What brings me to write this blog-post is really the time – the present that I’m living. Amidst a blur of super-fast actions and goings-on and a mind-boggling lull of loudness and noise, I stop a moment and look around me. In the stillness, I once again delve into the depths of my soul and engage in a conversation with my friend – my good old conscience…
The first thing that disturbs me is a brilliant wave of disturbance in itself and that’s impatience. Why are we so much restless?? Why so much of impatience?? We seem to have lost all our peace to some form of hallucination. In speech and action, we seem to jump into thoughtless conclusions, often violating all sources of history, humanity and logic. Most people either confuse sensibility and calm in speech with boredom and cowardice, or they regard the classic and the silence with something imitative and out-dated. Over and all, biased by what-not, we talk aggressively; contradicting, arguing and debating to prove our own individual points correct, yet all of the debaters lack an absolute quality of tolerance. We want our points to be seen and yet deny to bear patience to atleast hear what others are saying. Listening, a very important virtue, is on the verge of total extermination in today’s man, both young and old.
Impatience in love and relationships, impatience in work, impatience in mission and goals, impatience in music and art, impatience in system and government, impatience in post, power and glamour – impatience in total life and existence. Cause of impatience: discontentment and an utterly self-centered life. And, in the way, the terms ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ have been shortened in their definition to money, car, house, and spouse. And, then? More and more and more of everything. And all the affluence in the least possible time and scope, that is “as soon as possible”! Hence, my friend sits for about eight to nine joint entrance examinations, so that he can get a B.E. degree “as soon as possible”; get a job, a car and a flat “as soon as possible”; and get a girlfriend (or many girlfriends) too “as soon as possible”. That’s about my friends. And, my father’s friends? Their worlds seem to have zoomed into promotions, share markets, new car-models and as many housing apartments in as many cities as possible. Too much greed and too much hunger… Amidst all these, we are trying to find the heaven of serenity, are we??
“…Kaatlo bela haater dine
Loker kothar bojha kine.
Kothar shey bhaar nama re mon,
Neerob hoye shon dekhi shon,
Parer haaway gaan baaje kon,
Binar taare…”
About ninety years ago, Tagore had experienced the same agony of noise: too much speech and too many words. Heaven knows, if Tagore, Wordsworth, Neruda or Keats would have been able to maintain their sanity for long if they were born in this age. (Or perhaps the good and the evil have always been in the same balance through the ages… may be, simply my living in this age is making me long for the past…) Switch on the T.V. and you’ll find 82 channels (that’s on our T.V., it could be more on yours) barking at you all at once. So many news channels, so many soap-operas, so many commercials, so many KBCs and Indian Idols – everything too much and too many. So many chatrooms, so many Orkuts, so many Big Bazaars, so many Inoxes – all, all, all in excess. A blind following of a herd-driven culture and taste, all marked with a total absence of art – a false and fake mixed American culture heading nowhere but promoting some ape-like ways and styles.
Hang on, hang on! Silence and stop! And listen! Listen - there still is a world out there – a wordless world, a serene world of calm. That’s the nature talking to us… We need to come out of our narrowed selves for once and need to be quiet for once… Reflect, look and feel the ecstasy and the joy. Life isn’t as complex as we’ve made it, and to my respectable elders, the world (that is to say, the world at large) isn’t as crooked and hooked-up as it seems. Actually, it’s more beautiful if we ignore the artificiality that we ourselves have created, and all the more beautiful still if we ignore our human counterparts, and still more beautiful if we fall in love with these same counterparts. Peace and happiness don’t lie in some superficial crystal ball lying far ahead. The ball is broken into bits so that we pick them up while travelling the path of life. There’s limitless peace in the greenery, the vast blue infinite, the cool blissful breeze and most importantly in love. There’ll be no need of any speech or background music to experience these wonderful emotions and believe me, there’s no stupidity in this romanticism, friends. If not anything else, it simply helps us understand Science better.
Update: You could also read a lovely translation of the lines sent in by Kaushik at the 'comments' section of this post.
