By Kollengode S Venkataraman (written in 1999)
Stories in mythologies are often not cut and clean. This is because mythologies go beyond the simple black-and-white narratives and address the gray areas of our lives and the ethical dilemmas we frequently agonize over. Some of these stories have an enduring quality simply because human frailty, predicaments, and dilemmas are the same since the dawn of civilization.
Gennifer Flower, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Kodderick, and of course, the infamous Monica Lewinsky. The time and money the nation spent following the lurid details of Clinton’s travails brought X-rated movies into our family rooms. Our eight-year-olds, and even six-year-olds, lost their innocence.
But is there anything new about people having wealth, influence, or power “fooling around,” to quote Monica Lewinsky? These people always found willing partners for fooling around. For some, letting powerful and wealthy people “fool around” with them is a way to get ahead of others in life where winning is everything. The Tamil poet Kannadasan once cynically remarked, “No one ever asks a victor whether he played by the rules.”
But reckless hubris is followed sooner or later, as the Greeks believed and as Clinton found out, by an avenging nemesis. In politics, worse than being hated is being ridiculed.
Thanks to First Amendment rights, Clinton gave a new lease of life to late-night comedy. If Clinton’s Presidential library is to truly depict all eight years of his public life while in office, it will be the one having a section advising “parental or adult discretion” to visiting minors. As the nation got tired of the whole sequence of sordid events and the soporific trial, recalling a story in Vyasa’s Bhagavatam (written at least two millennia before Bill Clinton) would help young men and women everywhere:
An elderly sage was chasing his very youthful teenage son on the _shores of a lake where a bevy of young girls were bathing. The sage observed from a distance that when the youthful boy ran past them, the girls did not bother to stop playing or cover themselves.
But when the older father came along, to his horror, they scurried to cover themselves. Feeling offended, the sage stopped and confronted the young girls:
“Young maiden, you were shameless when a young man ran past you even as you were bathing half naked. But when I, an older man, dressed properly, pass by, you cover yourselves. Isn’t that strange?
“Oh, sage, ” they replied, “We are convinced of the innocence of your youthful son. But we are not quite sure of yours.”
Herein lies a message for all our young women – and men too!