Egoless?????

Probably it was all a lesson to teach us, a truly great person doesn't have the airs of his/her greatness.

I saw Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam up close for the first time in life today. The former President of India has the simplicity and humility which we visibly lacked, even being mere Associate secretaries of our respective departments and not an ounce more than the scores of achievers around the world.

Decked up in colour coordinated sarees, laughing, talking and joking near the red carpet, complaining of the pain in our high heeled feet due to standing and bickering about the heat even under the shade of a cosy tree, we were quite a contrast to the person whom we were all gathered to welcome.

I greeted him with folded hands, in a namaste.He simply asked me in tamil, looking at me in the face, "What are you studying?". Not so proud of my department in a BCom dominated Science and Arts college I answered "Biochemistry sir." "Oh that's a very good field!" he said and proceeded to greet my friend who was standing adjacent to me.

A few seconds of conversation, a few simple words, but with wholesome attention, even being total strangers to each others, it was disarming. What if we could learn this art of simple conversation in this ticking time bomb of a world and learn to be atleast graceful to those who approach us for help, if not actually help them? It humbled me greatly.

The true essence of knowledge is not extended degrees behind your name, but wisdom and civilization in your thought word and deed.

Like his knowledge equation says, knowledge=creativity+righteousness in the heart+courage.
  

From my window

Viewing the world from a small window

In the chamber of my existence

Through the mesh of prudence and prejudice

I admire the sunshine radiant upon this majestic tree

Quite erroneous, yet held high

Its random branches and an all enveloping canopy

Conceal its rotting undergrowth in its pleasant green

Cloaking the eyes of the likes of me

From seeing beyond its resilient reality

Restrictive, yet, I’m grateful, for it is protective

Its sap’s hues nurture the majority of life

This unbreakable inexorable machinery

Is too opaque for me to dare consider any likelihood

It crushed several lower lives underneath it

To grow colossal consuming the gifts of nature

In its own free right, thus it shelters greater lives

Than those it trampled to exist

Through some loopholes in its awning

My small window of vision

With its preconceived mesh of notions

Glimpses a struggling shrub

Beautiful like all nature’s brood

But horrid to my predisposed train of thought

It grapples for water, sunlight and soil

As rightfully its as the tree

All fairly being Gaia’s children

The behemoth seizes even its meagre necessity

Claiming its superior survival against the lowly shrub

Its divine ancestry against the unholy weed

Its existence natural and the shrub a global pollution

Though their mysterious antecedents are only common

Even in the chronicles of the tree’s own civilization

Higher lives of the tree’s shade hack away at this ugly shrub

Unknowing, unwilling to understand, accept or embrace

Diversity as a part of nature, choosing to be ignorant instead

Of the life and lives in the shrub’s microcosm

Sheltering a minority, but souls

Different but daring a niche in their unique way

As rightful attitudes as yours or mine

Some may flee to live with the tree instead

Surviving, yet torn between two states of realization

One oppressed, buried but they can identify with

The other established and accepted but coldly foreign to their individuality

What could you choose between condemnation and damnation?

Despite pacification amidst bigoted citizens of the tree

That they are unshakeable, relentless, and proper

The shrub will rise, and rise like a tempest

Claim and retrieve its inheritance from the dominant siblings

Even as I look down upon it with conformist disgust

Pray that some day this mesh of bias is torn away

Crave that we see the world not from a narrow casement

But after stepping out open and smelling the fair fragrant air

Yearn that some day the tree’s canopy shelters the shrub

Allows it space to nourish in its unique way

Open the doors to cherish that day

When all nature’s brood is

Legitimized, none bastardized