If you look at it, it’s not that strange that there are only a handful of events, incidents, and an equally small number of resulting feelings that define the way our personality shapes during the progression of our days. What you are today might seem to be a cumulative sum of all that has happened to us in our lives, but if we think about it, there are a very few crucial incidents and moments that have drastically influenced the way life will shape our personalities if it is to be believed that we are a direct result of what we undergo beside of course the part that is influenced by our genes or what our forefathers underwent.
I have had my share of influences. And one of the things that have always influenced me is ‘the nature of beauty’. I have to my discredit have converted a thing of such simplicity into a mystery, but all in the hope that it will reveal to me a facet of itself which till now has escaped the eyes of everyone who ever came close to laying his/her eyes on something that he/she considered a real thing of beauty. It might seem completely pointless and vain to have such a pursuit when we have enlightened souls constantly declaring that everything is bathed in beauty if you have the ability to see it. It might sound like an intelligent excuse but may be it’s only the beauty of that vision what I was after.
It’s again to my discredit how I continue to dissect beauty and love, the two apostles of greatness, and carry on categorizing them, calling them all sorts of names in my head for personal reference so that when I come across them I can draw on that particular sort and call it something that helps me to systematize my understanding. I do this, to my increasing discredit, with a view to limit the insecurity that is generated out of the lack of my own beauty and in complete knowledge of the fact that the sources of the two and all their kinds are constant and common.
My foolish pursuit of this fictional mystery is such that even the slightest conversation on the topic is deposited consciously into the finest grey cells of my mind I have (the best of whatever I have) for the sake of convenient retrieval. One such conversation occurred when I was talking to my friend Pierre. We were talking about beauty without specifying the type and form and not surprisingly by default we were talking of ‘physical beauty’ when he said that research says that children of young parents are found to have more symmetrical features and symmetry according to the laws of design is one of the intrinsic features of beauty. The talk then could have easily meandered into discussing how physical beauty effects mental beauty during the course of one’s life or vise-versa, but the sporadically rare work at the office surprisingly helped hold our horses.
Anyway, I narrated what Pierre said because I saw something on the streets today that I have come to call nothing less than ‘absolute real beauty’. I witnessed it from the bus while going to Express towers. The red double-decker bus I was traveling on had just stopped on a traffic light where all sorts of vehicles were lined up along the zebra crossing. Two imposing Mercs and the macho Pajero stood proudly parading their striking beauty, the perceptible physical definition of it which dominates our understanding despite the fact that there is no dearth of car enthusiasts who would stop at nothing short of comparing their mechanical beauties to the most striking beauties of human flesh and blood of spirit themselves. In any case, irrespective of if one considers them live or not, the steely grills of the Mercs and the Pajero and the ‘less beautiful’ cars glinted in the killer sun arrogantly. The stately smooth lines on the metal of the cars seemed to pompously defy the angular sensibilities of yesteryears. The impeccable paint jobs on the cars were beginning to encourage another discussion about the role of color in beauty to crack open when I saw something that put all debates to rest and questioned the very definition of beauty as we (as in increasingly more people) have come to believe it, mostly because they have been programmed by that another huge influence in our lives, which comprises of an equally vast array of dominant messages, called media.
If you are wondering what put an end to my foolish search for beauty, it was only a brown boy that I saw who effortlessly put my little self-amusing (or self-tantalizing) mystery to shame. A little boy of about 10 years or so, evidently paralyzed in one half of the body, bare breasted in the killer sun, trying his best to cross the street on the zebra crossing. From my place in the bus I could see him struggling with his body to cross the street against the backdrop of the ‘beautiful’ cars. By a conservative estimate, it would take him five times as much time to cross the street as would take a ‘normal’ person.
The red light on the traffic pole seemed to have been frozen in time as he crossed the street. The sound from the traffic seemed to evaporate as he crossed the street, his body inching forward somehow supported by the tiny supply of balance that he could manage with in his paralytic state.
In the bus, I felt a few more necks turn in the direction, his direction in which I was looking so intently. He was almost at the other end of the street when the red light turned to orange. A few more feet to go before the beauties lined up on the crossing would roar to take their masters to their important destinations. And then it flashed, it happened. It happened and put my vain mystery to shame. Apart from that, it curtly put me again into the club of firm believers who believe in the universal, unified and simple nature of beauty which makes it a free flowing force, which can move between any two or more places, people, and points in time.
What had happened was that the little brown boy, paralyzed in one side of the body, without a shirt on his back and struggling to cross the street had smiled bravely amidst his struggle. What seemed like a mammoth task for him, just a few more steps and he would be on the other side of the street. Even as the little brown boy teetered along, the signal turned red and it gave me that faint feeling of apprehension about the steely beauties that were just raring to roar off. But fortunately, to my disbelief and relief, the mechanical beauties had seemingly been sensibly restrained till the struggling, smiling boy would cross the street safely. Meanwhile, the boy, unaware of the status of the traffic lights carried on to the other end and once he was there, he stopped to rest immediately. As soon as the boy appeared to have made it, the beauties lined up on the crossing promptly sped away displaying the kind of aggression one is accustomed from them.
I moved on too, aboard my bus, my mysteries solved, my doubts dispelled, my insecurities about the nature of beauty shattered, my heart applauding every single wobbly step the little brown kid took. What do you know; the incident of the boy at the crossing made me feel like I had come across God in the street today. And I couldn’t help thinking about the boy in the context of the discussion that I had had with Pierre, ‘if his beauty had a face...if his beauty had a face…’ and then another thought (more sensible) trailed close behind it. ‘Stupid, his beauty does have a face; his face.’
Namibaba is not in a condition to say anything today ‘cause he has just met God on the streets of Bombay and he is still in a state of shock.
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