Chaar log kya bolenge? ('What will four people say?' in Hindi)

Old Indian films and literature in any of the multitude of languages in which they were created, were replete with scenes of distraught people, especially the elderly in the family, wringing their hands and moaning "Now, what will four people say?".  Invariably the context would be a rather embarrassing predicament in which some juvenile or devious black sheep of a family member had landed the elders through 'his'  umpteenth nincompoopish act. This author vehemently protests being labelled sexist, but a superficial research effort has yielded reasonably convincing statistics that the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of such acts were from the male of the species even those days.  Anyway, men tend to protest such allegations far less, because they guess they could be guilty!!  And of course, dear wife will go through this like a hawk, so why create an opening for a debate one cannot win? The affected parties, who valued their family's standing in the society more than their own lives (this literally translated to seeking quick redemption via wholesale suicides in some cases), tended to behave like deer in the headlights, not knowing which way to go.  Such headlights were deliberately shined in hi-beam by the viler elements of the community (yes, the villains), who enjoyed any discomfiture accruing to the honourable families and had a full-time job of actively creating and exploiting such opportunities gleefully.  Such people - who revelled in schadenfreude - were critical components of the `chaar log' the title refers to.

One has heard so many heart-wrenching real life stories from those days, of parents being unduly harsh on the children just because they saw the situation and the aftermath entirely through the prism of family honour, in deference to those ubiquitous `four people'.  Some rational elders might have been broad-minded enough to empathize with the youngsters, whose actions militated against their own old-fashioned ideas.  Some might have been sensitive and understanding enough to place the youngsters' happiness above all else.  Still, they were ultimately so heavily swayed by the unbearable potential stigma that society would slap on them and succumbed to that pressure, ending up shredding some lives and peace at home.   Children were forced into wrong lines of education only to sustain the pride of the parents and the legacy of the family.  Youngsters were denied the pleasure of pursuing new and challenging fields of work which appealed to them but perceived as inferior by the seniors.  Men and women were brutally separated and prevented from wedlock in the name of lineage and status.  All these were done to satisfy those four people who were never gun-shy to malign a family. But the consequences were disastrous, leaving the family feeling sad, broken and guilty - yet, with their false sense of pride in tact.  A genuinely pyrrhic victory, if there was one!

Where are those four people now?  Are they still part of our lives?  The answer is an emphatic yes; however, it is true that within a couple of generations, the old order has undergone some form of  metamorphosis and things have been turned on their heads somewhat.  While people at various levels of society are still fixated on what four people would say and the latter have retained their preeminent position in tormenting  others, the underlying issues have changed in terms of substance and trajectory.  Family honour and personal standing in society are probably still driving the behaviour of people, albeit in very different ways.  Here are some vignettes, based on the observations of this scribe.

Forty years back, only those celebrities, who imagined that their personal features formed the fulcrum of their careers, went under the knife periodically for cosmetic work on their bodies.  Now, the only requisite qualifications seem to be the availability of money, one's own or borrowed and a overweening sense of vanity.  Even the decrepit, the aging, the pot-bellied businessmen and rotund housewives avidly seek botox treatment and bariatric surgery without batting an eyelid.  The motivation is to wow those four people with superbly concocted stories of their own supposed dedication and commitment in going through yoga-based therapy sessions and stringent dietary control  - that is what they tout as the reasons for their rejuvenated looks.  The audience may not be naive enough to believe them because all the weight is very quickly regained, thanks to terrible eating habits and the complete absence of yoga or any semblance of exercise from their lives.  Nevertheless, all this is grist for the mills of the those four people, who are omnipresent.   This author has come across men and women with egos the size of a football and brains the size of a pea - if that big - who would rather hobble along with torturous pain in their knees and create additional problems for everyone around them by collapsing and fracturing bones no one knew existed.  They would obstinately refuse to use the support of walking sticks or wheel chairs, for fear of being labelled `old' (which they unquestionably are) by four people, who are for ever ready with their derogatory comments.  

There have been instances of BMW owning busybodies visiting other cities and missing flights because they sent back the `ordinary' car that showed up for their airport ride and insisted on a BMW - "what will four people say if we travel in anything less"??  One senior bureaucrat, a genuinely good and wise man, who cared two hoots for public or private opinion, used to travel in auto rickshaws and buses, completely shorn of all trappings.  Until he was threatened with divorce by his domineering wife, for whom those four people were akin to Oracle, especially if they were from her own family.

There was this couple, so completely made for each other in their obsession with living the high life just to impress society.  The family wealth has been accumulated in a very short span, using highly suspect and very often openly corrupt business ways.  The heir to this wealth was their daughter, a bright young lady of immense good sense, who hated the trumped up and blatantly fake lives the parents lived.  Her problem was that she was forced to be a reluctant participant in their parents' charade more often than not and she was bristling with resentment at this.  When her own wedding was being finalised, she insisted that it be a quiet affair with a few friends and close family.  But the parents, with their heads swollen with moneyed arrogance and false pride, ignored her pleas and staged a grandiose event, attracting massive attention.  The bride and groom were a very unhappy couple and expressed their anger in many ways during the ceremony.  While  people were suitably impressed by the dog and pony show, the glitz associated with the wedding unfortunately invited the probing attention of the authorities, who eventually succeeded in putting both the parents behind bars, because they were running the business jointly.  Now while those four people gleefully savaged the guilty who landed in jail, the daughter seems to be at peace, though!!  And some are criticising her for being indifferent to her parents' lot.  It happens!

But one thing this author cannot figure out is - why four??  Why not three or five?  Because, in many languages this number seems sacrosanct.  It is always `what would four people say', never some other number??  Wonder why.  May be, this is one explanation - when one departs from this life, one needs four people to carry one on the final journey.  Metaphorically, it is those four people's approval we seek all through our lives??  May be.