Speechless Eloquence...

There is something haunting about the eyes – it’s always the eyes. It’s said that ‘Eyes are the Mirror to the Soul’ and on reflecting upon the statement, I cannot agree more.

See the eyes of small children, lost in their fantasy world of dolls, toys and imaginary friends – the shine is almost unbelievable. The feeling that one experiences, when seeing such illuminant eyes, can easily be killed by glancing at the eyes of, say, a construction worker, returning home after a tiring day of thankless and low-paying work, in the later part of an otherwise beautiful evening. The exhaustion and disillusionment is almost contagious. You might have had a relatively easy time at work, but one look at those tired eyes – and you’re almost as tired as that person. And this, I say from experience.

I’ve often wondered about the relation between an individual and his work. What is work to a person generally?

Is it just a means to a living?

Or is it a way of giving meaning to one’s life?

Many people spend their whole lives doing something they do not like because they never tried doing anything else. Maybe they took a job (which they did not like) as a temporary relief from economic problem, but later they didn’t make the effort to try to do something they actually like doing.

Many people spend their whole lives looking for the perfect job – they switch from one field to another, trying to become a success but never having the perseverance to confidence to last somewhere.

Some are fortunate enough to find their destination pretty early in their life and they strive and struggle until they achieve their goal. After they do that, they set new goals.

Some know what they want to do, but do not find the courage or strength to follow their dreams; they live their entire lives thinking ‘what if?’.

Its sad that ‘work’ – the thing we do for the major part of our life, we don’t put much thought into the substance of it ; whether we enjoy what we are doing, whether it is path towards fulfilling our dreams… we just go on doing it.. every day; until we get used to it.

Anyway returning back to what I was saying - about the eyes;

How is it that eyes can be so expressive? Leave out tears, or the blinking, or winking or the furrowing of eyebrows; just an eyeball (usually Black), moving in a fluid-like mass of white – that’s enough to exhibit your present mood, and sometimes even the past.

Why is it that besides the eyes, none of the other facial features are endowed with such expressive capacity? Although maybe the eyes are sufficient to do that job. Any other facial feature also expressing your emotions - and your soul will be shown on your face.

It’s pretty easy to mask one’s facial expressions – smile when you are unhappy, be straight-faced when you’re furious, but if the other person looks closely, the eyes always give you away – the eyes are one’s conscience.

Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that, not everyone can glance at another’s eyes and gauge the true sentiments; otherwise, all our emotions would be public property with nothing personal or private to call your own. And it’s not that those who can glimpse into the souls of others are very fortunately privileged – they experience the hurt, torment and sadness within each one of us, which we are permanently trying to hide. They are a burdened lot, for they always know the harsh reality.

The most precious gift we have, in the context of experiencing the world, is our eyes. The power of vision is indeed amazing. To feel the cool breeze on your face, while you are seeing the most heavenly beautiful sunset you have ever seen; red and golden rays turning the sky into a glorious spectacle of colours – that is the magic of vision. However, those who have it do not appreciate it, neither do they utilize it. Sometimes we look but never actually see. It is only the fortunate few who have regained vision after blindness who fully appreciate this precious gift.

Maybe it is time we started looking at the beauty around us, be it just a tiny flower, a puddle of water, a lone palm tree swaying with the breeze, or even the eyes of another—one can find beauty in almost everything around us. All we have to do is try and see…

The Metaphor for Howard Roark.

There is something about a tree standing alone which always catches my eye. I don’t know why, but that particular vision always fascinates me. For some unfathomable reason, I associate such an image with human nature.

A lone tree, standing tall and facing strong winds, reminds me of people who never budge from their principles, irrespective of the ramifications of taking their chosen path. Their decision might leave them all alone, facing the adversities ahead without any support to fall back on. It might even lead to their destruction but they remain staunch in upholding what they believe in.
This may sound really weird.. but take a look at this picture and try to imagine what I’m trying to say….

Although it’s a virtue to stand by one’s beliefs, one cannot be sure whether the action of staying rigid will be rewarded by good outcomes or penalized by harsh effects. However for such an individual, the outcomes hardly matter, the penalties hardly affect him. Till the end, he is contented with the fact that he did not let any external circumstance compromise his ideals.
The one individual who fits perfectly into the metaphor of a lone tree and an idealistic man is not a real life person. He is a character (of a novel) who encompasses the whole concept of individualism. People who have a reading habit might have already guessed who I’m talking about.

Howard Roark – the man who does not understand other people but knows what he wants to do in his life; the main protagonist of the brilliant novel by Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead. Although it is difficult to describe his character without explaining the storyline of the book, the following excerpt from a character analysis I found on the internet comes close.

“Roark is fiercely independent. He believes in the merit of his revolutionary designs and has the courage to stand for them in the face of an antagonistic society. He is presented as the author’s version of an ideal man—one who embodies the virtues of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. Roark is the antithesis of contemporary belief that an individual is molded by social forces. He is not the product of his upbringing, his economic class, his family, his religious training, or his social background. He is a product of the choices he has made. Roark is an example of free will—the theory that an individual has the power, by virtue of the choices he makes, to control the outcome of his own life. A man’s thinking and values are not controlled by God or the fates or society or any external factor—but solely by his own choice. Others may choose to submit, but Roark will not. He is his own man.

Because Roark is his own man from the beginning, there is no change in the essence of Roark’s character. He learns a significant amount over the course of the story but his fundamental convictions remain untouched. The essence of his character is an unswerving devotion to his own thinking and judgment. Roark is like this from the first moment of the story to the last—and, most likely, he has been this way since early childhood. An independent man like Roark learns a great deal of content in his life—indeed, because of his commitment to the fullest use of his own mind; he is the only type of person who can. But his method of functioning, his devotion to autonomous thinking, does not change.
His first-handed method is also the principle that explains Roark’s integrity. Integrity, according to Ayn Rand, is commitment in action to one’s own best thinking, to one’s own mind. Integrity is the “practice what you preach” virtue—the principles that you must put into practical action the ideas you hold. But first, of course, you must hold ideas. Integrity requires a man to be a thinker. Howard Roark meets both of these requirements. He is a brilliant thinker and he acts on his thinking. He is not a hypocrite.

Further, Roark is a selfish man, in the positive sense that Ayn Rand means this. He is true to his values, to his convictions, to his thinking, to his mind, to his self. To be true to his self, a man must first have a self. He must think independently, he must judge, he must form values and he must act in pursuit of those values. He must never sacrifice them. This is exactly what Roark does: The integrity of his design is far more important to him than the money or recognition that will accrue from the commission. In remaining true to his values and judgment, Roark is true to the deepest core of his self. This is selfishness in its highest and best sense.”

For more of this , log on to : http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-111,pageNum-47.html

According to me, the shortest conversation that depicts Roark's personality most powerfully is the following:-

Ellsworth Toohey: We're alone. Why don't you tell me what you think of me.
Howard Roark: But I don't think of you.

(For people who have not read the book and yet are interested to know : Ellsworth Toohey is the guy who effectively destroyed Roark's career because he felt that Roark's individualism and refusal to bend down were a threat to his(Toohey's) power of swerving the crowd's opinion.)

The existence of a real life individual resembling the character of Howard Roark is almost impossible in today’s society. I say ‘almost’ because a little glimmer of hope still remains in my mind, trying to keep alive the possibility that people with such singularly focused thought processes may still find acceptance in today’s world.

Hmmm..I moved from botanic images to literary reviews. That’s either because of a vast spectrum of thoughts or a really messed up brain which cannot remain focused on a single topic.
How does it matter?

Depressing Nostalgia?

Been a while since I penned down my thoughts…

Things like Work got in the way….

It’s amazing really… just a few months ago (is it just a few..? more than six I guess) I had shared my initial corporate experiences in the IT industry….
Now, those experiences seem like a distant dream….
Gone are the days of training, sessions of team building and movies and dumb charades…

Time does change everything…

Many friends have left … for greener pastures maybe,
Work locations are different,
Deadlines eat away most of the time,
Endless meetings occupy the remaining time,
Weekends are spent in sleeping,
Savings are non-existent,
Expenditures are sky-rocketing,
Irritation of nerves is a frequent occurrence,

I don’t seem to be getting along with the life here..

It’s mysterious really… its been quite a few years since I have been living away from home, (although, at the college hostel, during the last few months, we had come to calling that our second home. In retrospect, maybe that was all the emotion speaking). Anyway what I mean is it was never this tough. By the time I left college I felt I was well equipped with all kinds of un/pleasant experiences to help me adjust to any environment. At that time, life in Bangalore with a couple of college friends (with whom I had spent the last 4 years) seemed like a piece of cake.

Now, when I look back, I realize how easy we had it back in college…
Admittedly,
– the food was tasteless most of the time
– there was a perennial problem with electricity
– there was a constant water supply problem (which sort of got resolved in the final year)
– the weather was indescribably extreme ( Temperatures ranging from 5 degrees Centigrade to 40 degrees Centigrade)
– the local populace wasn’t very polite
– there weren’t too many places to hang out in
– ……
However,
- At least there was no daily tension as to ‘what is to be eaten for dinner today’
- At least we didn’t have to think about the electricity/water bill
- No excuse for the weather ; we’d actually gotten used to it by the end
- Same goes for the locals
- At least we had the comfort of a friends’ circle;

We hung out at the weirdest of places :–
-the steps of the college auditorium from where we could see trains running through (ever seen a train running at night from a not-so-well-lit area?? Looks really amazing—small rectangles of light swiftly passing your vision while you try to decipher the passengers from the train),
-the railings and sidewalks of a newly built cable-stayed bridge (just found out about the ‘cable-stayed’ part from Google) on the river Yamuna ,
-sitting on the Ghats of the river Yamuna at different parts of the city,
-an ice cream parlour which was the centre of the main marketplace of the city,
-a confectionery store just a few minutes away (where six of us had once managed to build up a bill of 500 bucks for breakfast; the salesperson there must have thought we were a bunch of students who did not get to eat in their hostels),
-a newly made café which was built on the lines of Barista ,
-a Photostat shop across the gate of college which also sold ice creams and patties (the shop owner had gotten so friendly with us by the end that he used to join us in our stupid games like ‘Movie name Antakshari’ ,
-a Chaat shop adjoining to the Photostat shop which just about sold the best Chaat in that area for the lowest prices imaginable,
-a localite friend’s place (a few of us had made it our 3rd home)…..

The hostel was like a heaven by the end of our stay …the courtyard within the walls of the hostel was our very own playground- be it Ludo (at one point of time ---we were all addicted to the game), badminton or some weird game invented by a fellow hostel mate. Single rooms for each girl were an added advantage-you always had one place which you could call your personal den(although in hostel, one gets so used to all the noise, music, screams caused by a wandering lizard/mongoose/grasshopper/cockroach/unknown insect,and laughter, that one very rarely needs alone-time). By the time I had reached final year, we all had finally learnt the ropes of that place; we ruled that place – it was our very personal kingdom. Four years of togetherness had taught us how to survive in the most adverse of conditions, laughing together, cribbing together…..

* sigh * nostalgia is catching up with me.. so I better stop right here.

Anyway what I’m trying to say we didn’t how good we had it until we lost it; at least it’s true for me….

Now, we’re all supposedly Professionals; grown up, mature, career conscious, financially wise, with worries about the future, etc. etc.

In my case, I seemed to have lost touch with most of my classmates. The most ironic thing of all is that even though the people who had mattered the most in college are, fortunately, in the same place as me, we hardly ever meet. And people who were not so close back then continue to remain in touch even from places far apart.

Now, looking back at the good old days, I only feel a warm nostalgia, reminiscing about the good times, forgetting the bad. I try not to focus on what could have been and think about what I have today – a few good friends (who’ve outlasted the college-corporate metamorphosis) who are always there by my side and many new ones... some close,some not so much.

To an extent, I have also changed. The erstwhile friends’ circle has shrunk to a select few. I guess different people react differently to change; I took a long time to really understand that and that had caused me to face some unexpected disillusionments when i joined here initially. Now, I no longer take to heart small things which, once upon a time, would have really hurt me. According to me, the secret to adjustment in this new adult life is aloofness. You need to realize that the happy-go-lucky college life is finally over and things are no longer going to be as cozy as before.

If you can master the art of drawing the line between aloofness and intimacy, you’re ready to blossom in this new promising environment. You’re good to go.

I hope, soon I can say that for myself.