In this contemporary world, we often take for granted the fact that we are actually living in better times than our ancestors. This thought came to my mind a few days back.
While I was fanning myself amid the power cut, a usual affair in my part of the world, an idea flashed through my mind: are we not living in better times?
Apparently, the idea seemed as sudden as it was disjointed, but so is the way mind works.
Abrupt thoughts come to mind, mindlessly before dying down like a receding tide.
But this was strong!
Hundreds of years ago, before the invention of fan and almost any luxury that we have today, there were kings, kingships, and laymen, and the fan-bearers.
We all blame life and its miseries, but we do not realize the hardships and agony that our ancestors must have gone through in the not-so-democratic phase of human development.
In the preceding centuries, the life of the people was perhaps worse than that of the animals in a jungle. We should not be distracted by the glories and individual achievements of the kings, emperors, and their generals. In a jungle, the beast usually attacks when he is hungry; but the monarchs would often wage unprovoked attacks!
From the contemporary standards, Alexander the Great was not as great as his scribes, and the false perception of glory of the posterity made him. In this age, we can say history has been unjust to all our ancestors who were not the kings, queens, generals, or aristocrats.
Probably, slavery will continue to remain as the most prominent scar on the face of humanity as long as it lives on the earth.
Today, we can breathe in an open sky and pity the distress of the fan-bearer of each monarch in the past ages. Perhaps, no other individual would be more exposed to danger than the man who would cause uninterrupted swings of the feather amidst the intermingling heat through the physical environment and the embedded despotism of the monarch.
What if the fan-bearer would waver at any time, or fumble, or simply feel drowsy while performing the “sacred” duty.
Indeed, we are living in better times despite all the hardships of life. Despite all the ugliness of the existing realities, even a false sense of democracy provides us to vent our anger against the despots we choose ourselves.
At the end of the day, we have the satisfaction that we can get rid of them after a short span of time. Indeed, we are blessed to breathe in the era that does not collude with the monarchs whose nod would cost lives.
Though there are exceptional cases and a few remnants of the medieval despotism, they do not define the general rule and vehemently condemned by the rest of the world.
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