Having a Goal in Life

Having a Goal in Life

1988 12 December 20 Having a Goal in Life (414) In the village of Thipparaghatta in the Hassan district of Karnataka, there lived a man called Latchanaik, who made his living by working as a watchman on a coconut grove. One day, he decided that out of his four children, he would sacrifice his three daughters to his deity, Chamundeshwari. On the 23rd April, 1988, therefore, he brought home with him a calendar picture of this goddess and a white, barnyard fowl. Then, offering the fowl to the goddess he asked his family to prostrate themselves before the deity in order to offer up their prayers. When they did so, he took his sickle and, at one fell swoop, cut off the heads of two of his daughters, Tulasibai and Hemavathibai, aged 13 and 3 respectively. When his son Rajkumar attempted to intervene; he slashed his hand with the sickle. Then he pounced on his wife and tried to cut her throat. When she fell down unconscious, he turned to his third daughter, Anuradhabai, who was just one and a half years of age, and killed her too. After this maniacal orgy of killing, he ran out of the house. Four days later, his body was found hanging from a lone mango tree.

His widow, Lalithamma, has been given Rs. 5,000 from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund and Rs 1,000 from the Indian Red Cross Society. Now, planning for her son’s future, she feels that he must pursue his studies, and is prepared to work throughout her life for him. Lalithamma has also been promised a widow’s pension of Rs 50 per month and because her son has lost all five fingers of his right hand, he too is to receive a pension for the handicapped of a similar amount.

Lalithamma, having lost all, might have been expected either to commit suicide or to spend the rest of her life weeping and lamenting her fate. But these have not been her reactions. Firmly putting all her miseries behind her, she has planned a positive course of action for herself. She has set herself resolutely to building up a future for her son. She has, in effect, conquered an emotional handicap, just as her son, in learning to write with his left hand, is successfully conquering a physical handicap. What has saved her is that she has found a goal for herself. A person with a goal never feels deprived. The truly deprived person in this world is one who lacks a goal in life.