You are currently browsing the daily archive for January 2nd, 2008.
Don Quixote - that name which conjures up an image of a disheveled knight “charging at the windmills”. Think again. Behind that comic veneer lies a parable - one of passion, belief, love.
What gives a person a reason to live? What is life when one goes through its motions? Isn’t it love that powers us human beings? Isn’t it this emotion that drives the life-blood in the veins of life? The love of an idea, thought - anything. It takes “foolishness” or “madness” to pursue a seemingly lost cause. Well, who cares as long as you believe?
While Shaw would say that it is the unreasonable minds of few that germinate the power-ideas, how many have had the courage to acknowledge this madness that time? Rare indeed.
Switch to 2007 - the Age of the Indian Entrepreneur. Being different, “mad” seems to be “in”. Talk of start-ups buzz around me all the time. “I do not wish to work for another person..” but half of them end up doing just that. The power of your dream diminishes exponentially with the number of people you share it with. Keep it low. Keep it your cherished secret. Those very people you glibly gabbed it to would torture you with your failed dreams later on. The path of madness is one of unreasoned action, where your whole being lives, breathes that dream-not hollow talk.
What happens when reality hits you hard in all-cruelty? Cynicism sets in. Innocence is lost. One wonders what happened to that dream, that which you held onto with the slenderest rope of hope - hoping, wishing till the last minute, powering your prayers, thoughts in your waking moments into them. The “fullness” you experienced at one point of time is like heady opium - you wish for it more and more - not realizing that the moment has passed, that it’s time to move on - not believing it possible to be so. One feels foolish when one sees reason, is ashamed one ever attempted to think otherwise. Anger burns whatever beauty remained. An empty shell remains.
Where does one go from there? Well, isn’t that the triumph of humankind - to pick up the shattered bits and move on? One mutters soothing phrases from the good philosophical books. One is determined to not feel bitter, look forward, gaze to an uncertain future, look for new reasons to live.
“Make a heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-loss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss”
The saga of madness.Sigh.
