Thursday, February 21, 2008

Impossibly Human

How many studies have there been on human relationships? How many "experts" have claimed that they have the solutions to human dilemas ? How many humans have proved exceptions to all the studies above? How many studies are there to "study the studies"? alright! i will stop.The answer anyway is either innumerable or i dont know.

Personally this topic has occupied most of my thought time. And like walking along a pebbled path and turning over the pebbles to find something new, i have always found a new train of thought for the same topics.But the end point of most of these tangents are that we humans are utterly ridiculous. We are cursed . We go round and round and round in a million circles.Each of these circles dont make sense in the first place.So they definitely dont make sense when the connect with circles of other human beings.The pattern of our lives end up looking like the mindless doodle of an infant.{maybe even that is saying too much}

Ok.Pause.Why am i rambling so much?Well an incident occured today which totally surprised me.There is this old security guard of a our neighbouring hospital. Well now he would have been totally unremarkable except for one thing.His rulership of the parking lot. He keeps moving the board"hospital parking only" towards our office thus stealing most of our parking spaces. Then he goes ahead and saves the stolen parking spaces for people who bribe him. We have all thought one or two vicious thoughts abut him when we drive down and see all the spaces full.

Today i found a space and triumphantly parked there. He came running from somewhere to protect his precious space.He promised he would clear up some space elsewhere for me. I acquiesced to see what he would do next. He started moving the bikes an inch here and an inch there, all the while looking at me and grumbling about his back. I realized this was not a task he could do so i moved the bikes myself and squeezed in my bike. I assumed he would ask me for money but he just smiled and went away. He had made me late by 15 more mins so any charitable thought towards him vanished.This incident slipped from my mind by evening.When i slowly limped to my bike on my injured leg the old man appeared again from nowhere.I thought he was going to ask me for money now so i started limping faster. He walked faster.Finally he got to me and said

"madam.you were alright in the morning what happened to your leg.anyway, take real good care of it.put Iodex and massage and keep it warm water for sometime and then take lots of rest.It will become alright" so saying he smiled and walked away.

I think i was just too stunned to react. I stared after him in perplexed amusement.Maybe i should have felt guilty for harbouring bad thoughts of him.

But i was too happy! Happy that i had found one of those elusive reasons as to why i am still idealistic and amused because he very well could deny me a parking space tomorrow even if I was covered from head to toe in bandages!

-a tribute to our old man, the protector of all innocent parking lots.

4 comments:

talegari (ತಾಳೆಗರಿ) said...

I have a way of looking at it, nothing to say about 'connecting million circles'. The old guard is just normal human with certain survival instincts.Here getting money by making space to others is the survival instinct and he has no intention of causing trouble to others(he is not going to think of the trouble caused by him to others till it crosses a certain threshold). His making space for you is the a slight guilt gesture. Advising you as regards to your injury is again the normal behaviour.(being touched by sensibility of the situation).

Lets say there is a hawk which preys on the young one of another bird or creature, kills it and brings it as food to its young ones which it cares and loves very much. Lines of comparision are not one to one clear, hope you get the idea underneath.

ps:I am not a biologist.Just what I felt.

Unknown said...

what you say is of course true. My point was more along the lines of how we have lost sight of the base human nature. We have complicated everything and followed tangents from that and come to conclusions that are entirely wrong. But then something like this happens. You pause and you rethink everything. I hold that precious.

Anonymous said...

We go with pre-conceived notions about people based on certain unwarranted assumptions.

Hope my stay here keeps me as a better man once back :)

talegari (ತಾಳೆಗರಿ) said...

@ aditi: I understand your perspective-"My point was more along the lines of how we have lost sight of the base human nature. We have complicated everything and followed tangents...".

True that is precious in the process as we mature.