The Levellers

I remember reading this poem long back, during school. I was mighty impressed then with the thought that there is this great equaliser to which everyone must bow. I quote this poem here

Death the Leveller

By James Shirley (1596-1666)

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THE glories of our blood and state 
         Are shadows, not substantial things; 
There is no armour against Fate; 
         Death lays his icy hand on kings: 
         Sceptre and Crown 
         Must tumble down, 
         And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 

Some men with swords may reap the field, 
         And plant fresh laurels where they kill: 
But their strong nerves at last must yield; 
         They tame but one another still: 
         Early or late 
         They stoop to fate, 
And must give up their murmuring breath 
When they, pale captives, creep to death. 

The garlands wither on your brow, 
         Then boast no more your mighty deeds! 
Upon Death's purple altar now 
         See where the victor-victim bleeds. 
         Your heads must come 
         To the cold tomb: 
Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. 

____________________________________________

While death is the greatest leveller, I can think of a few more. 

Seen a school while the process of admissions are on? Anxious parents and well prepared kids. The blackberry toting father has left his baggage of ego and aggressive demeanour back home. Parents are their humblest selves at the schools of their kids.

Hospitals? A sick person, however high and mighty, has to experience the pain. He cannot escape the course of the disease. At best, he may manage to get the most effective treatment, but still cannot escape the side effects, the pain.

I am in the process of renewing my passport. For those, who haven't seen the system in India, I can succinctly say, passport office is extremely crowded, but not chaotic. There is an order and its only the sheer numbers that increases the wait time and not the process by itself. So yes, the passport office is yet another leveller. There was this uneducated, elderly man right before me in the queue. There are couples with very small babies, mothers with several children in tow. There are those who are patient to wait and those who manage to get irked at the smallest imagined slight. You wait with all of them.

It is at such places one is reminded of the ground under their feet. Such places jolt one's head out of the clouds. 

So what other experiences can you count as levellers? Any thoughts?

What are we missing!!

A particularly long and stressful day when everything happened to need immediate attention and when every single task had to follow Murphy's Law (if something can go wrong, it WILL), had me desperate to relax and wind down by the end of it.

Reading a book was out of question. I was too stressed to even read, come to think of it. Mindless iPad games did not do the trick either and hence I found myself take a walk when the boys had dinner. Halfway through my walk, a cat startled me by jumping out of the mini-tree on the pathway and we both looked at each other straight in the eye. Neither of us broke the gaze, and I actually liked looking into the clear eyes of the cat. It would be presumptuous of me to say that the cat communicated something or that it showed me a large depth. Naah....

All it made me think of was that animals are colour blind. They do not see colour. They completely miss out on the blue sky and green grass and pretty flowers and everything else. I assume they see things in blacks, whites and greys? But then, a cat sees much better in the dark than we can ever hope to. It can see in the dark, so what if its all grey? A bat can emit sound waves at a much higher frequency than our ears can ever comprehend. A dog can smell things that we cannot. Our intelligence helps us understand that there are things we do not see, hear, smell. But that will never replace the experience, will it? Maybe we are built only to see seven colours and their combinations and not more. May be there are more colours. Yes, we know about infra red and ultra violet, but we do not see them anywhere do we? And may be there are colours of a totally different dimension than below red and above violet? In which case, we don't know what we are missing? Just like the cat will never know that it cannot see colours.

This train of thought humbled me and so it happened that the eyes of a stray cat did what no other activity could. I went back home, my normal calm self.

In the Shadow of the Banyan

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is rare to come across a book that jolts you and makes you weep. I am more than glad that I came across this one and read it.

This is set in the time of 1975-79 at Cambodia. The period of Khmer Rouge, the killing fields, the systemic breakdown of the fabric of the Cambodian society.

The story is that of a young 7 year old Raami who is forced to flee her home with her loved ones barely packing up what could be a few bundles. It is the story of loss, tribulation, of a seven year old who is forced to understand things that even adults would not want to. It is also a story of dreams, hope, beauty and the human want to survive at all odds.

When her father is taken away by the Khmer Rouge, the young Raami beseeches with him to not go away. She begs him to tell her one last story. If that doesn't break your heart, nothing will.

Her mother's fury at what she felt was abandonment at the hands of her husband.  In just a few lines of a story of a family of birds, the author gets the reader to feel what this woman goes through.

Only when she finally manages to flee her country, not knowing what had become of her father, what his last moments were like, does the child dare to take his name.

There are too many poignant moments like these, too many for me to list down. If you are looking for historical facts, or if you want to understand what the genocide was like, this book is not for you. But if you liked the Kite Runner or The Thousand Splendid Suns, I would seriously recommend this one.

This is one book I am sure to read again and again.



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