Gopalkrishna Gandhi lays stress on need to control anger

Former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi discusses the power of anger and the importance of controlling it effectively.

“Anger as a master is a brute, but anger as a friend can work wonders if one knows how to hold and use it..,” former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi said on Sunday. 

Addressing the Dr. B. Ramamurthi Oration here on the topic ‘The Wily Way of Anger’, he described the various qualities of anger that can be differentiated as good and bad by quoting a few couplets of the Thirukkural; a terrible incident that happened to an Australian family; and an incident involving the anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. 

Describing its various symptoms, he said that anger was capable of unleashing a torrent of words from the subconscious dictionary of the deepest words lying dormant. He quoted a Thirukkural couplet, according to which a scathing tongue caused by anger could unleash words that would never ever allow one to heal. “So, it is important to control anger..,” he added. 

Citing the famous song Sorry seems to be the hardest word, he recalled an incident that had taken place in India wherein, a family of Australians suffered inhuman treatment in 1999, “for which as a country and society, all of us felt deeply, deeply hurt....” 

Dr. Krish Sridhar, Vice Chair of the Asian Australasian Society of Neurological Surgeons and President-Elect of the Neurological Society of India, also spoke on the occasion.