Now is a time when we all are voluntarily confining ourselves to our homes for a cause. The world is under a great pandemic threat caused by a virus known as the Coronavirus. Some people find it easy to do the task of confining themselves while some of us are very frustrated to spend time inside the four walls. Irrespective of whether you are an introvert, extrovert or an ambivert, we are all bound to change our lifestyle for quite some time as ‘this shall also pass’. But the current situation reminds me of a short story that I read sometime back written by the great Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Checkov. The title of the story is ‘The Bet’. You might be wondering how our home quarantine reminds me of this story. For that, I shall describe the basic premise of the story so that you get a clearer picture of my thought.
The basic premise of the story is that of a bet between a banker and a young lawyer. The banker, who is financially well-off hosts a party which is attended by many people. During their conversation, they happen to talk on capital punishment. Many people opinioned that capital punishment should be replaced by life-imprisonment and strengthened their stands with their own arguments. But the banker felt that capital punishment is more humane than life imprisonment as life imprisonment kills a person slowly whereas an execution does that in seconds. But upon hearing this stand, a young lawyer refuted it by saying that both were equally immoral, but if given a chance to choose between the two, he would go with life imprisonment. His argument was that its better to live rather than having nothing at all! After a heated discussion, the banker banged on the table and cried out to the lawyer that he wouldn’t even stick in his cell for 5 years and bet him that he would give 2 million if he does so. The lawyer accepted the bet and told that if that is the condition, he may stay not for 5 but for 15 years!
So, the lawyer was put into confinement in a garden wing of the banker’s house. Other than the food, he was only permitted to play a musical instrument, write letters, read books, drink wine and smoke. All these would be put through a small window which is his only connection to the outside world. The lawyer would not even receive a penny if he violated the rules and tried to escape before completing 15 years. Every year, the prisoner was supplied with different genres of books such as classics, romance, crime, fantasy and so on. Subsequently, the prisoner started demanding more volumes of books that ranged from languages, philosophy, history, the gospels, theology and so on. Years passed….and in within these years, the banker had driven himself nearly broke by gambling heavily in the stock exchange. Finally, it was the day before the ‘prisoner’ is to be released. The banker will be almost ruined if he pays the two million that he had promised. He regrets that horrible day of the bet. He thinks that the lawyer is still only 40, he can get married and with the fortune and start a new life. At last, the banker decides to kill the lawyer while he is asleep on his last day of ‘sentence’. He plots a plan so that he can do the task with no evidence left. As he entered the prisoner’s room, he was asleep and on his table lay a sheet of paper. The banker took it and read. It read as follows…
“To-morrow at twelve o’clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and the right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the sun I think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear conscience and before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise freedom, life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of the world.
For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw neither the earth nor the people, but in your books, I drank fragrant wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, loved women… And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by the magic of your poets’ genius, visited me by night and whispered to me wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books, I climbed the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from there how the sun rose in the morning, and in the evening suffused the sky, the ocean and lie mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from there how above me lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard syrens singing, and the playing of the pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came flying to me to speak of God… In your books, I cast myself into bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new religions, conquered whole countries…
Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know that I am cleverer than you all.
And I despise your books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage. Though you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if suddenly apple and orange trees should bear frogs and lizards instead of fruit, and if roses should begin to breathe the odour of a sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for earth. I do not want to understand you.
That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and thus shall violate the agreement.”
The banker, after reading it felt contempt for himself. He kissed the head of the lawyer and left the room without doing what he had planned. The next morning, the watchman came running and informed that the prisoner had disappeared! To avoid rumours, the banker took the paper left by the lawyer and carefully locked it inside his drawer…
Now, I hope you might have figured out why this story occurred to me during this time! The 15 years of imprisonment for the lawyer was isolation with the outside world but a union with the world of books. When he accepted the bet, it was more his greed towards money that prompted him to accept the challenge rather than the conviction towards his stand. But after 15 years, being exposed to the huge world of words, he feels a despise towards everything, he feels everything around his world is worthless. He gets enlightenment that the world doesn’t revolve around anyone or anything. Rather it goes on its own, uncontrolled by anything and moving with a force that comes from within. A force that cannot be altered by human efforts…while the selfish human seeks to take control of everything in his vicinity, everything becomes worthless in the long run! While 15 years on the outside made no significant difference to the banker (other than on his wealth), the 15 years of the confinement changed the lawyer altogether. Whether that change is for good or bad is an open-ended question that the author leaves, but I would like to believe that it is for good.
So in this period of home quarantine, we may not change as much as the lawyer did, but we can definitely change a bit…It is indeed a good period for self-introspection, reading, acquiring knowledge, watching great movies, thinking, and doing everything that you always thought of doing in your home but couldn’t do due to ‘imaginary’ time constraints. This is might be the time that our perspective change for a greater good. If big ambitions and personal gains were our aims when we stepped onto 2020, now they have changed to ‘survival’. It’s definitely high time that we redefine our thoughts and actions based on ‘collective good’ rather than ‘personal good’.
You can read the full story of ‘The Bet’ by clicking this link – http://aliclassroom.weebly.com/uploads/6/1/2/2/61229617/the-bet_pdf.pdf
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