Saturday, June 16, 2012

Fahrenheit 451...

Well - this isn't a tribute to great Ray Bradbury - great souls never need a tribute. They are always around. Their presence in the worlds - both real and ethereal - doesn't necessitate any events - be it birthday, anniversary, or death.

The impetus is more subtle. It's quite intriguing how visionaries' creations emerge, expand and evolve with time, and become future-realities. And more intriguing is how world remains obscured from it. 


A fish doesn't realize she is in water until she comes out, to find out it was her survival. Countries, societies, families - all meet similar fate. The pattern? Ignore little changes. Ignore need to change. Ignore inner voices. Suppress anything that tries to tumble one out of his vaguely-defined comfort zones.

Complex? Yes it is. Take for example Galilio's overthrowing of Aristotle's postulates about Earth being the center of the universe. World hanged him until he bagged for mercy, and died with the kind of fame that he didn't deserve.

Looking at 20th century progress of mankind, one feels proud. But if one looks at the five centuries of turmoil that renaissance-martyrs went through, one wouldn't be surprised we are living in a world that is so industrialized, automated, and comfortable. There is so much sown in by our ancestors - their blood, their right to live with peace, their convictions, their freedom of ideas and expressions. 


And what we reap are just palpable outcomes of those seeds. We have a world full of facilities, we have a world full of elusive progress. And yet we don't have enough freedom. Nor we have equality or wisdom.


Our ignorance to such tumultuous building blocks of history paves the way for our insensivities towards changes taking place as we live. Insensivities to little changes that should forewarn us of something bigger. Insensivities to those often harsh but truer voices that forecasts how the world will be. Insensivities to our own sensitivities that fade with time, with our willful consent.

Galileo died thinking the world didn't deserve him. He didn't live long enough to see his truths being realized around the world - shortly after he died. That, in fact, was a fact that elevated himself above every moral system of religion and science prevalent in his time. He died with regret, but his regret was like that of Jesus who forgave his tormentors for their inability.

The irony was on Ray Bradbury. He lived through the turmoil he predicted at its birth, and gleefully watched people garlanding him, with total disregard towards the truth he predicted. They didn't strangle him. They did worse. They celebrated him as a visionary who predicted that all the wise words will be burnt some day. And at the same time they materialized everything he depicted as devilish in his magnum opus.

It isn't about how much a written word matters. It matters just like DNA - and this fact does not owe its credibility to our acceptance. In the last half century, the world has been burning every written word, despite being existent because of it. It has burnt this word not in literal sense - but in poetical sense. This written word has meant our ability to think and grow, to indulge into something with deepest desire.  The world has buried this written word below a pile of junk - Gadgets, events, and puppets. 

If irony has got anything intertwined with greatness, here it is:
Reflecting on his name - he was a Ray of hope with a Brad in his pen that endeavored to amend the civilization. 
Well, he got Buried.

RIP.

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