MODESTY (finally)BLAZE(ING) AWAY

The people of my generation may be familiar with the comic strip Modesty Blaize.
Though it had nothing to do with the quality that is hidden in the name,still it reminds me of a quote that I read sometime ago:
"Modesty has something weird about it. You've lost it the moment you think you have it."
Today's papers have featured the much later noted quality of Puyol the Barcelona Captain and Dhoni who preferred to have the sidelights instead of the limelight.
It is well known how Amitabh Bachhan has almost perfected the art of magnanimity and modesty to a fault.Never has he posed to have taken the credit of any of his film successes or KBC or anything.Even publicly accepting his failures and financial duress brought about by his financial ignorance has become legendary.
He has never ever called himself a superstar- he just calls himself an Artist unlike SRK.
Same has been the case with Dhoni.
All these public personalities are bringing about changes in the Indian psyche- that had become warped by the faulty influences of the west (read American).
It is also an irony of sorts that the American thinkers who gave the concept of modern management to the world and kept harping about team work and team spirit were the ones who brought about the culture of "I" or I-ism as we can call it.
It is always I did this, I achieved this for my company. Their arrogance was amply rewarded by fat bonuses by bosses who agreed that it was indeed "he" who did it.

This was indeed also reflected on the field where slowly the fine art of slices and cuts in cricket, tennis and soccer gave way to hard and power shots.This was accompanied with words like killing instinct, ruthlessness.The words did not belie the spirit of the sportsman.
While doing prayanama I have learnt and doing anulom-viloma very fast and forcefully gives rise to one's ego and reverses the changes that pranayama was supposed to bring about.
Speaking in the spirit of holicism- they are all connected.
Breathing hard while living normally will bring about anger,anguish,jealousy,depression etc.
Now I'm not preaching that all the sportsmen should start breathing slowly, but prior to their games in the dressing room they are always told to breathe deeply.How does that explain the western thinking of doing everything fast and shallow.
Fast food, fast exercises,power yoga,pop music etc.
We had simple yoga, slow breathing,slow eating and no aggression.
It's possible that we have not achieved what the west has , but we don't try to make a virtue of what we have either.In fact so strong is our spirit of self flogging that it hurts.
The kind of leadership that Dhoni is expressing will have very strong connotations in the otherwise emotionally starved country.With the prominent families of the countries like Reliance, Gandhi,Modis (remember?)etc showing gross distrust of their own families do not leave much for the public to emulate. Now that the bar has been moved by FEW GOOD MEN- I'm sure it will pervade down to the starving public.
It'll probably start like the cult of touching feet that has restarted in the Indian life courtesy the television.