I Found Solace in the West...

The vagabond instincts of mine have been long suppressed but found their unleashing vigor recently when I trekked through the streets of Paris. The city described as the city of lights… Sure it does have lights but a lot more… Within those crooked small streets, those tightly packed buildings, the choked parking spaces and to some eyes – dirt filled pavements lie a spirit. The pages of history could run out of numbers, but the stories underlying every stone paving the paths would go untold.

When I first walked through… I did not get atoned by the megalomania of the cathedrals nor did I feel the élan of the serene scenic surroundings. They come with every other countryside. What strikes you is the way the city talks to your inner spirit. Those who look for freedom, for art, for challenges, for passion, for complexity, for free thinking, for philosophy – I present you – Paris.

Yes you do see the babes parading the streets flaunting their fashion sense, but so does u see people with free thought, the ability to penetrate through the plagued societal mendacities, the women smoking with a rare mix of courage and intelligence. Men armed with curiosity and sharp heads to dig the unending well of knowledge and wisdom. Art accepted and appreciated for its latitudinarian eloquence. The emanation of revelatory symbolism dictates the need to free your mind.

Young minds not echoing the rhetoric chores thrown at them but breaking the barnacles to breed polemical yet poetic philosophies. The imbroglios accusations through theatre, the satirical medicament through canvas, a rationalisation of irrationalism in living, classicalism marinated with cultural concoctions – that’s a very little of much more libertarian labyrinth called Paris.

At one end you find the Seine soliloquising with the gothic gospels of Notre Dame while Eiffel’s iron mickle emancipating as a metonymy and encomia of mans liberation and emanation from Iron Age to the iron acropolis. With Museums chiselling minds to walk complex and indecipherable directions and posters calling for challenging the philosophical ardour of earlier enchantments of Voltiare and Vivaldi.

The mind with its mundane materialism acting as gangrene will feel the lucid language of art and intelligence heal the prison bound thinking we have been forced to do with societal structure built around desolate deliberations.

The subtle monologue that the city oozes out could be heard though the silence of the green carpets near busy streets or in the deserted side walks between stuck apartments. The small Bastille of today embedding a mammoth storm of the revolution… What you see in the city is not just an urge to create but also a mellowed melodrama of alternatives to the way one lives.

The city of lights enlightens and lightens your mind…

The Walker

He used to walk every day in the morning… He has been doing more than 30 years! For 30 years he had been walking the same streets every day… People at times thought he was too old to still be able to walk… Not everybody at his age where able to walk… This fellow seemed determined…

Sharp at 6.30 AM, he would be brisking through the streets, some women used be cleaning their frontal area of the houses… a typical custom in south India… almost everyone in the streets recognised him… He was a legend… people could tell the time by seeing him across the streets…

He had a bent back… age did show up in his face… but not in his walk… The determination in his walk was evident… He never needed support to walk… never did he see down nor behind… he surged like a ship… mighty!

The girl had just finished her letter… she had penned every word in the letter at haste… She did not know what she was doing was right… But for her there appeared no choice… She had to do it… She did not sleep all night… the sun was showing up at the east… If it was to be done, it was now! She made the arrangements… These were her last moments alive… Made a last glance at her pet dog through the window… and stepped up a chair and tied the fatal knot around her neck…

Another glance at her pet dog… the window was bright with light… It was summer and the day break was early… Time to say good bye… she lifted her leg to push off the chair… A faint view behind her pet was a man lying on the road… She made an attempt to see him… What difference does it make…? Another glance…

He had fallen down… holding his chest… Something was wrong… he could not scream… or may be he did not want to scream… The girl was next to him… holding his head on her lap…! His face was old… his eyes were shining… she saw his eyes… it did not show pain… It did not show fear… It was calm… there was no scream… He is dead said a person standing in the crowd… The girl had seen him everyday since the time she knew anything…

It was 6.30 AM, the street was empty but the sun was up on the east… The girl was out in the street… she was walking with determination… with confidence… she will live… she will walk… she personified possibility…!

Am I Different?

“Yes… I am unique… I am different” – Proclaimed a person who gives me most of my crazy thoughts. I usually take him for granted… I don’t question him much… But one day when he was trumpeting too much on this, I asked him… In what way are you so unique?

“I did schooling along with so many people, you succeeded some times… failed many times… jus as any other person…”

“I went to college… did my graduation… I did well in academics as well as non academic activities…” so what… there are so many people who have been able to do that…

“I worked for a small company… learnt quickly… was a good performer… good ratings and people knew I am capable…” so what… there are numerous people who have learnt much faster…

“I joined an MBA school… with just about a year’s experience I was able to come out as one of the toppers and got special appreciation for the project done there…” what difference does it make… there are people in even better MBA schools… who are of same category…

He was out of words… “What else have I done…” he murmured…

“Ah yes… I created a website for myself before I was 15…” hmmm... so what… you did become some Bill Gates or someone…

“I can paint… I can act… I can write…” some can do much better… forget it…

“Hey… I have always done some thing which was not expected out of me… No one thought I would become the topper in school… neither in college… neither in B-School…” well… what is the point…

Well… in the above snippet… I end up being both the protagonist and antagonist… Are people destined to be different after all… why nature should create people who are unique…? I can see so many animals… trees… birds… insects… do I say that this only little bee is so unique from every other bee on earth? May be not…

We have heard so much about men seeking immortality… glory… honour… destiny… words which have made people do things which are so weird to comprehend from nature’s point of view… “Hey… why did that guy go almost half through the world killing and ruining everything in his way?”… “What is he trying to do by spending so many hours of his precious life reading and writing?”… In a quest to establish the uniqueness or achieve something called self actualisation… Oh yeah… Self Actualisation… or Destiny…

I would ask… were we destined really destined to be unique?