An ode to dimensionality
Christina Glaves, friend, photographer and a healer who had that rare
gift of absorbing the pain around her and thereby delivering relief and
peace, once told me that people don’t look at the sky enough. This was
said in a small cafe frequented by out-of-the-mainstream sorts in
Ithaca, New York.
We were having coffee at ‘Stella’s’ on a cold February evening in the
year 2000 and talking about people and things, the world and the
universe, eternal verities and diurnal prerogatives. The conversation
meandered from dust-speck to the universe, lingering at random things in
the in-between of these magnitudes. The sky-comment came, I remember
well, at an intersection called Humility.
Sky stories
She told her sky stories. I related mine. Just two. The first was a
thought that arrived at World’s End in the December of 1986. It was the
clearest view I’ve ever had from that point in all my many visits to
Maha Eliya or Horton Plains. The entire region South of the central
massif right down to the coast was clearly visible. How vast this island
is, I thought. It was a Poya day. That night, stretched outside a tent
and by a campfire, I looked at the cloudless sky and the full dimensions
of my existence and its utter irrelevance in the larger order of things
came to me. I knew the size of my country on the world map. The view
from World’s End indicated the size of the planet. The milky way
indicated the diga-palala of our earth in relation to the limitlessness
of the universe. It was humbling.
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World’s
End. Picture courtesy: Google |
It was empowering as well. I felt unburdened. I realized the meaning
of ‘dispensability’. I obtained the true dimensions of ‘self’ and
‘location’ in what is called ‘the larger order of things’ and what a
lottery our lives our in terms of the impact or otherwise of conscious
as well as unconscious acts. I used the word ‘empowering’ because the
shedding of illusion and ego gives working space to honesty and reason.
True, we slip and forget, but once you have a sense of dimension, it
keeps nudging you saying ‘I am around, don’t forget’.
Drunken officer
There was a second story I told Christina that night. It was the
night of February 27, 1992. I was trying to force myself to have a
dinner of dhal and bread. The dhal looked unfit for consumption. It had
too much salt. I had in any case lost my appetite. I was sharing a cell
in the Wadduwa Police Station with Ven Athureliye Rathana Thera. This
was a couple of hours before the OIC of the Police Station, one
Karunatillake began beating those being held in custody. The drunken
officer got the cell opened and having assaulted me, grabbed Ven
Rathana’s head in his enormous and cruel hand and banged it against the
wall. Again and again and again.
Right now, remembering, I note that Ven Rathana Thera is frequently
vilified by many who neither carry a single scar nor have lifted one
finger to rid this country of terrorism, the benefits of this reality
they enjoy with absolutely no thanksgiving to those who said it must be
done and can be done too. Like Ven Rathana Thera. Back then, in Ithaca,
that February evening, I related to Christina how it occurred to me that
we might all be killed that night eight years before. I realized then
that even if each of us lived another 30-40 years or even more, our
lifetimes would be nothing compared to the long span of history; that
the past did not anticipate us and the long future would not remember
anyway. It gave strength and humility. Slipped, yes and many times too
thereafter, but dimensionality asserts itself again and again to check,
to balance and re-confer humility and empowerment.
Cosmic arena
Last evening I was reminded of the needlessness of many things by a
quote that my favourite quotation-sender, Errol Alphonso sent my way.
Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer put it all in ways that I would never
have conceptualized:
‘The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the
rivers of blood spilled by all those Generals and emperors so that, in
glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction
of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of
one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of
some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they
are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.’
February is a short month and for me, one that is memory-laden, some
sad and some not. Like all other months, yes. This morning I am
conscious of dimensions, of being grain of sand and therefore,
paradoxically, empowered to embrace a universe. Tenderly, hopefully.
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