I have my dreams, I have my
fears, I have my hopes, I have my plans, yet all of it was rendered
inconsequential when I stared at Nature’s creation right in the eye. It is
strange how meaningless life is reduced to when it faces a greater power, a
force that cannot be contained within boundaries. Your plans of getting that
job with a higher salary, that dream of getting a room with a view, your fear
of failure, is all rolled into a ball like it were some old torn newspaper and
thrown into the garbage can. Such is the aura of Nature that it can make your
life seem nothing.
I had two such moments of
epiphany, once when I was hanging on to dear life on a boat that was in the
middle of a raging sea, and the other when I saw a lion at its pomp. The sea
looks calm and serene from the shores, the more you venture into it the more
you get acquainted to its fury. In Chennai, we do have the Marina Beach–the
second largest beach in the world, but yet every time a friend suggests a get
together at the beach, I exude the same enthusiasm that Indian batsmen have for
green tracks in Australia.
What could it be that makes me react the way I do?
The jam packed crowd that reduces a serene and sublime view to that of unruly,
ear piercing cacophony with images of mothers running after pesky kids? That
someone from the crowd might flick my footwear while I sink my feet under the
wet sand, as the tides wash through my feet? That I might be solicited by some
shady characters (mostly men) who upon politely turning them down resort to
abusing and name-calling? That behind every upturned boat you might bump into a
couple (sometimes of the same sex)furiously making out?
It is my lowly opinion of the
Chennai shores that had programmed in me preconceived notions about beaches all
over the world.
Maybe they steal footwear in
Bondi too.
I am sure Miami Beach has evil
lurkers, and molesters roaming about.
I bet that in the beaches of
Spain arguing with peanut sellers over the price of a pack of peanuts results
in him spitting at you.
And
then, I visited the coastal town of Umkomaas in South Africa.
The shores of Umkomaas are the
kind you would like to be ship-wrecked on, a splendid view of the sea that
stretches miles ahead, cloudy and overcast conditions, with reports of a storm
brewing on the horizon. Of the fifty five odd people that were there, forty
five of them belonged to the touring party, the rest were the skippers and tour
guides who took you on the boat ride. The group was split into different
batches which were handled by separate skippers. Not until had we ventured into
the middle of the sea, did the waves that wet-slapped me across my face made me
feel exhilarated, a thrill that you won’t feel by meeting your deadlines, or
winning the employee of the month award, or topping the class. This was about
getting high purely on nature, to be embraced by it, to wet ourselves by its
fury, to be taught a lesson by Mother Nature that in front of her splendor
nothing else matters.
We were advised in case of
nausea or sea sickness to look at the land, which in turn gave us a hope that
the shores were not that far. But the farther we went into the sea, the more
the shores started to seem like a speck, and as for the sea we had gotten so
familiarized with her mood swings from frenzy to moments of calm like she were
an old friend. I tried to break into a rendition of "Elay Keechan",
but I was advised to stop being cocky by the fellow members of the boat since
were were not out of rough seas yet.
Nothing makes you appreciate the
value of life than the possibility of staring at the face of death. While
holding on to the railings of the rocking speed boat, where even a slip could
mean being thrown into the shark infested sea, I realized of all that I had and
yet how incessantly I had been grumbling for so little. I was not worried that
I wouldn’t get to win the employee of the month award, or get to see my career
graph progress, or have my own cabin that would have the view of the city’s
skyline.
All I wanted to do once I reached
safe shores was to call my support system–my friends, my family, and the people
I care for and thank them for all the unconditional love, care and support they
had showered on me over the years. And if I had my way, to probably tell that girl about how she took my breath
away every time I saw her.
Maybe that is all there is to
life, not your money in the bank, not the things you own, not where you hang
out in the weekends, not how much you can afford to spend over a bowl of soup.
It’s all about having someone to hold on to when your boat is being rocked,
someone with whom you can share that bowl of soup. And I wouldn’t have realized
any of this……
Had I not been thrown in the
middle of the sea.
* * *
* * * *
I had been to South Africa on a
vacation, and apart from AIDS the other thing that you associate with South
Africa is a Safari, since exploring the former would be more risky and requires
two to tango, I went for the latter. I had been to the Lions Park in Johannesburg. I have never
seen a Lion in real life, I have been to zoos and parks in India at a much
younger age, at an age where I was too immature to acknowledge the beasts of
the wild. For me back then, the animals were just a source of inspiration for
Disney’s cartoon characters, the image of having seen a lion at an early age
has never stuck with me.
Maybe it was the thrill of
watching a ferocious creature, a change from the two legged beasts that I
encounter every day in my social life that had the hairs on the back of my neck
stand upright. Maybe it was the nature of the beast, the Lion, the majestic
King of the Jungle that has inspired stories, movies, poetry that had my jaw
dropped and had me all starry-eyed like I were watching a Rockstar in
action.
But then a Rockstar he was, it
was the way he moved, the way he growled, the way he prowled. And much like a
Rockstar, the White Lion posed for the cameras gazing into it with an intense
and fierce look, we were told he had even starred in a movie named “White
Lion”, and as my eyes met his I could feel my soul dissipating away. How can you not be overawed by looking at a mammoth creature as white as snow,
that weighs close to four hundred pounds and looks at you with eyes that could
cut through steel? The natives consider the white lion as a messenger of gods,
a statement you wouldn’t deny. Looking at him made me feel that I was in the
lowest rungs of all creatures that walked the earth.
Take one man from our race, the
super-achiever, the Alpha Male, a Greek god type who looks like Adonis, someone
who has achieved it all, someone who has done Engineering from an IIT, then
went on to do an MBA from an IIM, and then a doctorate from Wharton, and now
has a thousand people working under him, screws movie stars, earns so much
money that he can afford to wipe his ass with it and flush it down the drain.
Then, put him in a room next to a Lion.
Chances are that even an
all-conquering, globe-trotter who reaches for the stars and pins them on his
shoulders would feel insignificant when standing next to a Lion so sublime.
Nothing shatters your self-esteem as looking at a lion can, with him walking
around the open field like he were ruling the world, his long mane blowing in
the wind, the path he walks clears all by itself, he doesn’t have to say a word
to show you that he’s in command, but when he roars even the mountains shudder
upon hearing his voice.
Although he was in a contained
environment, where he was monitored and surveyed he never gave a feeling that
he was imprisoned. Sure, he was in an open field with his own Pride of lions,
he never had to use his hunting skills to put the food on the table for his
family, infact, he was reduced to a prisoner standing in line during chow time.
He knew this was not his natural habitat, but was his prison without a cage.
Yet he never let that crown topple of his head, he may be amidst humans, but he
sure as hell was not letting them know that he was a beast conquered. His
handlers still feared him, our guide was wary of what he could do, she also
warned us that our chances of surviving against a behemoth that covers four
hundred meters in six seconds were next to none. So, even if we dropped our
cameras out of the moving bus, we might as well consider it as good as gone,
for there was no way would we have the luxury of getting out of our vehicle and
getting it back.
We are so busy building
technologies, and conquering new worlds that we seldom acknowledge forces that
are greater than us. We are caught up in our own stories of how smart we are,
and how the whole of mankind is making progress, that we may even colonize Mars
one day. So deluded we are in predictions of our own glory that we fail to
realize that there lies a world outside our rooms that is bigger than all of
humanity put together. My one week surrounded by nature made me appreciate the
fact that as humans no matter what we create, and build, and no matter how many
moons we conquer, or galaxies we explore, none of what we have done or what we
have seen could match the breathtaking grandeur of being on a rocking boat in
the middle of a tumultuous ocean, or watching a magnificent Lion roam the earth
like he owns it.
He who has said it, said it
right “Until lions have their own storytellers, tales of the hunt will always
favor the hunter.”
