Make or break?

Continuing with the topic of contradiction of Man, I read about the epitome of American monopolistic capitalism, JD Rockefeller. In a way, he can be described as the father of MNCs and the founder of Standard Oil. Ironically, oil, as he was extracting and transporting was for kerosene to fuel lamps, not to fuel engines. After all it was the late 1800s.

On one hand, on Sunday mornings he is a dedicated Sunday School teacher. He partakes the Baptist Church charitable activities and he was their big contributor. Come Monday, he was a ruthless businessman who had no qualms with undermining tactics and devious business strategies that put other small-time independent family business to the ground. JD felt that what he was doing was right under the circumstances. He used his God-given ability to prosper the people of his kind. Perhaps, his Sunday activity was his way of washing all the unsavoury work over the weekday.

After his nefarious work was laid bare for scrutiny by a journalist and his company was ordered closed, he continued to prosper. His star shone bright as the automobile industry and the aviation industry had just made an explosive introduction to the mainstream. JD continued making money. With the help of media, which was also in its infancy, he showcased as a philanthropist. Financing universities, colleges for girls and other socially uplifting activities, his tainted past remained in the past. So, in a way, his spiritual belief gave him simple conviction to carry on life without over-questioning whether what he was doing was indeed 'good'.

On the other hand, there was Ramanujan Srinivasa, a simple clerk who was a mathematics genius who failed his examinations as he spent too much time doing math rather than learning other subjects. His interest in numbers took him to Trinity College in Cambridge and his work with Prof Hardy.

To understand how fascinated he was with numbers, one can only see what he thought when he saw a taxi bearing the number 1729. At one instance, he knew that it was the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. The two different ways were 1729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³ 

He went head on working on formulae and equations, some new and some old ones, without any formal training. The one constant nagging that plagued his soul was his feeling of betrayal to his traditional belief. Being an orthodox Brahmin who lived by the age old Vedic practices, he felt guilty of leaving the convenience of his abode to travel to a foreign, breaking his daily practices, cropping his mane to fit into stream of times and his Western attire. His eternal dissatisfaction was the hardship of maintaining his vegetarian practices. Despite the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, he yearned for his papadum. His perpetual dilemma was the balance between his ambitions and his higher calling.

His guilt must have made him an unhappy man. Upon his return, he became a sick and sad man. He died young at 32 year of age.

It may make us strong, giving us the strength to meet the challenges of life with a clear mind that what we are doing is correct or it could dawn upon us, constantly nag us and makes us feel guilty about something intangible and abstract. But, the discipline that it instilled in young is the very one that brought them to great heights! Points to ponder...