Roses, birds, adjectives and China
If you are my friend, I would like to know you completely. Or at least as completely as possible within the thresholds of friendship. Being a friend brings with it inexplicable volumes of vacuum (if unattended) and concern (if attended). So, it’s imperative that we don’t take our friends for granted—that’s what enemies are for—and make an effort to know them. For good. And how do we do it? By asking questions and sharing stuff that would break down the wall of ignorance around each other. Many times, we wonder how come we weren't aware of something about somebody we called our friend. It doesn’t even have to be an extreme case such as clinical depression or some other mental health issues. It could be as series as not knowing why they feel a certain way about certain historic events or why their favourite colour keeps changing with time. The bottomline is, little knowledge can be an awkward place and when it comes to friendship, we must take the highway.
It recently occurred to me that the reason why we fail to understand each other has very little to do with them and a lot to do with us. Human society is built on the back of otherness and there is a lot you (yes, you) can do to change the tide of this overwhelming trust deficit. However, my theory is we fail to understand the so-called others because we are filled with indifference towards them. Whoever the ‘them’ is in this equation, if you don’t have love for them, there is no way you are going to understand them. The first step is always light. And if you are not going to understand them, then the vicious cycle of indifference—hate is too ugly a word to be used in this context—shall continue. We can, and we must, do better. After all, what else are we other than being others to somebody or the other?
The more I live in Mangalore, the more I am exposed to the transition of a village into a city. On paper, Mangalore is stuck between wanting to be a Tier2 city and operating as a Tier3 city, but in essence, it’s a village undergoing an enormous transformation. The ethos of the people belonging to this city is rooted in humility and kindness but the place that they are moving towards is bound to have little scope for either of these endearing qualities. As we all know by now, cities are a living proof of collective loneliness and as people adopt apartments in lieu of homes, the walls separating neighbours grow thicker. I have a strange foreboding for such a slow catastrophe to unfold on this incredibly warm (but humid) piece of land in India.
Speaking of a coastal city, have you ever wondered why the sea is so damn beautiful despite all the garbage that our species feeds it on a daily basis? Because it remembers everything. It has a memory older than time. It remembered you long before you were born and shall remember you long after you are gone. If you feel you are worthless, always keep in mind that there is a sea out there, whose breeze you have enjoyed without expressing gratitude in its direction, and it remembers everything and everyone. Someday, we may not even remember who we were or are, or what we felt for each other but the sea will, and if we are truly fortunate, it will remind us too.
My beloved is interested in the flowers but she doesn’t care what genus the little lovelies belong to. She doesn’t bother to know why apple is related to the rose family. She simply sniffs the rose and feels lucky. Sometimes, she might even pluck a few petals and bite them to taste its unworldly texture. Similarly, she is least interested in learning the name of the bird she spots outside her window. She enjoys listening to the sound these avian marvels orchestrate though. It doesn’t bother her one bit if she can’t identify them by their names or plumes or mating noise. Nope. She is only invested in enjoying their presence in her life. I get anxious if I fail to know the identity of a tree in our neighbourhood or the difference between a crested bird and its un-crested cousin. To her credit, she tells me that if I am going to spend my life worrying about such trivial pursuits, I might lose out on enjoying them. As much as I hate to admit it, she is absolutely correct here.
My ajji was a wise woman—and if you have been a regular reader of this unmissable blog, you would agree too—and one of the many things she told us during my childhood was the supreme nature of water. To fire, there is water but to water, there is nothing. Which basically means, if there is an inferno, water can come handy in extinguishing the golden flames but when there is a tsunami, nothing can help. Nothing at all. To her understanding, without water, there is no life. Going by the indispensable stamp of science, water is indeed everything. And when you consider what David Attenborough recently said about the holocene and anthropocene, you’d be witless and yet wonder, what future shall we have where there is an abundance of water but no life?
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