JULY 12

In Quest of the Limitless

In the weekly column in the Hindustan Times of October 26, 1991, Mr. Khushwant Singh, a noted Indian journalist, wrote to the late Charnajit Singh, who was a prominent industrialist who bought over innumerable businesses ranging from soft drinks to furniture, as well as acquiring valuable properties within the country and abroad, including a large hotel in London. A whole fleet of the latest cars was always at his service.

However, he found it difficult to manage this vast business empire. Ultimately, the strain and tension proved too much for him, and he died before he was 51.

Man is never satisfied. That is because human nature is not one of contentment. By his very nature, man desires an unlimited world for himself. That being so, everyone continues in his own sphere to strive towards that end. But finally, when his capabilities fail him the realisation comes to him that his ‘limitless world’ cannot be constructed in this life. Craving for the limitless, he becomes the victim of his own limitations.

Has nature been cruel to man in casting him into a limited world and then leave him hankering after the limitless? The error is not that of nature but of man. The disposition he was endowed with was meant, on his finding this world inadequate for his purposes, to divert his yearning to the world of the Hereafter. Instead of striving towards selfish ends, he was meant to uncover the secret that what he longs for in the present world will be offered to him only in the Hereafter. But man’s personality has become the victim of contradictions. On the verge of success, man has tumbled down into the pit of failure. Even after the realization of his limitations he fails to understand how to reach the limitless world of his fondest imaginings.