While the world has been grappling with major geo-political fissures, in the last year or so we’ve witnessed high pitched mass hysteria in the media, discussions and the coverage of diplomatic blasé and blushes, blown out of proportion by partisan conclusions and divisive views built on wild theories and conjectures that seem more bizarre than a faultily written film script.
How would writers of classic literature respond, if they were around today ? Many of us would recall these zany lines from the wise Walrus (one of the fascinating characters from Lewis Carol’s fantasy-world in the wondrous ‘Alice in Wonderland’) who spoke eloquently but without much sense : ‘The time has come, to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings – And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.’ Sounds apt in present day soap-opera that’s playing out !
The Bard, who said everything uncanny about human nature and its fickle ways had his ‘Macbeth’ speak the ephemeral truth ‘Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more’. As if talking about the self-styled leader who claims to save the world, the Bard would add ‘It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ ! And now the world watches it all unfolding with bated breath, each day presenting a new challenge..
Speaking of powerful rulers and their quests and conquests, there was ambitious ‘Julius Caesar’ and his the trusted friend, the honorable ‘Brutus’ who betrays him but in course of tumultuous journey says lines centuries ago that mirrors what we witness today :
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life, Is bound in shallows and in miseries..”.
But what of ‘love’ and ‘undying loyalty’ that plays such an important part in all human dramas, as one story after another captures emotional and moral senses of the people at large, here’s what Shakespeare’s cheeky character ‘Puck’ says in that eternally sublime comedy ‘Mid-Summer Nights Dream’ : ‘Course of true love never did run smooth, Love looks not with eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is the winged Cupid, Painted blind’
Working on Living 