Its Alive!

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It appears funny now … doesn't it? The storms are bursting overhead … the electricity was flowing through the cables … and suddenly Dr. Frankenstein's creation … on the laboratory table … opened its eyes … to awake. The exhilaration on the good doctor … was understandable … but I figure movie goers squirmed in their chairs at the suggestion. Surely … we are not gonna go there!

' You should have taken that shot ' … is another line from circumstances … urgent and spontaneous … in which the shooter … hesitated. Again … we find the mistake … entirely understandable. A man is not cultivated on the killer instinct … he is raised to nurture and love … his object of creation.

In other scenarios … movie goers find themselves in a protective embrace … of the hero in the story … as he climbs back out of the failure … his enemies put him in … and battles against odds … that are overwhelming. We want him to win … we want faith to be true … we want to live! Perhaps that's where … we cultivated the killer instinct.

But a killer instinct … founded at the edge of the seats … in movie theaters … is not a reliable instrument … in facing adversities … in real life. Its like Indics learning English from Television … they find later that its not up to the mark … when taking the English literature exams in Oxford. Obviously we have to do a little more ourselves. Perhaps scale a mountain … swim a channel … or understand the nature of life … that founded the language.

' They're here ' … a line in circumstances … confounding … but the light of revelation … can no longer be denied. We realize in these situations … that what we mumbled about … whispered … was anxious … is now out in the open. Mathew 10:27 … ' What I whisper to you in the darkness … you shall shout from the rooftops.'

But what is it? You know that and I know that … and so do billions of people living on the planet today. But how do we bring ourselves to say something … that has been such an intimate relation to our minds and souls … in the course of creation … which may also be the very thoughts with which we think and speak? It boggles the mind … and we stay quiet … with the notion that we know … and so does everyone else. But wasn't that the bane of the reformer … who realized that … what he thought … people were thinking … was not actually … what people were thinking.

In school on one occasion … the art teacher … got us to work on creating a paper mache mask. Inevitably … all the kids came back to class the following week … with painted paper mache masks of monsters … goblins and the like. So did I … but as I wondered today about why I did that … the only answer that comes to my mind … is that I hated school. That's a reasoned response based … on my understanding and social conscience today. But you know … I'm fairly certain that as a kid … I had something else in mind.

How did that change? I expect it was the world … growing up to appreciate the nature of life … the relationships … social decorum … responsibilities … and the little things we do … about avoiding this and that … learn a trade … respond to trust … learning to keep our word about something. Its the world … that broke … thrashed … and eventually refined that paper demon. It made me a man.

Dr. Frankenstein may be pleased to know … that his creation … eventually learned to put things together … and on its own volition … advanced and improved its creation … to something that is greater … and more stable in its experience. And along the way it may have discovered love … lose it … and learnt to know and understand what it is … before re-inventing it again in its experience. But isn't that like becoming Dr. Frankenstein himself? … Does that surprise us?

I recently made the acquaintance of a student from India … who took board at the house … I'm in. He's doing his P hD in bio-metrics at the university nearby. Bio-metrics is the science of … identifying key features of the living organism … and putting it together … to identify the species. Its used in security and surveillance systems today … as a way of affirming the identity of individuals … based on their height ... shape of their ears … nose … pupils … size of forehead … and so forth.

Its not the creation of the man … but it is a science that affirms man's creation … by probing into the individual features … properties … identifying marks etc. Its the way we … as individuals … come to know and understand who we are. In doing so … we realize the ambition … of the whispers in us … to attain a degree of clarity about ourselves. It probably pleases them to do so … and that again … is of course understandable. An Indic song says … ' Over time the heart of the flower changes.'