I was standing by a wall with my cousins to watch the elephant parade from their family home by the paddy fields in Mayyanad. We could hear the beat of the drums in the distance. Children were running around in excitement. Little had changed in the land of illusion; I thought incredulously recalling the years that had flown by. Each year the festival revived memories. The elephants came and went, straddled in huge iron chains. They were hired as a mark of devotion to seek favor from the gods. It was a business transaction which had baffled me for years.
As the crowd gathered around, the parade turned the corner heading for the lagoon. The intoxicated dancers were flailing their arms and stamping to the beat of the drums. The children were wide-eyed with wonder and set on a course of their own delusion. The elephants followed desultorily; flapping their ears and swishing their tails. It had been an awesome sight once, but we weren’t a captive audience anymore.
“They even sell the hairs off the tails to ensure longevity.” my elder cousin remarked indicating the great beasts. We looked on uneasily as the music from the loud-speakers competed with the drums. I could hardly hear myself think. The movement of thought had been so clear at the beginning. It had simply been a matter of presence of mind, or preoccupation. With the discursive inquiry, even the fact that the sense of ‘other’ referred to a context ‘other’ than now had surfaced by the age of seven. It had burgeoned over the years, gaining weight and control. My reference point shifted from presence to memory tipping the scales from unqualified awareness to interpretation. There was nothing I could do but watch as the mind swayed towards this ‘other’.
We had soon lost sight of our direct relation to life in our haste to communicate with each other. Abstracting life had become a game of wits as we were swept along by the ideas ballooning in our minds. Identifying things created a strong sense of identity which became a persistent fascination. Since our labels belonged to things, the desire to belong grasped our minds. We longed to belong to something or ‘other’. It had seemed so natural at the time.
I had no idea that it would play such havoc or lead to a life-long subservience to fantasy. I was too young to appreciate the potency of habit. There is impeccable order even in the carriage of thought, I realized joyfully. To counter conditioning, could we explore this movement a little deeper with our children? Why not? It would take patience and care and save them years of frustration.
If we unravel the nature of thought together, we could slow down the process of assumptions by paying attention. We could share the web of thought around. We could examine and explore. We could look at the universal paradox of relying upon abstractions to communicate with each other. We could transcend our deep loyalty to an abstract world and fall in love with life instead. Left to our own devices, we would drag along a chain of incomprehensible associations as I had done for years. Like the devotees in the parade, we would let our imagination soar making this ‘otherness’ into something vastly more.
Ignoring the magnificent head-gears of the elephants and the crowd of worshippers milling around a little girl ran across the clean swept yard picking up pieces of her burst balloon. Amidst laughter, she distributed the fragments with care and persistence. She was only one.
The din of the giant drums had exploded the bubble of illusion in my head, I realized amused. The scene of the dancers, elephants and devotees had brought to life the enchantment that went on in our own minds. I was so relieved to be free of my infatuation with words and images. “How can we liberate our children from this infatuation?” I wondered. Given a chance they too would learn to love life rather than love our ideas of it.
It would be wonderful if the next generation could benefit from our work. It would take trust and respect for the challenges facing children so they can learn to translate life into abstractions without falling foul of them for life. It would take mutual regard for intelligence to break free from our habit of relying upon abstractions to uncover truth. JK had prepared the ground with single handed determination.
All he lacked was the tacit consent from the community at large. As consensus in the community grows, we can cover that ground afresh.
It was my cousin’s turn to accept an offering from Faina, his little grand daughter. We extended our arms in earnest laughing as she meticulously placed fragments of her shattered balloon, in the palm of our hands. We put our heads together to examine the patterns on the fine strips of rubber, stretching it this way and that while the parade drifted round the bend towards the lagoon. Meanwhile the chord which held the burst balloon lay glistening upon the ground beneath our feet.
© 2022 Geetha Waters