Tag Archives: New York

Aug22

Making Sense from the Bizarre

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in the "kirat-arjuniya" episode, enc...

in the “kirat-arjuniya” episode, encounters in the forest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hullo Friends,

This story comes from the Oriya Mahabharata by Balaram Das. One day, Arjuna saw a strange creature in the forest, a creature he had never seen before. It seemed like a fusion of nine animals – its head was that of a rooster, it neck was that of a peacock, its back was a bull’s, it had a lion’s waist and serpent’s tail, and its four limbs were those of a human, a deer, a tiger and an elephant. At first Arjuna thought that this was a monster. He raised his bow to kill it. But then he realized that simply because it is a stranger does not make it a monster. A creature that does not exist in human imagination can exist in the imagination of the cosmos. He lowered his bow and the creature raised its human limb, a hand, in blessing. For the creature was Krishna himself, checking how much patience Arjuna had for creatures he did not recognize.

Often we come across situations that have no precedence, that do not make sense, that confound us. Our natural reaction is one of hostility. We want to shun it, or destroy it, and restore the familiar. We consider it a monster. But if we look at the monster with a different gaze: one with curiosity, seeking the familiar within the unfamiliar, a whole world of possibilities opens up.

Mark had lived all his life in New York City, a city that is designed as a grid. All the roads are laid out at right angles to each other. Every road has a number and there are road signs everywhere. One can get from one point of the city to another by simply following intuition, logic or the road signs. There is no need to talk to anyone to get to the destination.

So imagine his surprise when he landed in Mumbai, which is anything but a grid and where no road is at a right angle to another. In fact, he wonders, in some stretches where does the road actually end. For he sees hawkers on pavements, pedestrians on roads, bikes on dividers, buses cutting lanes and cars moving against the traffic. There were people packed into buses like sardines and suburban trains he could never get into. The flyover was not quite a flyover; it was home to a whole tribe of people who were a moving market of flowers and digital accessories. This is chaos, he concluded. He wanted to run away back to New York.

But after two days of fear, he stopped and observed. He observed the macrocosmic chaos contained microcosmic order. He observed people did get to work on time despite the traffic jams, with a little adjustment. People of different socio-economic criteria were living in the same space. The reality of poverty was not being shoved into ghettos and denied; it was out there for everyone to see and deal with. Everyone seemed to have a mobile. He managed to get to his meetings but it involved asking directions to four people. Deals were being struck, various languages were being spoken, files were being moved, money was being transferred, markets were abuzz and life was moving on. It was just different.

Must every city be like New York? Must every city be like Mumbai? What is the ideal city? Mark realized that order takes many forms. And absence of grids does not mean anarchy. The Navagunjara was no monster just an unfamiliar conglomeration of different familiar creatures. The problem lay in his assumptions and expectations of how the world should be.

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May9

Never Say Die

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Donald Roebling (1908–1959) was an eccentric t...

Donald Roebling (1908–1959) was an eccentric twentieth century American philanthropist and inventor. He is most famous for inventing the Landing Vehicle Tracked. He was the great-granson of John August Roebling who built the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Welcome,

In 1883, a creative engineer named John Roebling was inspired by an idea to build a spectacular bridge connecting New York with the Long Island. However bridge building experts throughout the world thought that this was an impossible feat and told Roebling to forget the idea. It just could not be done. It was not practical. It had never been done before.

Roebling could not ignore the vision & he knew deep in his heart that it could be done. He just had to share the dream with someone else. After much discussion and persuasion, hemanaged to convince his son Washington, an up and coming engineer, that the bridge in fact could be built. Working together for the first time, the father and son developed concepts of how it could be accomplished and how the obstacles could be overcome. The project started well, but when it was only a few months underway a tragic accident on the site took the life of John Roebling. Washington was also injured and left with a certain amount of brain damage, which resulted in him not being able to talk or walk.

“We told them so.” “Crazy men and their crazy dreams.” “It’s foolish to chase wild visions.” Everyone had a negative comment to make and felt that the project should be scrapped since the Roeblings were the only ones who knew how the bridge could be built.

In spite of his handicap, Washington was never discouraged and still had a burning desire to complete the bridge and his mind was still as sharp as ever. All he could do was move one finger and he decided to make the best use of it. By moving this, he slowly developed a code of communication with his wife. He touched his wife’s arm with that finger, indicating to her that he wanted her to call the engineers again. Then he used the same method of tapping her arm to tell the engineers what to do. It seemed foolish but the project was under way again.

For 13 years, Washington tapped out his instructions with his finger on his wife’s arm, until the bridge was finally completed. Today, the spectacular Brooklyn Bridge stands in all its glory as a tribute to the triumph of one man’s indomitable spirit and his determination not to be defeated by circumstances. It is also a tribute to the engineers and their team work, and to their faith in a man who was considered mad by half the world. It stands too as a tangible monument to the love and devotion of his wife who for 13 long years patiently decoded the messages of her husband and told the engineers what to do.

Perhaps this is one of the best examples of a never-say-die attitude that overcomes a terrible physical handicap and achieves an impossible goal.

 MORAL

Often when we face obstacles in our day-to-day life, our hurdles seem very small in comparison to what many others have to face. The Brooklyn Bridge shows us that dreams that seem impossible can be realized with determination and persistence, no matter what the odds are…

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