When you weren’t looking...

I observed a rather strange thing the other day. I was standing on the balcony, intently staring at dumptrucks and cranes put a big pipe into the even bigger chasm, dug up in the road in front of my house. Except, they weren’t really doing anything. All, those heavy machines were doing, was to flit around from one side to another, raise their robotic arms only to lower them again and make those characteristic whirring noises only to stop midway. I was excited at the prospect of actually witnessing something interesting happen but it seemed as though the mammoths were deliberately fooling around, conscious by my presence and waiting for me to go away, to get on with their work. How often does that happen to us? The moment we stop and carefully observe something, it seems to lose all its vigor and life. I looked out of the window for a quick glance sometime later and ‘voila’, the gaping hole in the road has almost been filled up, pipe and everything! When did that happen? They were so darned slow when I was actually looking at them!

Countless things in our everyday life fit into the ‘I can’t work while you’re staring at me’ category. Most obviously, the humble clock. Everyone, I’m sure has noticed that the hands of the clock seem to drag themselves, almost unwillingly so, when you sit down and stare at them. That the act is a telling indicator of how jobless you are and is fantastic at putting you to sleep is another story. But as a kid, I remember trying to ‘monitor’ the clock, in a bid to investigate how on earth, my half hour cartoon show got over in a jiffy! Another common experience is with body pains. How many times, have those minor niggles, nasty sprains, groaning aches and throbbing wounds in various corners of the body magically disappeared after a good nights’ sleep? They simply refuse to die down, testing our patience and troubling us with all their might while we’re awake. But the ‘morning after’, its as if they were never there!  

These observations seem simple and profound at the same time. They are evident yet inconspicuous. Somebody might brush them off as ‘frivolous’ and yet somebody might find meaning in them. Unable to contain my philosophical side, I could not help but relate these to life itself. Doesn’t our life, too, zip by like a whirlwind while we are caught up in a plethora of activities, some essential and important, some trivial and avoidable. Buildings are built, cities are transformed, newer and more advanced gadgets take over, mankind progresses and before we take stock, its mostly too late. The kids have grown up, your sweetheart can’t see you clearly anymore and needs a cane to walk and most of those dear old pals have perished. If at all the clock teaches us anything, it is to brake once in a while, to stop and look around. To forget the rat-race for a while. Soak in life. Taste life. To find higher meaning in our existence. And when its time to move on, to store an image of life as it is, in all its still glory. Because one thing is for certain…Life, like you know it, is never coming back.