Wake up in wonder*

 

 

“Look! I hold up this envelope, I look at it … a whitish patch of colour…you also see the same envelope…but a different whitish patch of colour different from me…and …all of you have a different whitish patch of colour …your distance from me is different, according to differences in your eyesight and place of sitting …so is true for shape also…some of you have rhomboidal…others have rectangular…(and some others can see a part of it only) the wonderful part is …had you all seen me commit a murder….your evidence will be accepted in any court of law as conclusive evidence.… to hang me …but you could not swear in a court of law that you had all seen the same whitish patch of colour …” And thus the teacher went on:

 

Coming back home I was looking at my table…though I have seen it hundreds of times but today I felt I was looking at it as if it is the first time. I wonder whether my eye-sights are changed or the object has assumed a new look, previously it was not so. In my wanderings on wonder, I felt a new world inside gradually opening before me. My belief system was shattered and my mental habit was disturbed and reached a point where beliefs and ideas had been accepted too hastily, now my reflective thought attained a peak where it appears inconsistent, outright contradictory. Is this the same table I left before going to college or it is different? It exposed me to a new perspective and unlocked a new world that broke my myth of taking for granted everything and was elevated to the feeling of awe.

 

Friends! ...how many times we used to read the adventures of Gulliver, who swims to Lilliput where he was tied up by people who were less than six inches, to Brobdingnag, inhabited by a race of giants, eventually ended up on the flying island of Laputa where all had one eye pointing inward and the other upward. They remained lost in thought of mathematics and music having no practical applications. Finally he landed to the Houyhnhnms, where he found a race of intelligent horses that were cleaner and more rational, communal, and benevolent. Though at that time neither did we understand the errors, follies, and frailties that human beings are prone to nor satire but we used to travel in wonder with pictures and dreamt of going to those places. Friends!! How many times we used to climb at the roof top of our houses at night when there were no clouds, we used to look up through the night sky full of stars and moon. And just few years back I enjoyed the wondrous meteoric shower.

Now if one asks what are those stars? As a matter of fact, the gestalt of those stars which do not exist there now appears as if it is there, though some of those have gone into nova or black holes and no longer exist even when one is seeing them. Thus, what one sees is an illusion striking the eyeball. One’s mind is open to the possibility that things are not what they appear. The sense of wonder is reawakened with the key to reconnect it to embrace this wild world again.

 

In the teeth of these amazing odds, we in our ordinariness exist on this planet almost in human-centric bubble. We forget how to see the world outside with wonder under our gaze. We are all in an ocean of wonders. We doubt; we fear; we think strange things. Yes, Friends!! Never forget to look up at the sky, lest you will miss the rainbow. But look under your feet also otherwise you will fall in a drain. Wonderful experiences may be terrible and may be breathtaking at a time. Remember friends!! Arjun was granted the divine vision at his request to Lord Krishna to show him His Viśhwarūp or the infinite cosmic form. When he saw the entire creation in the body of the God with unlimited arms, faces etc., where thousands of suns were blazing together in the sky, the sight dazzled him. Arjun, full of wonder and with hair standing on end was unstable with fear, bowed his head with folded hands before the Lord and asked Him to show His normal pleasing form. Krishna consoled the frightened Arjun by assuming his placid two-armed form. Be careful!! See the rainbow but don’t fall in the ditch.

 

If one no longer pauses to wonder and stands enveloped in awe, one is as good as dead or blind. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled with fear to incite what is unfathomable remains as the most radiant beauty. The more one wanders, the more one focuses one’s attention on the wonders and realities of the universe and less taste one shall have for destruction. One can restore one’s psychological health with wonderful sights.

 

At our tender age we used to wonder during the trip to the circus or magic show of great P.C. Sircar, to watch the firework-show with great amazement. Yesterday when I was reading my own piece of writing, which I wrote several years before, I was wondering oh! Such a nice piece I can never write right now. Or sometimes I wonder, Oh! Trash, I wrote this piece, so nastily and in such higgledy-piggledy manner? Sometimes I wonder my head is so full of dreams and an appetite for wonder-quest. Watch the beauty of the migratory birds, the roar of the rising water of the sea and mounting mist from the falls, burnt-orange colour sunsets behind the Howrah Bridge, and coral reefs of the astonishing arrays of the ocean. Wonderful to see someone chasing the dreams passionately, the repeated assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter, looking at the baby-donkey¹ first photograph of Raghu Rai which was published in the London times, brought strength that will endure as long as life lasts. Though the feeling of awe frequently happens in solitude, it draws us out of ourselves and toward others and inspires generosity and compassion. As Kant puts:

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

 

In his treatises, Hero of Alexandria describes a range of devices for producing spectacles and generating wonder. Hero uses the concept of wonder to add an intellectual component to the utility of mechanics to relate expertise to the divine and true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring. …What better gift one can offer to a child except for a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life as an unfailing antidote against the monotony and disenchantment of later years? An example of wonder is feeling awe when looking at the face of a newborn baby talking in full sentences.

 

One day I saw a boy searching the roots of the tree and suddenly I ask the reason for exploring the roots, his answer surprises me—“I am looking for its origin from where did it come and where was it before.” The sun looks to me to be not so far away, not so big, and not so hot either, and I guarantee that the sun looks as if it moves, but to my dismay all are misapprehension. Our sages brooded over in the hymn of creation when, why, and by whom the universe came into existence!! I wonder how to recuperate my consciousness coping with the objects too great to be encompassed!

That even nothingness was not, nor existence, there was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it. What covered it? Where was it? In who’s keeping? Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed? ²

 

I often wonder, Politician talks so much non-sense about social trajectory and I wonder too about their ability to talk—a rare species of the human domain!!

 

And now see my friends !! Picasso was walking home one day and saw a bicycle seat and handlebars lying on the side of the road. The moment he saw them he knew what to do. He took them home, stuck them together, and created this sculpture of a bull’s head³– an art object simple yet ‘astonishingly complete metamorphosis’. Seen from the everyday perspective, the handlebars and the seat are experienced as parts of a bicycle with specific functions for seating and governing. However, only when they lose their everyday pragmatic meaning as bicycle parts and transcend into the new symbolic level of reality, does the aesthetic experience emerge. In other words, to be a part of an aesthetic experience, beauty must transcend from its extrinsic to aesthetic values—that is, a beautiful object must become an object of beauty. Thus two levels of narrative are associated in two ways, where the surrounding environment is shadowed, self-awareness is aroused, what we call in Indian context ‘rasa’ which literally means taste or delight, and is employed to denote the essence of the artwork. In this state of flow, the person is self-transcending, self-forgetful, and bewildered in time and space. Bharata in his Natyaśāstra explains: “every activity (on the stage/art) is aimed at the creation or generation of rasa”. Rasa is realized when emotion is awakened in the mind of a sensitive person in such a way that it has none of its customary responsive inclinations and is occurred in an impersonal and pensive manner. The contemplative self is free from all craving, striving and external necessity, idealized in masquerading particulars. Such an experience is supposed to be blissful and self-generative, out of this everyday life, though the bottom line seems to be that any aura of wonder experience is never fully intelligible. Varied repertoire of musical notes triggers the unexpected and powerful emotional responses which results in tears. One encounters celestial amazement in the face of the greatness or sheer beauty of engrossing performance of musical concert.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is infinitely developed by generating a real dream’s characteristic mixture of vagueness and vividness. Alice falls down in a rabbit hole and finds herself in Wonderland, a bizarre and completely alien place in which she encounters a series of very peculiar characters. She gets involved in strange situations and conversations with Wonderland’s inhabitants. It is often perceived as merely a trip to a fantasy world created by Alice’s imagination, which has no connection with reality. As an explorer, Alice finds that the land is populated by beings that are governed by a set of social codes which are unfamiliar to her. Instead of adapting to this new society, she does not conform to its values and acts as if she was entitled to impose her own. When Alice meets the mouse, she wonders how a mouse should be addressed. She turns the notion upside down; she figures out the mouse should be addressed as in her brother’s Latin books “A mouse, Oh mouse…” During the fall through the rabbit-hole Alice wonders: ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. Let me see that would be four thousand miles down.’ As a matter of fact, the novel ends with Alice rebelling against the Queen, who once again sentences Alice to death: ‘Off with her head!’ …Nobody moved. ‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice and she had grown to her full size by this time. ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’ Wonderland appears to be a place where everything is possible, and absurdity and nonsense seem to be the order of the day. The reader is transported to fantasy backgrounds that seem to lack a place in time and space but nonetheless, the presence of the author through his ironic view of reality is reflected in it. The issues that Carroll explores in his novel are timeless ones, such as the transgression of justice, the abuse of power, and so on. The habit of wonder promoted, thus, defines one as roomy and profound.

 

However, what inspires me most is to lift my eyes to heaven, since there is always the last time for everything overhead, without any ruckus, the stars are going out.

 

And finally, have you ever noticed the un-blinked-eyes of the idol of Lord Jagannatha! Someone interprets in an awesome manner:

 

The Lord beholded his own creation

And Lo! His Eyes remained as wide open as for ever —

Absolutely wonder-struck in Eternity!!!

 

*বিস্ময়ে জাগে (an expression from Tagore)

 

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2.नासदासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं नासीद्र्जो नो व्योम परो यत् |

किमावरीवः कुह कस्य शर्मन्न्म्भः किमासीद्गहन गभीरम् || (Nasdiyasukta)

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