Contrarian Companions

Greetings!

Recently, we have been watching episodes of an immensely interesting series, based on (equally engrossing) quartet of books by Trenton Lee Stewart. It has an awesome name that would attract any child reader in a heartbeat - The Mysterious Benedict Society!

The premise, while exciting for children is intriguing for the grownups too. The book is peppered with awesome puzzles, enigmas and secrets and all that will keep the reader hooked to it.

It all starts with extremely talented twin brothers, who grow up to be polar opposites. Of these two, one (Mr. Benedict) cherishes the pursuit of truth while the other (Mr. Curtain), turns out evil and wants to gain power on humankind by brainwashing them with negative thoughts of emergency. 

Mr. Benedict, surmises that the only way to foil the vile designs of his twin is by getting four exceptional orphans to infiltrate the school run by his nemesis and sets up confounding tests to find the right ones.

One of the four who make it to this team (and the youngest one at that), is Constance Contraire, whose greatest achievement is "to have never agreed with anything"! 

While the three children work their way through all the tests, Constance simply questions, raises doubts and generally dismisses these tests. 

When the three children raise concerns how she could have made it to the team, Mr. Benedict says something to the effect of "Well, there are tests, and there are tests!" In fact, she, being a real smart cookie, is the first one of all four, to figure out what exactly is going on. 



Perhaps we all have met such (rare) 'Contrarian Constances', but the point to ponder is how have we treated them? 

Let us see.

In the new diversity-desiring organizations we strive to diversify workforce in terms of gender, race, community and nationality - but do we really value the contradicting colleagues who may be adjectivized starting from 'cold' enough to exclude from water-cooler talks to 'crazy' enough to be excluded from important projects. 

Do they not enhance our intellectual diversity at workplace? 

In the family and friends' circles, we may at best 'tolerate' them while at worst 'outcast' them. 

Do they not enhance the 'truth quotient' within the close-knit group and make us more honest and less pretentious?

Perhaps, (at least before labelling and discarding them,) it would be prudent to give an ear to their contrarian criticism and then make a genuine attempt at intertwining them into our society. 

The three founding non-adult members of this little mysterious society end up doing exactly this, they even agree to name their team as per Constance's brainwave and hence the name of the series happens to be one of the Constance's contrarian ideas (well at least that is what the author would have us believe!). 

Of course it really takes significant resolve and patience for the three orphans to keep their calm against all the grumbling, protesting, demanding sweets, napping and contradicting of Constance. But they keep at it and win against all the odds.

Perhaps, this is the way for our society to embrace intellectual diversity and elevate ourselves towards the truth, untangling the web of pretentious falsities, just like these four lovable kids in a marvelous fiction! 

Sincerely Mine!
Anand Kulkarni

Comments

Prachi said…
Nicely written
Saturday, July 10, 2021
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