Karma And Trekking

The Ox had an action packed Saturday (no not THAT kind of action). I got out of the house at about 6.30 am, trying to reach the faculty as early as I could. Having met up with several other early birds, we arrived at the University forest reserve at the appointed time (before 8am) only to find that nobody was there. How typical, we thought. However we didn't have much time to muck around as all of a sudden the VC (who was the guest of honour) popped up and we had to offer profuse apologies (and a rather weak explanation as to why no one else was there). Visibly huffed, he left "to get breakfast".



Several phone calls later, the rest of the faculty filtered into the area, and the Dean managed to wrangle the VC back to officiate the proceedings. That done, the rest of the morning went by about as close to planned as possible. Breakfast, some light warming up exercises and finally the trek into the surrounding foliage.

Two hours in a slippery, mucky wet jungle really makes you miss the creature comforts you surround yourself with. It was good, and the Ox got some much appreciated exercise out of it. Everything went well, except for one notable event near the end (well to me anyway).

I suppose everyone's at least heard of karma by this time. To put it simply, what goes around, comes around. Why I'm suddenly talking about cosmic justice has to do with the incident, 15 minutes before the end of the trek:

A female colleague (which I'll call B) suddenly collapsed and fell on her arm as we crested the final slope. When the medic and myself got on the scene, B was on the forest floor, clutching her arm and almost in a fetal position. She refused to move, and everyone could plainly see she was on the verge of tears. Several of us shooed the stragglers back towards base camp with instructions to bring back a stretcher. As I watched her friends try to soothe and talk her into getting up and walking back, I have to admit I didn't feel as sorry as I felt I should have.

Maybe I should explain. 2 days ago, a final year student I was supervising called me up in near tears. Her evaluator for the presentation of her project was B. I knew that the student really put in a lot of effort into her work, and I was expecting a walk in the park for her. I couldn't be more wrong. According to her, B came in, took a cursory glance at her work and asked in a tone which said 'I could be anywhere else but here': "Is that all? I'm going."



Now imagine you're a student and you've put in 3 months of solid effort into your project. Come the big day and you're raring to show your results, but the evaluator simply treats it as if it were a bit of fluff. Granted, you may say I'm biased toward the student, but I've generally been very strict with these kids, and I know this one deserved a chance at least. As I told the hapless student not to worry, I suddenly had a flashback to something I saw a day earlier. While I was evaluating several other kids, B walked in, apparently to finish up with a student of her own. Her face as she did so was mired in distaste (I'm putting it mildly). It looked like the kind of face I would have if someone told me to clean the septic tank with only a brush and a pail. I didn't really think anything of it then but as I heard my student's story, something clicked in my head.

I called my tutor on the phone. He was one of the best students in his year, and also had B as his evaluator. When I asked him how his session went, he told me the same thing: B didn't even give his project a look through, and she was very brusque. All of this pointed to a pattern in her work. She always seemed busy (although I know for a fact that I have at least 10 times as much workload as she does) and for some reason I never COULD get along with her very well, even during my trip to Germany last year (she was whining for rice after day one). Which brings us back to today...

As I looked at my colleagues trying to comfort her, I couldn't help but berate myself silently for not being more sympathetic. I tried, but the knowledge of what she'd done to students in the past few years filtered the sympathy, and set me wondering: was it just bad luck on her part, coupled with fatigue? Or is some of that bad karma coming back?

I'm no judge, and I don't know the way the world works. All I know is I've done some bad things to people in my time, and I was reminded today that there's no escape. We pay, in one form or another. Sometimes we pay in cash, othertimes, the debt sits quietly, waiting for that one slip we make.