Columnists
Rejecting Litost,
Embracing Chardi Kala
SARBPREET SINGH
I think I like this young man. In fact I think I like him a lot!
How a person handles his fifteen minutes of fame tells you a lot about him.
“People keep asking me what it feels like to have been assaulted in a hate crime. Honestly, I can't come up with a better response than simply gratitude. I'm thankful for a few reasons. If they had attacked me any more violently, I may not be awake right now to tell my story. If they had attacked me even half an hour earlier, they would have harmed my wife and one-year-old son. And if they had attacked me anywhere else, I may not have had bystanders there to save me.”
How many of us would have the inner strength to say these simple, yet powerful words, shortly after being viciously attacked!
No grandiloquent rhetoric. Just gratitude!
One of my favorite authors, Milan Kundera, in an essay in “The Book Of Laughter and Forgetting“, talks about the difficulty of translating certain words and phrases from one language into another:
"Litost is an untranslatable Czech word. Its first syllable, which is long and stressed, sounds like the wail of an abandoned dog. As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it."
He uses the following story to explain the meaning of “litost” - pronounced [Lee‘ - toast]:
"She was madly in love with him and tactfully swam as slowly as he did. But when their swim was coming to an end, she wanted to give her athletic instincts a few moments' free rein and headed for the opposite bank at a rapid crawl. The boy made an effort to swim faster too and swallowed water. Feeling humbled, his physical inferiority laid bare, he felt litost. He recalled his sickly childhood, lacking in physical exercise and friends and spent under the constant gaze of his mother's over-fond eye, and fell into despair about himself and his life. They walked back to the city together in silence on a country land. Wounded and humiliated, he felt an irresistible desire to hit her … and then he slapped her face."
Our language too, is replete with words and phrases that defy translation. ‘Chardi Kala’ is one of them. Continuously rising spirits. Optimism and joy. Positive attitude. Ascending energy. All valiant attempts to translate the untranslatable! Each, however, woefully inadequate!
Such is the nature of Chardi Kala!
To truly explain the meaning of the phrase, one would need to tell a story. Pretty much in the same vein that Kundera explains ‘litost’, putting it diametrically opposite to Chardi Kala.
Well, what better story to tell, than the one of Prabhjot Singh, the young Columbia University professor, who expressed gratitude after the brutal attack he suffered.
Many of our young men and women, especially those who grow up far from large Sikh communities and are often targets of bullying because of their obvious ‘otherness’. Who could blame them for feeling ‘litost’?
Prabhjot Singh was attacked by a group of men as he was walking in his Harlem neighborhood.
Without provocation. He was clearly targeted because of his appearance. Because of the turban he wore on his head. The beating was horrible. He was punched and kicked. His jaw was broken. He too could have felt ‘litost’.
His words, however, smacked of something else:
“People keep asking me if we're going to leave our neighborhood. My wife and I have no intention to move. We have loved spending the last few years in this vibrant and friendly area, and our experiences here have been largely positive. We love serving this community, and we have specifically structured our professional careers around helping our neighbors access health care. Even more important to me than my attackers being caught is that they are taught. My tradition teaches me to value justice and accountability, and it also teaches me love, compassion and understanding. It's a tough situation. I care about the people in my local community. I want the streets to be safe for my young son, but at the same time, I am not comfortable with the idea of putting more young teenagers from my neighborhood on the fast track to incarceration. This incident, while unfortunate, can help initiate a local conversation to create greater understanding within the community.”
This, dear readers, is Chardi Kala!
September 28, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: G P Singh (San Antonio, Texas, USA), September 28, 2013, 8:58 AM.
Well said. Prabhjot Singh's response has truly been awesome and captures the spirit of Chardi Kala. May we all learn from him.