My efforts to regularize my
penning of days have been in vain. Perhaps, there is some inspiration missing
but yet I am compelled to write. Perhaps, I am drifting from page to page, back
and forth in this giant corpus of life, unable to comprehend its epic scale. I
love and loathe, fight and ride the drift at the same time. Perhaps, life is
pointless like Kafka says. Or Perhaps, life is divine like Sri Aurobindo sang.
Who are we and what does nature
want from us? Are we just its plaything,
swung from ecstasy to tragedy to amuse itself? It just struck me, in the midst
of a conversation with a dear friend that we are never able to return the same
amount of affection (or labour of love) that our parents are prepared to endow
on us. I am not being sentimental here. Consider it a matter of fact. Your
mother will always be more protective of you than her mother and so will you be
more protective of your next than before. Why should that happen? Nature has
been truly careful in selection of human traits. After a close study, I realize
that its principal goal, its truly uncompromising objective, is survival and
multiplicity of life.
When man becomes contemplative,
all life seems utterly meaningless or completely meaningful, at once, for a
very short time, threatening the scheme of nature. For if life is all so
meaningless, one contemplates terminating natural instincts. And if life is all
so meaningful, one contemplates abandoning them.
Everyone, left alone for a few
days, is visited by these eternal twins more often than we admit. Those who
live in cities are on a treadmill, hopping from one assignment to another,
unanchored from one shaft and anchored to other, so much so that they do not
have any real time to reflect. City is a machinery to keep one connected with
this treadmill, this unceasing movement, uncontrollable drift. They spend their
youth getting weary, day after day. They spend their days, shallow and
unreflective and are cruelly harnessed by nature in its great purpose of perpetuity.
Shallow men dread solitude. They
cannot muster the courage to go within. It is a dangerous thing for them. It
makes them suicidal, doubtless. While such a thing (feeling lonely without
company or amusement) is considered much normal by all alike in the society, it
truly is just collective cowardice and denial of human condition. While we think we have built cities and
walled nature, we have certainly curtailed its physical dominance on us, but
handed over the psychological reins to it. For nature, a fair trade.
In ancient times, the empires
that sustained are the ones that kept the common folks entertained, gave them
an engagement, a distraction to waste their free hours so that they may not
rise up to understand the true and iniquitous reality of the empires. Men were
the beasts of burden who carried the glorious empire on their shoulders day
after day.
On the surface, retrospectively, Gladiator
games look like an unnecessary form of violence to create entertainment and the
Italian colosseum that hosted them in their central arena still presents a
glaring metaphor of how common public loves its ringside cheering more than
being in the centre. But, it could not be otherwise. A common man is afraid of
taking the centrestage and he loves his ringside chair. What a definitive
symbol of human life! The arena is set, gladiator foced but ready. The beast
that is shackled inside is waiting to express its rage. The gladiator has to
invoke its inner rage, draw like an actor from memory, to lunge with all his
power at the beast. Because, his best chance is the first strike. The beast
doesn’t tire easily, the human does. That is the thrill of the game too - an
unequal physical combat played till one of them is mortally wounded. The
emperor keeps the show running, creating heroes to celebrated, competitions to
be ruminated and legends to be composed.
The meaninglessness of life wins
here.
On the other extreme, life can
seem truly meaningful, every aspect, every atom. The glorious design of the
universe, arrangement of its planes and substrates and baffling imagination at
work – all bound by a law, a discipline. Diamond is a complex and intricate
arrangement of carbon atoms, a very beautiful, non-random, poetic arrangement. Just
as the medium of poetry is mind, is there a supermind, a mind above minds,
which is behind the diamond? There is a pseudo-scientific argument that the
combination is a chance event, discrediting the beautiful poetry behind it.
But, is it not like saying that if all the words in the dictionary were to be
cast into a computer, we might get compositions like that of Shakespeare,
Milton and Dante! It does sound ridiculous when taken in context. At least, it
hasn’t happened until now. Even with all its strength of calculations,
arrangement and flawless computations, a computer will stand to be defeated in
poetry by an 8-year old! What is the factor here? A mind! Perhaps, now we may
put into perspective Einstein’s iconic quote: ‘I want to know the mind of god.’
We see that beauty has a precise
geometry that a painter must understand to render it. Leonardo Da Vinci, a
genius of tallest order, saw it and created Vitruvian man. The Vitruvian man is
not just a drawing of geometry but a window into the truth of human construct.
In the drawing, he demonstrates how our body can be expressed in relationship
to our very fingers. Indeed, a beautiful study! He illuminated for human
understanding, the intelligent principles of design that govern the physical
body. So, there is a governing
intelligence.
In the Vedas, there is a very
innocent and wise seeking of truth such as: Why should fire behave the same
way, irrespective of its origin, as if bound in duty to an unseen law? Fire is
just an atomic arrangement, governed by a principle that assigns it a
consequence. And why should water and earth, our constituent elements follow
the same laws?
To me, It appears that there a
creator and keeper of laws. And although described variously, he could very easily be the same being!
Voila! Life is meaningful again!
Thank you pal
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