THE BLIND MAN

He was walking ahead of me.. and I was rushing in my usual speed in the direction that usually led me home. It was a particularly busy crossing on a sufficiently hot morning in October...and it was not long before I overtook him- I walk fast- but somehow, I kept losing my pace. Déjà vu? I stopped long enough to afford a look back. He was blind.. he was blind??!!

I vividly remember staring at him.. Did he know where he was? Or even, what gave him the (over)confidence and exaggerated hope that he could be on a crowded street, surrounded by people of dubious propensities controlling the steer wheels they were at, wanting to own a share of the road to get to the places they wanted to go to any which way…overtaking from the left, over-speeding, carelessly driving themselves off the road? What really gave him the assurance to venture out as such, unaccompanied? I thought it was particularly overoptimistic(!!) on his part to choose a time and space that were clearly not suited to asserting his independence or whatever.

But, could the irony have been any starker? I saw him feel the road - choc a bloc with traffic zooming all around oneself- with his white stick and take small, concerted steps in the direction he purportedly wished to go. Blindness…ohh. I could read his face.. his doubts.. his questions.. I could read them all. I could hardly move an inch. I stood right there, planted in the soil, paralyzed, still staring , Maybe I had stopped just to help him if he needed it anytime soon. But ah, there was something else to it all. I usually find myself in a similar catatonic trance when something, anything around me belongs so much to me that the distinction between our separateness in time, space, dimensions or even physical manifestation disappears. Or if something holds a mirror to me that reflects back an image so stark and honest in its manifestation that I freeze for a minute to soak it in. I can’t but help feel thankful to the instant and the mechanism that fills the thought in me. A blind man on a street is no supernatural phenomenon. It may come about fairly easily. But things like these do not escape me pretty easily. For a great while I could not escape the irony of it all too. This man lacks eyesight. This man…lacks…eyesight. I rolled over the thought in my brain as if schizophrenic.. He lacks eyesight... But is he really different from the rest of us? Of course, blindness is an unfortunate physical deficit. It shears off the color in your life. Color that may or may not lend beauty and advantage. But it certainly makes the living experience more complete. Returning back to the experience, I suddenly looked out for more blind men around. There were, of course, scores of pairs of eyes looking around in the light that was illuminating half the world but not his. But indeed some lack eyesight and some vision! In both the cases the groping and the sense of futility and helplessness are the same, only qualitatively different in character. Eyesight and vision must make the world a brighter place. Let us all stop for a minute to examine where our lives are headed. Let us examine our ‘vision’ once again. Let us stop ‘groping’ in the dark. Let us not be ‘blind’, even if restoring ‘vision’ must need assistance. The ‘power’ here to streamline our life with a unique mission- a ‘vision’ to self-actualize, to be on our own despite our ‘blindness’ of physical or any other manifestation, to cut off from unnecessary herd activity, to differentiate ourselves in our own capacity and to lend individual meaning and purpose to the undefined construct that life is..
.. I remember looking at him again and moving on.. happy that maybe I shouldn’t judge him and take layers off him in the way I had been doing. His life maybe is more complete than mine or what I think his is. I, for one, have a lot of dreams and a vision too that needs sharpening over time…(but I lack courage).. This man lend that to me in some measure! I reckon, one should not just be satisfied with an eyesight. A Blindman with a vision may see a lot more.

As John Milton also said, On His Blindness

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,—
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask:—But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need
Either man's work, or His own gifts, who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. 0

.....They also serve who only stand and wait.

LOOK INTO MY EYES!

“I want you to eat me!” – said no animal ever! ~ This is PETA’s new punchline for Animal Rights!

Sometime back, I had shared a status on Facebook that was prompted by a friend’s retort when I asked her about how many birds she ate in a week! While that conversation was tongue-in-cheek, the more I question this, the more similar answers I get. I guess enlarging the sample size only proves my theory! Man thinks animals are a part of the food chain he rules, so it’s a given that his rules rule!

I get told, “I eat animals and you eat plants! So you are ruthless too!”. Well that shuts me up for a minute I agree. “But tell me that only when you stop using toilet paper (trees) to do what you do with it!”  I say that to friends ONLY ;)

You may still have the ‘plants pain too’ argument but my heart just bleeds when I see how we own animals and use them to our advantage as if they were created not for their own lives but to slave for us, entertain us with their habits and colours, decorate our walls and floors and titillate our taste buds. Just when have you really gone close to an animal and looked in their eyes in a way that hasn’t made them defensive. There’s so much love there!

Animals nuzzle and kiss their young like we do with our babies. It arouses such a great feeling of empathy in me. Think of when you have come home to your pet dogs. Don’t they just jump and slobber all over you with wet kisses! NO ego. NO SULKING! Only unconditional Love! How adorable! Or cats! And how royal they (think) they are! Or funny monkeys, uninterested cows, and huggable rabbits?

Animals feel like we do. For instance, the largest animal on our planet has the largest heart! Elephants! They are highly intelligent and emotional. They form close knit social bonds in their group and share  a strong sense of family and death like us. They also feel many of the emotions we experience. Each one among them is a unique individual with a unique personality. They can be happy or sad, volatile or placid. They display envy, jealousy, throw tantrums and are fiercely competitive, and they can develop hang-ups which are reflected in behaviour. They are indeed very sensitive! Indeed, it is widely known that these Great animals die of heartbreak when someone close to them dies. There is a lore popular amongst couples. They talk of the great white Swan who has a single companion for their entire lives. They swim together. Raise their young and when one dies, the other goes along! Is there a pain any greater than that of Love? If they love each other so much, why don’t our hearts break to abduct them and put them up in cages in zoos, shoot in the air and bring one down for fun, pluck out the feathers of a live bird and put them between two slices of bread? A living feeling animal!

I live in Banaras! The most spiritual city in the whole wide world. But it does not mean Banaras is not bleeding of insensitivity. Every morning, going to office I pass by a slaughterhouse; I just shut my eyes and say sorry for not being able to save the screaming animals! Birds pulled out from cages and pulled apart as it were only carrot leaves being plucked! Ahhh..

We wear fur, we make medicines out of tiger bones,  jewellery with rhino and elephant tusks! But human needs a tusk just like no animal has the sadism to need to sleep on human skin!

A month back I saw an old movie with a friend. Hatchiko- A dog’s story. It's a real-life story from Japan. Hidesamuro Ueno brought his dog, Hachiko, to Tokyo in 1924, and every day when he left for his teaching job, Hachiko would stand by the door and watch him go. Then at 4 p.m. the Akita would arrive at Shibuya Station to meet his owner. A year later Ueno died of a stroke at work, but Hachiko continued to return to the train station at 4 p.m. every single day, searching for his owner’s face amid the slew of passengers getting off the train. It’s the story of how a loyal Japanese dog is not able to get over the loss of his human friend and waits for several years outside the station gate for him to come back. Follows smells and tracks and trains to look for him. Eventually, the stationmaster made the dog a bed at the station and began leaving him bowls of food and water. Hachiko returned to the train station every day for 10 years until he died in 1935. By the time the movie ended, I shut the laptop down; we hugged each other and cried bitterly for ten minutes.

Just love animals! Please love animals!

WHY I READ !

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The one who never reads lives only one. " 

Books have always had a magnetic effect on me. I am pulled towards them like a new day tugs at the sun and the moon pulls away at the waters of the ocean. Inevitable! They coo their soft stories into the winds and catch my breath when I pass by them.  And so I have to stop by. The pages keep flowing and Time keeps passing us by!

When I hold a book in my hands, I can’t help but wonder at this marvel. This relic of Time. Books hold the mind of the author(s) for eternity. They are a fruit of intellect. A gift from the writer to mankind. When I think about this, I wonder, if ever it would have been possible to push us to even shift our thinking caps a bit if people burning with a discovery since the olden times would not have written it down in a Book. Before there was internet and everybody could look up anything, there were Books that held the reins of Human Thought and propelled us forward on the dusty roads of exploration and discovery. Books have remained the tool of gathering up information and stories and reaching out to the readers. In the past, there were small booklets which were distributed among the masses to inform about religion and moral thought and to keep alive cultures and traditions.  

But Books have also blazed a discovery and set us on new roads. For instance, 150 years after it was published, Charles Darwin’s Theory of Origin still remains controversial. The book is still live and relevant. Some politicians and religious leaders denounce it even today and would invoke a higher being as a designer to explain the complex world of living things. However, mainstream scientists see no controversy. Evolution is well supported by many examples of changes in various species leading to the diversity of life seen today. Also Shakespeare. He is such a timeless poet. The depth of emotion and the fine portrayal of human psychology in his sonnets and plays have etched an everlasting impression on our collective minds. He is our go-to whenever we want to eloquently express a mundane thought.

There are thousands and thousands of writers and thinkers in the present and past and forever who have written about Art, Culture, Society, Philosophy, Anthropology, Medicine, Finance, Astronomy, Geoscience, Physics, etc and have propelled human growth through discovery. And many timeless authors and poets like Aristotle, Premchand, Francis Bacon, George Eliot,  Mark Twain, Dharmveer Bharti, Virginia Woolf,  E.E. Cummings, Earnest Hemingway, Sylva Plath, Maya Angelou,  Anita Desai, etc., there are so many who have let us a peek into their being and into human emotion through their writing. Indeed when I sit with a book, I sit in conversation with some the most intelligent minds ever, in the comfort of my own room and hearth. It’s a homage to them, to Beauty, to words and to Books.

The day has pockets —One can always find one, go deep and drown in a Book. I love Books and reading is an interaction that I will carry on till Time permits!

So, Now, in this sort of book-drunken life … in this relation to reading, which is where the writing comes — I didn’t discover I had a talent; I discovered I wanted … to emulate, to honor, by trying to do it myself, as well as continuing to read it and love it and be inspired by it. ~ Susan Sontag