In all humility...

What is it about us that we, as a society, give inordinate pride of place to the virtue of modesty?

Why is it that we teach our kids to be humble, and not go to town tom-tomming their achievements?

Would we have admired and applauded Sachin the "master-blaster" if he had acted like say, Sreesanth, on the field? Ceteris paribus, if the only thing Sachin did not have was his trademark modesty, his ability to be superhuman but not appear as one, would we still have oohed and aahed at his copybook straight drives and punched off-drives? Or would we have gone "oh, what does he think of himself?" and dusted him off in our perpetual search for a more modest hero? In short, would we have been as proud of him if he had been overtly proud of himself?

Is it a coincidence that some of our most-beloved heroes, from Mahatma Gandhi to Narayanamurthy to Sachin Tendulkar, have been seen to be very modest in spite of achieving all that they did? Or is it, that we as a society, love to remember and highlight the success of people who don't proclaim it themselves? In the process, probably, glossing over some equally talented people who happen to score a little lower on the modesty-meter?

Is it because of our own insecurities? That we feel bad because we cannot achieve as much, and if someone  says so in our face, we would feel worse. And hence, we all gravitate towards those who do a lot, but don't speak about it as much, just so that we no-hopes may feel a bit better.

Is it because of our need for hope? If our heroes appear to us as super human, may be we would just shake our head at our own inadequacies and admire them. But if they have super human abilities but appear humble, appear like "one of us", we all get to renew our hope and think "hey, maybe I can do something too. After all, he has done so much and he looks like one of us..."

To put it more crudely, is it because we want to feel like better people than we are that we demand our heroes to act like lesser people than they actually are?

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying humility is a bad thing. If I have kids someday, I'd teach them the same too. But sometimes, I cannot help wondering if it is a tad overrated. This "aww-look-he-is-so-great-yet-so-modest" fetish that we all seem to have.

I can't help but wonder, if in our collective subconscious, we reject people who may have oodles of talent, but somehow come packaged with oodles of self-pride as well.

I can't help but wonder, if there has been actually another kid as talented as Sachin, but who got the short shrift since he went about proclaiming at age 15 that he will be the greatest batsman of his times... and some selector decided to "put the boy in his place" by making sure he never got the chance to do something...

I can't help but wonder, if as a society, are guilty of placing so much emphasis on modesty that we are blinded to everything else... or even whether we should even feel guilty about it at all...

after all, what is a hero that doesn't give us hope...

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Disclaimer: I am an out and out Sachin fan... for a long time in my life, I used to select my friends on the basis of whether they liked Sachin or not... while I am not as vehement as before, I still find it difficult to get along with people who question Sachin's abilities, temperament, committment etc., So the above post need not be interpreted as questioning Sachin's virtues...

PS1: I wanted to write a 'dedication post' for his twenty years of international cricket, but found that whatever I wanted to say has already been said, and much better at that, by many people. So all I can say is, thanks for all the wonderful memories...