My Dream Morning

The night does not always bring a pause. Sometimes, quite often rather, one wakes up with the residual thoughts, so clear as if the intervening night didn't exist, of the previous night’s discourse, which one might have had with self or with the like-minded. Before hitting the sack last night, I was thinking about the world famous leaders like Mandela, Gandhi and Lincoln, the bosses, the statesmen and the administrators of long-ago. While valuing the leadership qualities, the insight and the method of all these chiefs, inside my head, for a moment I wished for a life in their age. A life in the age of dignified and stately management, a life in the time in which a leader, by rectifying the mistakes of a common man, would stand as an exemplary master in front of his people. Authority, as it should be. 

May be in that age my appetite for leadership would have been satiated for I would have had the best footsteps to follow. Dreams! A wish is just a wish and mostly a contrast to reality.

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela writes about an incident during Apartheid that has remained in my head from the time I read this book. There, no doubt are many such inspirational stories about Mandela’s approach towards tightrope situations but I find this one the most inspiring. Mandela writes that the youth wing of ANC was always under the government scanner and the police would act brutally against the protestors. Thus the youth wing started to have secret campaigns and as a part of internal resistance, Mandela would often address the young Afrikaans, up in the arms against NP. The incident that is way too inspiring is the one in which Mandela was scheduled to address a gathering in a church that was pre-planned by ANC quite secretly. He writes, when I entered the church it was bustling with the air of desire for freedom and I had not seen such a mix of enthusiasm, passion and fury before. It made me smile. The steroid levels were high and every young man looked as ferocious as a tiger ready to hunt (I don’t remember the exact words written in the book, no quotation marks thus). With the same fervour, Mandela walked toward the stage and as he stood face to face with his people, his passion diminished when he saw hundreds of police men entering the church gate for cordon. Nelson Mandela writes, he had prepared such a powerful speech for the occasion that if delivered the emotions would have been heightened resulting in mayhem. But, Mandela didn’t want bloodshed and he didn’t want his tigers fall prey for nothing. Standing face to face with his people as well as the oppressor, Mandela started to sing. Yes, he started to sing a song! His audience was taken aback in the beginning but within a few seconds only everyone started to sing along. It was a freedom song but a cheerful one. It mellowed down the air around but by singing and dancing to the beats of freedom, Mandela along with his young Afrikaans lived the rage, only in a different shade, the shade that averted bloodshed. Leadership, as it should be.

In the same book Mandela writes, ‘A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.’

How many leaders, bosses and administrators can do this today? None.

I don’t wish to ruin my morning by elaborating on this. I woke up today with Mandela on my mind and I would rather like to have an extended Mandelian Morning.  However, I do wish our leaders, bosses and administrators seek inspiration from these great men and women of past and learn to stay behind the flock instead of grabbing the limelight. Seems like a distant dream right now.