Friday 25 December 2015

TO MAKE A CELL OF GOOD LIVING: All Seasons' Greetings

‘Make a cell of good living in the chaos of our world”, said Eric Gill, as I remember it. I read it in my early twenties, some decades ago. It remained inscribed like an affirmation.

      I had then just finished a course in architecture at a college. Enthusiastically I started to look for an ideal, model cell in places, books and journals, and with the masters of architecture. But soon I realised this cell is beyond floor-wall-roof. Inevitably I turned inside. Consciously I started peeling off a layer after layer. Alas, there was no cell there except my gaseous ego. It brought me to tears like a peeled onion.

      Lo! And here too, within me, I found chaos. My body and mind riddled by some or other ailments and maladies: of ignorance, taboos, models or dogmas, indigestion or malnutrition; of teeth or skin or eyes or nose or stomach or some other limbs; and victim of epidemics such as war frenzy or cricket frenzy or flu, and so on spread by a city –  market – media – mod culture. And over them all there presides my omnipresent ego, whatever, wherever I am.

    I have been moving, almost all my life, to places: cities, villages, forests, coasts, monuments and ruins. I have been moving in the First World, the Third World and the Fourth World in India. I never crossed the borders if India.

      I have been fortunate to share warm hospitality of numerous anonymous people. The affirmation never left me. It would appear any time any place like the pop ups on the Internet. I realise now and then while moving in the real world and virtual world, the affirmation is as valid today, even more than ever before, as maybe it was hundred years ago. On the way slowly emerged a resolve:

‘From Here Now on
Live every Moment
Add every Moment
To the Time Eternal’
 © Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 25/11/2005  

Note: 1. Quoted poem above is by the author.
          2. About Eric Gill by Fiona MacCarthy, The Guardian, Saturday 22 July 2006
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.