HOW DO WE GIVE VALUE TO THINGS ?

It was just yesterday that I said to my wife “Suppose there is a hypothetical situation wherein…”, but before I could continue any further she exploded “You are always thinking of hypothetical situations and various fall-outs! I just can’t think like that; so don’t trouble me with such things!”

It was then that I realized, how the preoccupations of men differ from those of women. May not be all women, but certainly most of them. When men seek the company of other men to spend their time in such idle talk, the women get resentful! So addressing the wives of some of my friends, I now say –“It’s not fair!”

What I was trying to get my wife to evaluate was this situation : - If you were a 30 year old man wearing a red shirt and jeans walking on a road, and without your knowledge a 20 year old lass has complained to her brother that a man in a red-shirt and jeans had attempted to molest her. The brother in a rage had rushed inside his house, picked up a bottle of sulfuric acid, rushed out in search of the molester, and at the first sight of a man in red shirt and blue jeans, thrown the acid on his face rendering him totally blind and distorting his features into a grotesque mask.

Suppose after some 25 years, due to some phenomenal advancement in science, the victim’s eyes are partially restored –  just enough to feel his way around in the world, without having to face the frightening perils of being totally blind. It also happens that the assailant - the girl's brother -  realizes that his victim was actually innocent and seeks to compensate him for all the years of blindness and permanent facial distortion. The question that arises is - how do we fix a value for the compensation that he has to make? Would one crore be enough? Or two crores? Or five crores?

Imagine this blind victim and the assailant are traveling by bus from Bangalore to Mumbai. The victim is however not aware of his assailant's presence in the bus. Suppose some woman raises a furor about the blind man accusing him of purposely falling on her with a bad motive, but it all happened due to his feeble eyesight (Our blind man seems to get into a lot of trouble! :-) ) A cop traveling in the bus demands a five-thousand rupee bribe from the blind man which, failing to pay, would land the man in jail. The blind man has no money! But the assailant would be carrying just enough cash as he is proceeding to Mumbai to secure the admission of his son into a college by paying a donation. The assailant who who would have been in dire financial straits would have borrowed money from a money lender to pay for the college admission of his son at Mumbai.  The money was given to him after a lot of taunts and insults. Surprisingly the assailant offers to pay the Rs. 5000/- bribe that the policeman is demanding in genuine contrition, even if it means his son losing a year of college, it being the last day for remitting the fee. Would this Rs 5000/- be of a greater value than say, the one crore rupees?

If there is a manic depressive suffering from intense bouts of anxiety and depression that makes it almost impossible for him to concentrate on the job. He somehow seems to do an adequate quality of a job allotted to him and there has been no serious breach of discipline or insubordination. If he has rendered some work, which though not of ‘good quality’, but is perhaps as much as he was capable of doing. If you were now to compare the ‘value’ of his output with another man who essentially had no major problems since childhood, was more or less fortunate in all his efforts, and as a result had turned out major publications which have genuinely contributed to the good of the society. How would you compare the ‘value’ of the two outputs.

Are humans capable of assessing such value, or would you prefer to put your trust in a God who is supposed to be ‘Omniscient’! Frankly, I would prefer God to men!

                                 xxx