argued, sold, agreed, told stories (sometimes made them up)...in short whatever it would entail to bring me round to another point of view – not necessarily his own but an alternate viewpoint.
And through it all, never lost patience. We fought tooth and nail (I refused to give up and so did he), then we made up only to disagree yet again.
In fact, ever so often we would end up arguing even before the first argument had gotten over! Obviously, change kisko maangta hai?
Ab ekdum honest bolne ka, tumko maangta hai? Nahin na? Bus to, I kept saying the same thing -– for years! But there was no listening, no giving in until one day, a small bulb went off in my head...
...
I decided to surrender. Just to have the satisfaction of knowing that if there'd be no argument and disagreement, there wasn't anyway he was gonna win. Now, here's a winning one, I said, rubbing my hands in glee.
Smart, eh? No Sir. I wasn't prepared for the deluge that hit me. Surrender brought with it absorption (of newer ideas as he plied me with information of any and every kind); a desire to build (bridges with friends, parents, colleagues); to think (novel concepts and ideas); to progress, to change and most of all it brought joy. Immense, inexplicable joy that only surrender and with it Faith can bring. You trust someone, you surrender to them.
And the point of this story is that this is exactly what Munna does in Lage Raho Munnabhai. As I watched the film the day before, I could see the pain, disbelief and trouble that he goes through before surrendering to the Mahatma and how he comes up a winner post his inexplicable faith.
Trust me, once you figure that one out – there is absolutely nothing that you'd lose. Bole to, Maamu ne bola na!
manjula.negi@timesgroup.com