A Winter Ode

I de-board the bus before it could reach its final destination. I am home for the winter break and it is crucial that I walk some way up to the Mall. It is a tradition that I cover the way up from St. Edwards school on foot, and sometimes all the way from BCS if I am in the mood. It helps me keep a track of how much staying away from the hills has affected my stamina .
It is a bright Monday afternoon, not that the day of the week matters much here, for my routine remains deceptively same. The Mall however would be at its best today, all shops and stores open for business but no unprecedented crowds. Only a pleasant bustle befitting the city centre during  peak tourist season.


The first snowfall of the season has come and gone, the winter wind blows gently with the afternoon sun shining triumphantly in the azure sky.
The slight chilly is more than made up for by the warmth I feel as I quickly ascend the uphill path, carefully pacing my breathing.

I am wearing my headphones , at a very low volume and somehow the music aligns itself with the atmosphere. The jolly chirrups of the birds melt right into the rhythm as though they are a part of the composition.

I feel my calf muscles tightening, my breath quickening slightly. Seems like I am a little out of touch.

I recall the countless times that I have walked up that very path, mostly alongside friends or family, laughing and yelling all the way up.

I constantly look at people's faces, the ones who trod downhill and try hard to mask my discomfort, however insignificant.

"Do you have 1 rupee in change", the bus conductor had politely asked when I had given him two notes of 10.
The fare was 11, I had clearly remembered it to be 11, but somehow I was sure that I had been gone long enough for it to be more than that. For everywhere else, time seemed to run so fast that things changed rather hurriedly.

I had an agenda, an easy one. I had to buy a good book for myself and another one as a gift.
The mood was right, every bit contemplative and lively.

I stopped by an old Magazine Stand on the Mall. Although I had to visit a bookstore, it was a custom to buy a copy of Reader's Digest from that shop. Once I remember having bought my magazine from this stand and entering the bookshop further ahead on the mall. I looked around the shop for a while and picked up a book to buy. I paid my dues and headed out only to turn towards the yells of the assistant at the bookstore. He was panting as he reached me, and with an exasperated expression he said that I had only paid for the book and had forgotten about the magazine. It had taken some time to explain the scenario to him at the end of which he seemed a little confused. This was around the time I had stopped buying the magazines from that bookshop and had made my  acquaintance with the friendly magazine vendor instead.

Today the magazine stand vendor wasn't around so I waited a couple of minutes for him to return. He approached me with a huge smile of recognition. I smiled in reply, took my copy, handed him the money as he made small talk with a young boy and headed on.

Things had changed a little since I had come here last. A whole new complex was under construction at the location of a famous bakery which seemed to be closed temporarily.
Interestingly the architecture of the new building preserved the old Shimla feel with wood paneling and a sloping roof.

There were a few tourists clearly distinguishable with cameras hanging around their necks, decked up in jackets and scarves, moving in groups. A few other foreign tourists roamed around in couples.

I craved for a cup of coffee, and then a nap right then and there. My emotions floated on the deliriousness of joy. Soon the joy would be replaced by awareness, a heavy consciousness that would drown these emotions from wherein they'd need to be painstakingly rescued and would have to be rendered semblance. 

But for now it really didn't matter, all that mattered were my books and a cup of coffee and some cake. I was almost hoping to meet someone familiar, but as fate would have it, I wouldn't have a human companion today.

I met a Husky as I neared the bookstore. She was still a puppy and had big, beautiful green eyes. I am convinced she gave me a little smile when I pet her. She sat down on the ground, as if permitting me to play with her and then after a few licks she stood up, prim and proper, and trodded away in the search of another human to play with.

I walked inside the bookstore with a daunting task ahead of me. I had to pick up a good book with no prior homework. It never boded well with me to read reviews authored by strangers about a book before I read it. For me it tainted the experience of  the awe and wonder that reading something new brought with it. I didn't like prejudice to cloud my judgement, especially because, as I see it, everyone makes a different story of the same book and I was determined to make my own original version.

I scrolled through the section that had books from the authors I knew about. Picking up one of those would be a safe bet.

After about 10 minutes of looking around the store and flipping the pages of a few books, I finalised the one I would get for myself. As for the gift, I planned to stick with something familiar as a recommendation.

I walked out feeling quite impressed with myself. Now for some coffee and I would be off.

It was already early evening, the sun was descending and a chilly wind blew across my face, turning it slightly pink and making me realise that I probably should have brought a jacket or a hoodie along. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jeans, pinching my books between my arm and my torso and walked towards a cafe.

Meanwhile the sky had began to change its colours, with thin wispy clouds rendering it texture.

For me, this will and always be, the essence of winter at home. 

1985

The collective consciousness of the world is degrading, and how.
The dream I dreamt before reading the English novelist, George Orwell's literary masterpiece '1984' now haunts me afresh.  The dream that found meaning in Orwell's dystopia.

It was a lonely room, spacious and austere in an intelligent way, wherein an old man with a cheery, bespectacled face welcomed me.There was a large window opposite to the door, with no artificial light source traceable in the room.
I was invited to sit on a wooden stool facing a wall which had a wooden shelf run horizontally from end to end at a height proportionate to that of the stool.
It was ominously silent in that room, a large, worn out desk made of dark wood and a chair similar in make were placed on my right with the chair resting against the corner of the shelf. A huge, ugly metal almirah towered next to the table on the adjacent wall.
At the far right corner of the shelf, right behind the chair lay a stream of unorganised papers and a few odd looking machines. One resembled an ECG, with reams of graphs stacked neatly beside it.
For some odd reason, I saw in the face of my friendly old host features of the most celebrated physicist of the 20th century, Dr. Albert Einstein.
The optimism of his aura was in stark contrast to his demeanour of worry. He cautiously closed the door behind me and pulled out the chair and rotated it to face me.
Sunlight flooded our part of the room.
With a grave expression on his face and evident horror in his eyes, he began.

" We are spiralling downwards. At what exact rate I am not certain of, but this I can say, the number is unprecedentedly high. "

He shuffled in his chair, and then continued in a heavy voice.

" The human race has called upon its own doom and I am not sure if we can avert the catastrophe even if we were to mend our ways right this second. "

I looked at him incredulously. He seemed to take into consideration my state of mind and went on.

" I take it that you are familiar with the principle of Evolution? ", he didn't wait for a reply.
"Turns out that evolution didn't just favour the ones that were biologically better equipped at surviving, it also favoured the ones with more mindfulness. The evolutionary path that our species moved along was one that enhanced our self awareness, emotional intelligence and above all our consciousness. All things necessary to form the fabric of society that sustains us today.
As a species we have been successful not because we are the strongest, or the fastest, or the tallest, for we are neither of those things. It is not even in fact because we are the smartest. Evidence suggests that Neanderthals had bigger brains than us.
We survived through the development of our collective consciousness. That which enables us to perform acts of love, friendship, empathy and protection; even counter intuitive acts which seem to have no biological explanation, such as practising celibacy or fasting.
A true patriot would lay down his life before betraying his motherland, lovers would willingly give away their comfort for the other's happiness. Despite these deeds being contradictory to one's survival.
We had begun to ascend the stairway of morality. We were riding the growing curve of collective consciousness.
Even when individual or group morality fluctuated, as a species we moved forward - towards civilisation.
Our wars also stemmed from the building of our consciousness as more and more people formed believes and opinions and fought to safeguard them, the process of believing in itself being continuously refined. Our constant strive for development and our struggle to get better, to better our standards of living, our technology, our reach, all of our circumstances - all of this emanated from what I like to call ' Positive Evolution'.
We kept on evolving as a species continuously and therefore took it for granted that it shall remain the natural order of the world. Just like the arrow of time, we figured that the arrow of evolution would too always face forward.
This is where we became complacent."

His speech had completely enraptured me. The clarity of his words was clearing a mist in my mind and I was lost in the process, almost enjoying the revelations of my own mind when I realised the meaning of his final sentence and couldn't help but emit a gasp of terror.

" We probably are beyond the inflexion point already. The curve will now move in reverse. The terrible things we have allowed to happen, negating all of our progress. The violations of human rights and dignity, the genocides, the oppression of people.
Every atrocity of the scale where it wasn't isolated has now hindered our growth, threatening to send it in reverse. "

I was perplexed.

" We have had terrible things happen in the past. Slavery, civil war, religious crusades, extremism and what not. What has happened now of a magnitude so high that .... "

My voice trailed off.

" Yes, the powerful have inflicted the powerless with suffering throughout history but never has this effort been so coordinated, so global and ruthless as it is now.
The modern era with its interconnectedness has made it impossible for isolated acts to exist, thereby affecting our collective conscience. We are now closer than ever, and never before has annihilation so absolute and of such magnitude been possible.
Nature defends itself.
It sees that man has acquired enough brains to invent an atomic bomb but not enough mindfulness to realise the gravity of his deed, nor the intellect to control the repercussions of his own invention.

And now we tread on a path to oblivion and I am afraid, hastily so. Within a few generation we will start degrading. We will become worse off than single celled beings with no self awareness, no knowledge of a greater world. Our faculties will begin to diminish and go on to a point where survival would be meaningless, only an instinct biologically hardwired into whatever would be left of our brains.

This is the reality of our situation as of now, and I am not sure if we have time and resources to change it.  "

.
.
.

I recall waking up with a start, not quite remembering what it was that forced me out of my sleep. Gradually it came to me as I went on with my day and its enormity struck me.

Then it came to me again as I flipped past the pages of 1984.

1984 is a gruelling story of how the control of language enables a strict surveillance of thought in a totalitarian government and how these actions are successful in eradicating the consciousness of the people of the fictional nation called Oceania.
The propaganda of Oceania's ruling 'Party' runs deep within people's minds and leads them to digest absurd claims and justify strict measures all the while benefiting the powerful.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

The party's slogans embody the subversive use of language to undermine the meaning of words.
The vocabulary is reduced to an official language by the name of 'Newspeak' which contains only straightforward words with all nuances and shades of meaning being robbed, rendering the act of critical thought and evaluation impossible.

In its core, the novel is a warning against the dangers of routine of thought.

To think critically and to seek knowledge of the truth, in order to empower critical thought - is as much a right as it is our duty - as a free, self aware people.
Lest we fall into the traps of cunning propagandists, waiting for us to fall into the flaw of routine.

Lest you wake up to dream like mine, the only thing different being that its not a dream. 

The Summer Of The Blossomless Jacaranda

As a young child, I met at the doorstep of my new house, a tiny little sapling. It was green and fresh and dwarfed even by my little presence. I held my father's hand as he bent to take a closer look and both of us decided to care for the plant, which we hoped would become a tree someday. Never did we have to go out of our way with the care, we watered it in the beginning but nature soon took to nurturing it all by herself. She must be proud of just how much that tiny sapling has grown now, and how full.

When summer came by, I saw for the first time the purple bloom of the Jacaranda tree everywhere around. A cluster of bees would perpetually hover around the sweet smelling flowers, and birds of so many kinds would inhabit it's branches which swayed to the merry tune of the summer zephyr. Soon our dear tree matured and showed definition, we realised we had a Jacaranda of our own.

Years rolled by as quick as spilt marbles on a road downhill, as happy years of childhood often do and our friend grew tall and magnificent, much to my pleasure and my mother's dismay. She loved that tree, which provided shade to our home and a home to countless birds who woke her up in the morning with their happy chirrups, but she loathed the purple stains of the fallen leaves which were all over her expensive flooring and were mushed under the feet of people coming in and going by. Soon, the tall one became an absolute beast and it's branches threatened to push themselves through the tin roof and into the glass windows.

"What do we do with this thing? Look at how huge it is." ; my mum would say in utter dismay. It grew taller everyday, bushier and harder to not do something about.
My parents began to discuss their options, they began by planning to trim the branches and once I heard them mention a more permanent possibility of cutting it out entirely. They proceeded to quickly cast that one aside, their are strict rules protecting trees, nevertheless I was aghast at them being able to fathom a solution so cruel for the tree that had grown up with me. None of us could have thought how large it would grow out to be, all these years back when we had met the young sapling right next to our doorstep.

My young self couldn't help but ask, wasn't pride the right response rather than disappointment?
We're curious beings, we hope for things and people to grow but the moment their growth reaches beyond our expectations, we panic. We try to tame growth, lest it not cause us inconvenience and give us only the results we expected. Nothing more, nothing less.
What we often forget, or choose to forget is that growth isn't always defined or convenient, it isn't meant to be. There are always branches that go in unprecedented directions, which we mistakenly believe will hamper the efforts of reaching a predefined, ultimate destination. The more branches that grow, in unexplored directions, charting their own way, the better we will understand the journey, and perhaps the destination that we had prematurely fixed.

To me, the Jacaranda was and continues to be a symbol of growth, of blissful summer evenings and of a strong bond that I share with nature. To me, having cared for the tree was my little contribution to the sprawling sea of purple, purple that elevated moods and uplifted spirits, an offering to the greenery that surrounded the hill that I call home.

A row of Jacaranda Trees near my home.

The winters were just around the corner when a few people from the Municipality knocked at our door with the orders to trim our tree. It was a necessary precaution being made ahead of the time, for whenever it would snow, the electricity wires- not too high for the tree, could pose a hazard with snow all over them and our Jacaranda.

I peeped out of the balcony to see all trees in the neighbourhood being given a trim, I realised it was finally time to make peace with the idea.

Soon after the chopping begun, the leafiest branch of the tree was completely severed, which was not exactly according to plan. The branch fell from the roof with a thud, and children came running to play its leaves. My father assured the tree cuter that what happened was for the best, that they wouldn't have to worry about the tree overgrowing anytime soon. The neighbours too insisted that they trim it some more, and as everyone agreed they went ahead to do so.

The following summer, our Jacaranda didn't bloom .Not a single speck of purple made an appearance.  Around me, the other tress did flower but with a glory that seemed diminished.
The summer of the blossomless Jacaranda was indeed a gloomy one.

The purple came back the following summer, much to my delight and that of my folks. It came with a fantastic blossom, the likes of which we hadn't seen before.

Maybe then, a setback can realise its own beauty through the promise of accomplishment that lies ahead.  

The minutely funny case of the Chilled Minute Maid

Wow Pulpy ! 

So a regular day and four college students walk into a supermarket after an excursion.
Tired and exhausted, they look towards the fridge for a cool and refreshing drink which they'd kill for.
Aah, Mosambi Minute Maid, that's the real deal !

And so, the most intelligent of them all picks up the bottle and looks at it admiringly. Now ours is a species which is always on a budget ( or at the very least supposed to be on one). One bro catches another mid-glance and realises he already has a brand new bottle, only that it isn't cold.
  
We college kids are inherently gifted with the ability to make small improvements in our supply qualities and feel like a genius after accomplishing the feat.

A plan of some serious ingenuity was hatched and discussed, - * Saadi waali bottle ko na bag se nikal kar fridge mei daal lete hain aur andar se thandi bottle le lete hain! *

Giggles were exchanged, backs were patted.
Because asking the store owner for a valid exchange is too mainstream, and stealth is how WE like to roll.

It was a plan that required utmost secrecy and the highest amount of skill.
So the highest achiever amongst us all leapt right into it, without a second thought.
All he saw was the goal of acquiring 2 chilled Mosambi Juice bottles, and nothing else.
 Alas his overconfidence would be his downfall (WAIT-FOR-IT).
So this smug fella strode right to the refrigerator with a cocky smile playing on his lips, his assuring gait swaying past the three of us. We looked at him in awe and with trepidation for we were still figuring out the best way to go about this mission, while he apparently has everything sorted.

" Dude, there are cameras here", shouted the one who originally owned the saadi bottle; in a vain attempt to stop his friend from public embarrassment.
But that wouldn't halt him.
With one swift motion he took out the said bottle from the bag and slid it into the fridge and with another graceful sleight of hand he took out two bottles from the fridge.

" He did it !", we all cried out in unison. There was a taste of celebration in the air.
But we were celebrating too soon, for our dear friend strode right to the counter and thrust both the bottles on it.

Oblivious to our concerns, he was unable to see anything wrong with his action.
And then, the inevitable moment of sad epiphany struck him like a lightning bolt.
Oh- * Lots of feces*

So, instead of having a already paid for lukewarm beverage and a cold one, we now had two cold beverages (Yay!), both to be paid for  ;-(  .

It was a  time of great stress, the remaining three of us hovered into the nearby aisles finding some tit-bits to buy, also laughing at our dear friend's folly while his cheeks reddened as he prepared to face the ultimate humiliation.

Turns out Mr Smarty couldn't bear the mortification of the job he had committed and so he had obediently paid for both the bottles.
" Let's just leave and forget about this."
But we wouldn't let him forget. After trying to convince him to speak the truth and get back his money in vain, we had almost given up. The lights of the store began to switch off, just like our hopes for redemption and with heads held low ( one head drooped particularly low) we proceeded towards the exit.

" Bhaiya! Actually....... ", spoke up a sweet, strong voice.

Yes! We had found our knight in shining armour in the face of our littlest friend. For courage isn't an attribute of the big or the tall.
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

The air was tense, we all looked at the store keeper with dread and hope in our eyes.
Will our friend get back what he lost by his own stupidity ?

After a round of animated explanation, muffled laughter and weird eye contact, we were able to get our story through.
"Take another bottle", the kind owner said while handing us one.
" This isn't ours!" shouted Mr Smarty.
* Humaari toh garam waali hai *

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~THE END ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our place in the Cosmos

We indeed have come a long way from the times of Aristotle and Ptolemy. The ignorant era where man was boastful enough to believe that the entirety of creation- the vast (our concept of vast was ironically limited) universe revolves around us, and that we constitute its centre.
The belief was rooted in the deep seated philosophy that we are special and cherished creations of the almighty god. We maintained that the supremacy of mankind over every other species was a gift from the gods, a gift borne out of being special. We were quick to adapt such ego boosting notions and so the concept of Geocentrism stuck around for a long long time.

In about the 2nd century AD it was realised that the differences of seasons and retrograde motion of various planets should logically conclude to varying distance between the planets, earth and the sun. The original model was modified by shifting the centre of rotation of the cosmos away from the earth. All this while preserving the view that our precious planet would still sit at the middle of all the action, grand and resolute. Ptolemy's model explained the observations of the day well, but questions were soon being asked and the world gradually moved on to Heliocentrism, thanks to Copernicus.

 It took us ages (and god knows how many shouts of 'Sacrilege') to battle and ultimately defeat religious dogma and accept not what we would like to believe rather  what observation and mathematics pointed us towards.

It took exceptional courage to come to terms with the fact that the world does not revolve around us after all, and that we too were just another planet orbiting the mighty sun. 

But our notions of self-importance were to take many further hits.

Our dreams of perfectionism were shattered when Kepler helped establish the elliptical motion of the planets, rather than the more perfect-circular orbit.
With the advent of technology and telescopes, man was enabled a view of the cosmos that revealed great many secrets and most of them made us feel tinier and tinier, also more and more ordinary.
As we ventured beyond our solar system, into the Milky Way our collective ego took a grand hit as we realised that other than our sun, existed billions of more stars in a sparkling galaxy that we named the Milky Way. Our mighty sun was in actuality just another yellow dwarf and was out-numbered and out-shined by a plethora of hot and fiery worlds. 

We soon began to fashion the laws of the universe which were governed by reason (and started being reasonable about our own place in the universe).
We've established that we aren't the centre of the universe or our local group, or our galaxy not even our own solar system. 

So are we then, truly ordinary?

 A teeming group of species on a beautiful blue planet (with patches of green) in some solar system at the fringe of a galaxy somewhere in the big, vast universe? 

Or is there more to the story?

Astronomers and scientists have established that for life to thrive on planet earth there must have been a delicately balanced plate of ingredients to start with. Over the years our planet could have faced major disasters, and shifted the balance towards chaos. Somewhere about 4 million years ago our moon was bombarded by a heavy meteorite shower which had a significant effect on our future and most of all the inner planets. Termed as the Late Heavy Bombardment, this event may have rendered life possible on the blue planet. The earth's environment was drastically changed thanks to the bombardment and most of the water found in our oceans today can be traced back to water-rich comets that delivered the liquid of life to us. The event that made our blue planet blue! 

Another event that ensured that earth would be a habitable planet is its location- which is just right for living beings to exist and prosper.  We are one of the three planets located within the Goldilocks Zone- an area in space wherein a planet is just the right distance from its home star so that its surface is neither too hot nor too cold. Although our neighbours Mars and Venus are also within this life nurturing belt, the ravages of time haven't been kind to them. Mars has lost most of its atmosphere while Venus has a highly poisonous one composed of clouds of sulphuric acid. 

Counting our blessings, we have another one to include. The gas giant Jupiter protects us from the lumps of rock and ice in the asteroid belt. The gravitational influence of Jupiter has and continues to deflect many potential threats en route our home. 

We are the third planet from the centre of our solar system- the sun. Moving from our Solar System to a larger picture, we are about halfway between the centre and the edge of our galaxy.  Despite our humble location relative to other heavenly bodies we are the centre of our own observable universe. 

Narcissistic much? 

Maybe not this time. 

As we know nothing (PRETTY MUCH NOTHING) travels faster than light. Our universe began (by some solid estimates) about 13.8 billion years ago, in all that time light can travel very far. If we were to fashion this distance into a bounding sphere around our earth, we would get our observable universe and we would be its centre. The important thing to note here is that how significant the concept of our observable universe is. Since nothing (pretty much) travels faster than light, nothing on the outside of this great sphere (if there is anything at all, no way to know) can influence anything on the inside, in any manner. So who cares if we aren't the centre of the entire universe, right? We are the centre of the one that can possibly affect us. This area keeps growing with the passage of time, but the centre never changes. 

The further man has ventured out into the cosmos, the more insignificant we seem to become. Wonder and awe fills our hearts as we gaze up to the heavens but the most awesome wonder of all remains the one of Life and Civilisation.

Humans are curious beings, and we've gone through extreme measures to quench our hunger for knowledge. We are explorers by nature. The fact that makes us feel truly special (at least for now) is the miracle of life. Technology and human innovation has allowed us to peek into worlds far, far away from us. We have even been able to send probes, robots and messengers to some of these places in an effort to find out more about them. And truly, during this grand journey we have found some astonishing stuff. We know how stars are formed by spotting giant nebulae; we got to know how stars die in supernova explosions and the multiple fates they may undergo after the big boom. Man has walked on the moon, collected samples from Mars, seen the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn up close and flown past a probe by Pluto beyond the realm of the Sun.  

We have found ice on the red planet, seas of ammonia and sulphur but we've never ever come close to finding life- intelligent or otherwise- beyond our planet.

In Arthur C Clarke's words -" Two possibilities exist, either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." 

Despite the continued and zealous search for extra-terrestrial life, we have yet to come into direct contact with any. If we are truly alone in the Universe, which many say is a  statistic impossibility, maybe we are truly special.

On July 20 1969 as Neil Armstrong took one small step for a man, which was a giant leap for mankind he was in his own words, suddenly struck by the tiny pea that the earth was, pretty and blue. 

"I felt very, very small", he said.

Small we truly are, dwarfed by the magnanimity of infinity, but we sure aren't too small to count.The scale of the universe and the tiny speck that we are in it will serve as a constant reminder of our humble abode when (not if) humanity cruises to the zeniths of success. 

As for the question- Special or Not?

I'll leave that for you to answer. (I am a sadist who loved having you read all this without giving you a definitive answer.) For maybe it’s a good thing we can't say for sure, so we might not get too complacent or break our hearts.

 And no matter what the truth be, we still have time on our hands to sway it in our favour (Unless some crazy alien invasion happens soon, which -let's be honest- will be way more exciting.)

The Story of Stories

To Rushdie's question  -"Who am I?"

His own answer was : "I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me."

My answer would be a little distortion of his - I am the sum total of everything I have read, every story I have heard and of everything done-to-me and by me in the duration of my own tale.

In the world of stories we meet our wildest fantasies and also confront our darkest fears.

The power to associate with someone other than us, their circumstances and situations, their tragedies and triumphs is uniquely human. To plunge into their story, heart and soul, and let it affect you is what connects us as a people. A people with a shared heritage and a future that ties us together. For it isn't just compassion that helps us identify with characters real or fictional (although it is a major component). Even animals and birds are compassionate beings and they may have the ability to identify with one of their own when they see it ( some with higher intellect, I hear can even dream about their mates) , but the ability to observe, form, narrate and appreciate the tales we weave out of experiences like these is specially gifted to us. Or maybe it's a gift the human race presented itself with and thus while beasts perish and flowers wither, if not us, our stories live on.

We began by conveying tales verbally. A fascinating idea with strong effects but the method had its flaws. People die but pass on the stories they have heard from the older generation, adding their own adventures to the mix. But at other times, entire civilisations die and with it ends all the tales and fables that they may have concocted during their reign. Word of mouth is effective but not efficient and that's how we moved to documenting our beloved stories, to hold onto our imagination more vigorously.
 It is amazing to see how tales are distorted and re-fashioned as they move forward in spacetime.The renditions can give us a worthy peek into our collective conscience.And that's exactly why we need tales to be written down, so we may digress anytime we want but preserve the spirit of it for who says there can't be more than one version of a story.

Tales are able to blur the line between fantasy and reality in a way that adds to their enigma.The concept of truth is rendered false in a world like this, for your truth isn't mine and mine isn't yours and we can't even complain because in this world, truth is anything but objective.
But the true beauty of stories lies in the fact that it changes shape with every telling, and its effect grows stronger too with repetition.

An age back, when televisions were not a thing and books, although abundant weren't well understood by all( Plus we have to remember that reading is a noble, yet time consuming pursuit.), plays and enactments of fine literary work enchanted audience. Music was skillfully integrated in the art of storytelling and the written word was magnified, the imagination of readers glorified and the writer's metaphors simplified; all a hundred fold. The well chosen cast, the set and the costumes all breathed life in what most would see as a lifeless manuscript. In my opinion, however, reading is the best manifestation of our stories for it lets us opens our minds and lets our imagination run and soar. And back in the time when we couldn't possibly store a stage play, we could always hold on to the dear book.
Technology came and revolutionised the way we hear, watch and appreciate stories just like it revolutionised every other activity. Now we went to the cinema, watched television and browsed videos and episodes on the internet.
No matter the medium, the simple act of storytelling and reading, listening and watching has essentially remained the same.

Nothing can enchant us quite in the manner that stories do.

Many religious texts are assisted by stories to bring to life the philosophy and the way of life they endorse. For stories are easily remembered and understood. Instead of drilling down a code of conduct into the minds of believers, the trick lies in showing them how good conduct is rewarded and bad leads to trouble, with a help of a well crafted story.
A nice little anecdote will charm any listener and a speech that begins or ends with a great story to take away would prove to be pretty effective, anyday.
Stories are our best bet when we are looking to connect to people, emotionally.
The best way to teach a child a lesson in compassion is to read him a story.
We indulge in them for leisure and entertainment, we dwell on them to satiate our quest for knowledge and our lust for travel, we hang on to them for emotional support, we narrate them to send out a message or profess the principles we stand by, we tell them to free our souls and teach lessons, we read them to soothe ourselves, we remember them when we are tormented by our demons.

They are the most beautiful gifts of our imagination and coherence.
For don't we all aspire to be the lead in our own story, we aspire in someway to profess our chronicles to the realms beyond our own reach.

Despite stories being the necklace threaded on the string of culture and tradition, more often than not they manage to transcend these very    differences and that's what again makes us, uniquely human. 

From Photographs to Pics

Don't you remember the good old times when photos could not be digitally stored? After an enthralling vacation the most exciting activity left to do was to go to a studio and get the photographs developed. Countless photo albums adorn the-out of reach shelves and dusty drawers in most pre-millennial homes. Homes where aging grandmothers would often turn to these to indulge their overwhelming nostalgia, where these would be proudly showcased to all who visit the house, where these would remind all the family members of the older and simpler times. The photo studio always gave you an extra reel copy that you might want to develop in future, and they were often packed in a brown paper bag and stacked away carefully. Each photograph was taken with the utmost care and precision and there was a thrill in waiting for the final result for there was absolutely no way of knowing how it turned out. All momentous occasions, trivial or profound as they may seem to the third person, were dutifully captured. The entire exercise was given due respect, and all things necessary had to be arranged ahead of time. It gave us all something to look forward to even after the vacation was over, and a chance to reminisce the time long after it was gone. Today, almost  everybody has a phone which  is equipped with a camera, a camera where we can click multiple pictures with the flick of a finger and review them just as easily. We have all but forgotten the times when we had to count each click, where mistakes might cause us a missed opportunity or one less picture to add to our very real collection of memories. There are photographers among us with fancy cameras who still care for a good shot, but the purpose has changed. From collecting memories to collecting likes and hearts on the social media, photography has changed in essence. A well clicked picture just doesn't please the eye and delight the heart, it goes on to showcase your skill and perspective and nowadays contributes to your popularity and assists your friends to readily glimpse your dazzling life. Beauty is meant to be appreciated, memories meant to be shared but the pictures we click are so much more for our own selves than for others. For they might appreciate the lush green landscape, that towering monument might charm them and they might laugh at the antics of the little boy Tom next to the lake but they'll never see what we saw, the significance of our pictures remains with us to be fully understood and cherished.
Today we pose for a thousand empty pictures just for the sake of getting them clicked. We readily upload them online and wait for our friends, acquaintances and family to look at them. Social media has indeed assisted us in sharing our happy times with all those who care about us, it has help us connect with our peers far away. But do we ourselves ever look back at these pictures we clicked so painstakingly? Or are they merely meant to show to the outside world? We save them on our hard drives and shove them in some folder, never to be opened again, as we get busy in our increasingly busier lives. We want to photograph each special moment, the wonderful alignment of the moon on the distant hill, the chance meeting of a highschool friend, the wonderful expression on our pet's face. We have this intrinsic need to capture this all, but sadly it's now meant more for other's eyes than for our souls.