I always wonder at the way a place that seemed big when you first got there just gets smaller as you got to know your way around it. It’s quite like the plastic Christmas tree that you decorated since kindergarten just got smaller as you got bigger. Less intimating, easier to decorate, easier to reach the stars on the top… maybe also, less awe inspiring, giving us the power to jump up and hang the decorations, without using the stool, without holding your mother’s hand and then suddenly, a gentle Thud! You fall. You cry. Someone picks you up. Asks you, concerned, “Are you alright?” plain, simple concern. No condescension, no accusation but still. Ever answered with an angry retort? I have. So sometimes I wonder, is this what I have grown up to become? I feel like I have lost the sense of wonder and awe, which would fill me as I looked up at a big building, or gazed to the top of the Christmas tree, at the twinkling lights and the crowning angel right on the top… things which seemed so far away. Yet there had always been the anticipation, maybe if I live long enough, I could be tall enough to get to the top. But there would also be the seeping disappointment, if I grow a little every year, wouldn’t the tree grow as well? So maybe I’ll never get to it! But wonder of wonders, the fairy dust worked! The tooth fairy did exist because hey! One Christmas I could touch the top of the tree on my tippy toes.
Happiness, simple and unadulterated. What happened to it? It. Just. Died. With the "maturation" into adulthood and the coming of the 21st century marvel, which is globalization. And I’m sure you’ve read lots of articles on this one so let’s just be “cool” (more like clichéd) and call this, just another brick in the wall.
Have you noticed how when little children laugh their eyes smile?
It puzzles me but, all I see in the eyes of the people around me as I jostle through the 8 am Morning Rush is a vary alertness, an unequivocal aim of getting to work on time, and in many cases a slight hint of desperation. This world is surging forward like high tide crashing at the rocks, except it never ebbs away. It keeps coming, and it batters the common man, the "mature" adult against the solid silica over and over and over again. I am dashed out of my reverie when I bumped into a poised and calm 45 year old woman, in her crisp starched cotton sari on her way to work. When I turn to apologize, I am pinned with a REALLY angry look. So much for smiling with your eyes. And so much, for poise. If this where development and growth brings us, I’d rather not have a bunch of cars, some property or a nice phone. I’d rather just sit on top of a mountain and look at the view. Oh! For the fulfillment of such fanciful ideals.
When I was little I would look at a skyscraper and count the number of floors in it, although I would go cross eyed somewhere along the way and have to start all the way from the beginning again, finally giving in to the utter impossibility of task. Down the years I’ve still tried to do it, and my dream came true when I counted ALL FIFTEEN FLOORS of the LIC building on Mount Road in Chennai. Anywho, essentially my point is that a sense of awe and humility at the sheer size and scale of the world around us is now considered as being the curse of the complacent inexperienced minds which are just ‘easily amused’. An expression of pleasant contentment at a cup of coffee well-served at a Bistro was reciprocated by my friend, with a careless shrug and a overtly humble, “Oh that’s what they’re paid for, Big deal!” A person has to think a million times just before asking a question that’s on their minds just in case what comes out sounds ‘uncool’ or ‘ill informed’. The fear of not seeming up to date with going on-s of the world around us in terms of the latest music, or the newest brands, or the most recent unnecessary overpriced piece of technology is the paramount concern in the minds of many. Attribute it to low self esteem of the individual or the psychological dictatorship of the society we live in, an innocently spoken phrase or a defuse of silly excitement at something trivial can be so ‘pregnant’ with connotations (yes, pun intended) that a sufficiently self conscious person would best leave it unsaid. So much, for the freedom of speech and expression. We protest against physical coercion for human rights, but what about the compartmentalization of our minds, this complete and absolute take over by no one in particular, of everyone in general. It reaches us all, this shutter on our soul, this filter installed at the frontal lobe of our cerebrum: stop, listen, repeat. Reuse, Recycle. The same junk that everyone throws out linguistically is picked up by our radar and regurgitated for fear of risking a place, a seat, a number in this assembly line we call the Beat Generation.
