Beauty - A Situational Perception!

Is beauty a concept of contrasting colours distributed in a certain pattern?

The sky is beautiful when the clouds form in a mix of shades; a rainbow adds colour to that very sky and projects yet a distinct beauty. The saffron sunset is a beauty that captivates the heart of even the heart-less, the golden yellow of dawn has its own palette of colours that exudes beauty.

The nudity is a colour that becomes richer with a bright shawl carelessly thrown over its shoulders highlighting the contrast of colours and enriching its beauty! Is it true too that the measure of what we fall in love in a person is the beauty that we perceive from the contrast of colours…the texture of skin contrasting with the colour of clothing, that image contrasting with the green and ash and purple and violet of the park or the place, the very many contrast that we are unconscious about yet leaves its signature in making an impression the image of that person, a combination of contrasting colours, among the other elements?

Is that impression created by the contrast of colours any significant even when all the other parameters are uniform? A brown thin strap of a watch in her wrist makes her hands beautiful, thus signaling one that she is beautiful; is this perhaps an unconscious thinking one would have? What when the colours smudge, fade or disengage tampered by passing time? Does the old definition of beauty get redefined?

Or, is beauty a concept of space, with a certain planned positioning of things?

The nail polish on the toe nails makes her feet look so beautiful; when the same amount is applied on the tip of nose you become a laughing-stock! The bare chest of a woman is a barren sight, but how beautiful it transforms with a tiny piece of pendant! Is beauty then a concept of space and how the space is filled, or left empty? Does emptiness define beauty on some occasions, while fullness defines it on some other occasions? Beauty of a ballet is the fullness of its stage; of yoga, it is in the emptiness! In a particular staging of event someone or something appears beautiful, and when the backdrops of what created that beauty is removed, the perception of beauty is shifted, perhaps deformed. Are our impulses controlled by the comprehensive beauty of images captured with the background that doesn’t form a part of the actual, such as in an advertisement of a four wheeler that comes with the background of a beautiful mountain or splashing waters?! Does what is revealed distort the perception of beauty of what is concealed, or does how much is unveiled form the perception of what is beauty in its absolute? What then when the pieces are shuffled, space realigned, emptied and refilled with different forms and shapes occupying the vacuum or creating one, in the true wickedness of destiny? Does the old definition of beauty get redefined?

Or, is beauty a concept of sound, controlled or released in a particular manner?

Have you ever told someone “Oh! I like how you say that! It’s so sweet!” I love some words my friend speaks, love for how it sound through her; sometimes it doesn’t even have to be packaged in a word, it can just be a ‘hmm’ said in a particular way! That’s beautiful, sweet! There are moments when I love my life as I live through it with a background of a melodious song, or the sound of a flute! The meaning of feeling is defined with a different emotion when I listen to the voice of Sade sing The Smooth Operator; the meaning of existence is defined in different words when I watch Yanni perform on stage – the love for the sounds I hear become so deep and connecting. What is the role of sound in influencing a relationship – the sound of voice or instruments? Does one love a violinist because she plays violin so well – in love with the emotions her touch of bow on the violin strings produce, thus morphing that sound to be the beauty of that person? What when an instrument goes off-pitch, broken string, or a faded voice? Does the definition of beauty get redefined?

In the absurdity of these thoughts I am searching for non-hypocritical truth! And I know, I am not finished; the definitions of contrasts will continue in the mill of my thoughts…; share with me your thoughts of the unexpressed definitions of beauty.

Shahir.

A Love Letter

It is a nicer feeling to prepare, sit and write to you; in olden days, this would have been done in a nice – perhaps scented – paper, written with a beautiful black fountain-pen, seated against an open window, with a table lamp on the side, as the whole word is asleep after a day’s toil; with the curtains flapping its wings as the cool breeze from the paddy field or the woods outside would attempt to enter through windows, to eavesdrop on the whisper of thoughts within…before those thoughts are shaped into words and are carefully laid out on the paper for the eyes of the beloved to read, or feel, rather.

It all gave way to emails; the curves and curls of ‘i' and ‘m’ and ‘b’ and ‘d’ and the letters of the like, the tails and wings of ‘g’ and ‘y’ and ‘q’ and ‘p’ that we carefully draw as we write, decorating the letters and words written in cursive to match the beauty of our thoughts, are now shortened to Ctrl+B to bold or Ctrl+I to italicize, taking away my ability to express the deeper sense of love that I hold for you, by writing for you a beautiful letter, to read, love and cherish.

We lost the joy of writing the words of our love, for us to feel the paper, , knowing that through those lines had moved the fingers that wrote those words of love, fingers that carried the thoughts of the heart that owned them. What an immeasurable joy was it to look at the smudged ink on the corner of a line or in the middle of the paper, where we conveniently imagined that smudge to be from the drop of tear from the thought of missing each other or smudged by the sweat through the lines of your palm from holding the pen as you sit fathoming the depth of love, jogging through the memory of path we walked together!

And the wait for the postmaster! There wasn’t a man in the whole of universe as important as the man in that khaki shirt and brown bag made of cloth; there wasn’t a sound more harmonious and longed for than the ringing of the bell of his bicycle; there wasn’t a wait longer than the wait for that sight and sound of the person who carried in his bag a little envelop that contained pieces of thoughts from heart beating my name miles away. The joy of receiving a letter quickly sink from the realization of the wait for the next one, and then it is a mission to read the letter, then the paragraphs, then the sentences, then the words, then the letters, then the punctuations, then the space in between…; they become your image, they carry your sound, they radiate your light; they reduces the distance of time and space; or so I believed, every time I read you.

It became easier, as time passed, to tell you that I am remembering you, by simply picking up a rose or a teddy bear from the ocean of world-wide-web, designed by someone in the Bahamas or Brazil; what is its beauty, O love, when compared to the beautiful leaf or a special flower that we plucked as we walked through the woods that we then stored with care and passion in between the pages of our books. The pages faded in time, the pigments of leaf and flower were all lost in time, yet how we retained the fragrance of that love we so well cherished in that memory.

In the space of modest needs and simplest expressions, where a bunch of blue berries to eat, a tender coconut to drink, and a garland of wild flowers to gift you, would have marked a grand celebration of our love, than the euphoria for instant expressions that stole the grace and joy of loving, living and longing.

I still want to write more; I still want you to give me leaf and flowers to keep in my book; I still long for the sight of postman walking towards my gate to give me that little envelope…I long for the olden days in the light of this new age!

Love

Note: This is a fictitious letter.

In search of that thing called...

More often, the best of joy in my life has derived from the many little moments that are so warm and worthy; they didn’t unfold under the crystal chandeliers and breathtaking designs of lazer beams in the grandeur of a ball-room or with a guard-of-honour, but were the simple moments carved out of the simple events of normal days and nights.

They are the moments when I kneel down to hug my little girl as she come with her little complaints of her sister; there is an inexpressible joy in listening to her broken sentences attempting to express the series of events that apparently made her little life miserable!

They are moments like when I watch my daughters sleep… Huh! Have you experienced the feeling as you watch your little ones go through a dream in their sleep! Watch them sleep; looking at their face that you may have not looked so close for weeks or months! Often times I wish to enter their minds to see why they smiled, or to see who they are playing with, the gestures of their eyebrows or fingers indicating some conversation!

These are the simple inexpensive but priceless moments through which I often felt the ultimate joy of living, and often feel nostalgic when I look back..through the path travelled.

I regret the nights when I stayed back in the office or remained busy with trivia’s that then appeared as significant– the one or two additional hours that didn’t change the world - and missed the chance of reading them a story, or putting them to sleep…or simply to be beside them and run my fingers on their forehead while listening to them tell me their stories of the day, as they slowly slip to the warm embrace of sleep…

Simple joy, I realize, is in the presence of, and our contribution to, an unabridged life of the living beings around us, whether it is about tending the plants in the garden or spending a moment to mend a broken care; it’s closer than we thought we can reach, and nearer than the distance we readied ourselves to travel!

Attaining simple joy, I realize, often doesn’t require crossing continents, or digesting libraries of Cambridge or Alexandria; it may just be at an arm’s length, standing disguised, for us to notice, and the language it requires is one that most of us are born with – the language of empathy.



Shahir.