Idea within an idea
The dynamics of living emerge from finding an idea within an idea. The force of life is all about rethinking, reinvention and repositioning that idea. It is out of the old that the new is born. So when we lose that thread, we don’t know how to begin and how to go forward.
Mir Taqi Mir, the 19th-century Urdu poet, wrote:
Hamse kuch aage zamane mein hua kya kya kuch,
Phir bhi ham ghafilon ne aake kiya kya kya kuch.
(People have come and gone but only those are remembered that become the continuum of the heartbeat through its renewal and reinvention.)
In those days, the disconnect with one’s past was minimal and recreation of an idea from an idea was a tradition in the creative process. There was more to learn from lives than from the media. Today, we are distanced from the people we live with and can learn from. Today, even with the boom in social networking and communication and access to knowledge and information on the Net, it is increasingly difficult to reinvent society with the same charge, intensity and depth as it was possible earlier.
It is imperative to connect with the soil and its heartbeats, anguish, joys and pain. We discover ourselves after we have outlived our enthusiasm as consumers; by then we are often entirely bereft of relevance and purpose.
It is here that we need to pause and reflect. Did we live our life like a cog in the wheel, involved in the process of making people become like us? And will they, as they burn away, see this? Realisation is valuable, whenever it comes. At each stage it has its own potency and thrust.
This point of rethinking is the epiphany of our existence and it is here that the intangible heritage of human history and culture stands us in good stead. Language that has contained a nation’s heartbeat comes to the rescue.
Once Urdu poet Raghupati Sahay, better known as Firaq Gorakhpuri, was attending a mushaira in Lucknow University just after Independence. The unruly students were booing at the poets. A disgusted Firaq took hold of the mike and thundered, “I wish these fools were educated enough to understand Urdu so at least we could have shared a joke with them. Now they will continue with this hu-hu all lifelong!”
This said a lot — it was a sign of times to come. While the elite were carrying the cross of a deliberately imposed colonial legacy, the underprivileged were bereft of culture. Independence came with a huge price tag which we are still struggling to pay. The interest is compounded beyond all calculations for it came at the cost of our self-esteem and dignity, a price only our spiritual heritage can dream of repaying in small measures, that too only for the seekers.
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