Today I want to tell you a very short story. I don't know it's origin or its veracity but, all the same, it sounds true to me. This is said to have happened during Mr. Abraham Lincoln's presidency.

In one of the parties he was attending, he chanced upon a particular Lady of great wealth, who had powdered nose and two chips on her shoulders. He noticed that she was waxing eloquently about her moral superiority over a certain 'someone' else.

Mr.Lincoln walked up to her and said, “My dear lady, would you be kind enough to sleep with me?”

Of course, shocked out of her socks, the said lady retorted in negative. After a deliberate pause, Mr. Lincoln said, “Well, allow me to rephrase this question. Will you please sleep with me if I agree to give you three million dollars for it?”

The lady was taken aback, but this time no answer was forthcoming instantly. All she could do was mumble, “Mr.President...” As her uneven voice trailed off, Mr. Lincon said, “So, looks like your problem is only the price!”

Usually I tell this story at parties for a few good laughs. But today, I have a better reason for narrating it. Today, I whole-heartedly hope that some of us, if not all of us, who have followed me this far would stop for a moment and ask, “At what price will I sell myself?”

I know. I can already hear the bickering begin. The voices of dissent, booming and loud from a moral high-ground, tearing me to shreds and happy to leave the carcass for vultures to feed on. Reactionaries are everywhere, I know that too. If you are willing to think before acting, then think about what I just said, “At what price are you willing to sell yourself?”

Let us not deny it. Life is a trade. My life is. So is your's. Nothing in this world comes for free! There's even an adage about 'no free-lunches' that you might have heard, isn't it?

The ultimate price one pays in life is life itself. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John Lennon and others like them paid richly for who and what they were. They died! You and I, we lesser mortals, don't always have to live that expensively. Or make life or death choices just to survive.

Our existence depends on trade of much smaller things. Like our values. Our principles. Our integrity and honesty. Our freedom, and independence. Our love, our dreams, and our right to speak. We trade in such mundane everyday things to survive. Most of the time without even knowing it. Or worse, knowing but never admitting it.

When we let a politician scam the nation and get away with it, we trade our right to justice for comfort. When we bribe a bureaucrat we trade our right as citizens of this country for convenience. When we let a punk fondle a girl in a bus without doing anything, we trade our sense of right for security. When we take a job for prestige, we trade our dreams to survive in someone else's sympathy. When we marry for wealth, we trade our life for money. When we live in our yesterdays, we trade our todays for nothing. When we live for our tomorrows, we trade our todays for worry.

We trade our principles to keep our job and our boss happy, we trade our dreams to survive in this world, we trade our passion to be 'practical', we trade our 'life' to have a family, we trade our intellect for a lifestyle, we trade our soul for pots of gold. We trade day in, and day out. You see, it is only human to trade and be traded with.

So recently when I heard a few people on Sulekha being accused of selling out for mere 'reward points,' I wasn't too surprised. In both, real and virtual world, I am sure the rest of us too are in line. It's only a matter of the right price, isn't it? :-)

 

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