Month: September 2013
Quote Unquote
Here goes some of my favourite lines from an assorted collection of books and movies, mostly for the language, but some for the truth and philosophy behind it..
- Then he and the crocodile vanished under the water which became agitated and rapidly turned into a foaming vortex of stinking brown water, horribly tinged with red. – The Vulture is a patient bird, James Hadley chase. Read this about ten years back, but the memory is still so vivid!
- Terraced gardens girdled the sides of the surrounding mountains with green ribbons, great white rocks gleamed, a tiny red hawk of Sicily rode down toward them on a shaft of sunlight. – The Sicilian , Mario Puzo.
- That impossible anger strangling the grief until your loved ones memory is just poison in your veins.. And one day you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed just so you could be spared your pain. – Liam Neeson, as Ra’s al Ghul in Batman Begins.
- “Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills.”
- “Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.” – Excerpts From: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
- The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said: “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” – The Dalai Lama paradox.
- The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. – Dan Brown, Inferno.
- When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. – This was apparently said by John Lennon!
- To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour – William Blake
- The truth is that airports saw more sincere kisses than wedding halls, and the walls of hospitals have heard more prayers than the walls of the church. – Author unknown, unfortunately.
- Voilà! – in view, a humble Vaudevillian Veteran, cast Vicariously as both Victim and Villain by the Vicissitudes of Fate. This Visage, no mere Veneer of Vanity, is a Vestige of the Vox populi, now Vacant, Vanished. However, this Valorous Visitation of a bygone Vexation stands Vivified, and has Vowed to Vanquish these Venal and Virulent Vermin Vanguarding Vice and Vouchsafing the Violently Vicious and Voracious Violation of Volition! The only Verdict is Vengeance– a Vendetta, held as a Votive– not in Vain, for the Value and Veracity of such shall one day Vindicate the Vigilant and the Virtuous. Verily, this Vichyssoise of Verbiage Veers most Verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my Very good honor to meet you, and you may call me V. – V for Vendetta! Classic!
Art of Patience!
“Patience is an art well learnt at the mercy of nature”
That was a line from one of the chapters of my high school english literature. For no apparent reason, the quote was imbibed straight onto my permanent memory the moment I read it the first time. As enchanting and mysterious as it sounds, it left me wondering since that day if there was any way I could directly relate myself to it.
It was not until a few months ago that I felt first hand as to how it would feel to be at the mercy of nature. And YES! I was finally able to soak in each and every word of that line.
It all started when a group of 4 colleagues and I started hiking up on the lush and rocky terrain of Mt.Lafayette in Lincoln, New Hampshire. Our strategy was to scale up Mt.Little Haystack first, walk along the ridge en route Mt.Lincoln and all the way to reach Mt.Lafayette finally and retrace the trail back to the base. The total distance of the hike was around 9 miles and it took us about 10 hrs to and fro. It started off on a relatively sour note for me, for I just realized my hiking shoes had gotten a bit tight and I started feeling a mild discomfort on my toes already. But I was hell bent upon scaling this mountain. So, we set off with huge loads of gatorade and water cans stacked up in our backpacks. The ascent up was pretty smooth and I covered roughly 2.5 miles up to reach Little Haystack in 3 hours. The deafening silence amidst the thickets and trees, except for the sound of falling waters all around you is a little eerie, given the fact that we are so much used to the bustling noise of the city.
After a little respite for lunch, we continued our way along the ridge to Mt.Lincoln with a breathtaking and gorgeous view on either side of us. Now this is another 2.7 mile trek from Little Haystack to Lafayette along the ridge filled with razor sharp rocks piercing their way into your foot at every single chance. I was walking through the crests and troughs of the ridge when the accumulated discomfort turned into a pain and started radiating out of my toes due to the constant pressure against the vamp of my shoe. Within the next one mile the pain was searing through my toes so much that I had to take my shoes off and walk barefoot for the next 200-300 mts. Now, given the stinging rocks strewn all over the ridge, it was becoming next to impossible to walk barefoot either. A perfect impasse. Thankfully one of my colleagues who was an expert hiker wound the laces of my shoe so taut so as to give my toes some room. This worked for a while, but the damage had already been done. The pain persisted, but I managed it all the way to Lafayette. The first thing I did once I reached the summit was to take my shoes off and by god did it feel good!! I was literally able to hear my toes screaming in pain. With that blissful feeling engulfing me, we started taking some snaps in the exquisitely picturesque summit.
It was time to make the descent now, which means I had to put my shoes on again and walk for another 4.5 miles! The hike back to the base was quite interesting. Half way along the ridge, it started raining. The elegance of looking at rain pour down from 5260 ft above ground is something indescribable, a visceral feeling, albeit you observe it. It looks like vertical stripes of white ribbons spiralling down towards the earth only to be blown apart by the wind. It was a like a mini tornado in the sky and by far one of the most alluring things I’ve ever seen in my life. But I was told by the expert hiker in our group that it’s a bit dangerous to be out on the top, especially when it rains, since lightnings have a proclivity to hit the highest points above the ground first. Beauty always comes with a price! So, not only do I have to walk, but I have to walk FASTER now since we had a lot of ground to cover(approx 1 mile) along the ridge before we actually start our descent down the forest(another 2.5 miles). THAT MOMENT, right there, was when I realized I was at the mercy of nature and I have no other option but to remain patient and just continue walking! Consider the circumstances : A sore foot, toes crying out for help, walking speed compromised due to the pain, the downpour, lightning threat. Given all this, I had to walk faster, and giving up was not an option! I was reminded of the Joker’s paradoxical question “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”. Well, in this case the object(me) was “rendered” immovable and eventually would be fried by the unstoppable force.
So, we strapped our wind cheaters on and continued walking against the gushing winds from almost all directions. I’ve always heard people say, going up is the toughest part in anything, but to plunge down is easy. I respectfully disagree! According to me at least, hiking up a hill has always been easier compared to hiking down. Agreed, hiking up is much laborious and painstaking, but we need to exercise extra caution while climbing down a hill inside a forest, given all the slimy rubble we have to walk on and let’s face it.. gravity is always looking forward to drag you down even at the slightest chance.
I walked(read crawled) for the next couple of hours and abruptly there was a glimmer of hope! I was able to hear the sound of cars whizzing past in the highway outside! Finally, a sign of civilization! It restores your lost faith that every trail ends with the same place where you started from. But the problem here is you continue to hear the blaring sound of the highway and yet never really come in contact with it for what seems to be an eternity. The restored faith suddenly goes for a toss. But you have no other option but to keep walking! You lose track of time and all the highway noises just seem like a cruel prank, when out of the blue you’re abruptly back to the civilization where you belong! You see light!
I’ve been on a few hikes before, but this one stands out because it connected me with something profound and taught me what being patient is all about. I guess I remembered that line for a reason after all!
When the beginning and the end are seemingly distant, yet close.
“Do not fear impermanence. As soon as life enters the womb, death starts stalking us. Night and day follow each other. Here, death follows life. “Death is an event whose proximity is unlimited and distance very limited,” my Master would say. Death has no great respect for excellent health et al. One can die in the pink of health. When it chooses to knock us down, nothing can save us, no deals can be struck and no bargains made. Thus, our life, whether we are just born or a century-old, is nothing more than a drop of dew, tantalisingly poised at the edge of a blade of grass
Our illustrious ancestors point to that very same tiny droplet to illustrate a great point. Granted, this drop of dew would disappear immediately after dawn but, not before swallowing the magnificent Sun and reflecting it gloriously. So, while life is nothing but proximity to death, living lies in putting it in its place and expressing the glory of creation. Therefore, whatever the span that destiny chooses to offer us, let us lead a lively existence. Understand the impermanence of everything, radiate inner cheer and keep walking.”
That was an article that I came across a few years back in one of the local dailies, with a really interesting take on life.. The analogy used to interpret life is just simple, elegant and impeccable. Although the quote about death received quite a bit of negative feedback when the article was initially published, from people who look at life in an optimistic and “gung ho” way, let’s face it.. we have always been in denial when it comes to sensitive subjects. A classic example of our breed living in denial..
“Help control global warming, prevent the polar ice caps from melting.. save the planet from extinction” – A common tagline we often see advocating the importance of saving the planet.
Really? Do we actually think we are trying to save the planet? The earth has seen the dinosaurs from the paleozoic period and whatever existed before that till the evolution of modern human race. What’s actually a cry for saving the planet is a veiled attempt at preserving our own race from extinction. Sure enough our environmentalists can prolong the life of the human race on earth by a few more centuries, but the mere fact that we try to put an expiry date on the earth is just typical of us living in denial. And what do we do when we are confronted with denial? Nothing! We just push it out of our mind and shift our focus to trivial issues of our daily life, like being on time for work, missing the bus etc.. True story! Think about it the next time you come face to face with denial.
Coming back to the article, those are some of the best ever lines to have characterised life and the impermanence factor(change) that shrouds it. After all, change is the only constant! Peace!
Topical Storm.. 