Gray..

This is one quote that I read way back in school perhaps it was class 8 or a class or two earlier. A fellow batch mate had used the following quote in one of her Hindi essays or may be some magazine write up. A little fuzzy about the exact source, and the exact words but this is what I remember:
“Roshni ne digh-bhramit  jitna kiya, kya kabhi andheroon ne utna kiya?
Raah ho sandesh kuch aise mile.. aaj tak bhatakte hai kafile..

It is strange how the light of affluence, money, and power leads men more astray than the dark drudgery of poverty and deprivation. Although the latter also leads men to do deplorable things, it’s the intoxication of light that is more potent in blinding people towards the right way.
Again sometimes we are able to see things more clearly when the lights go out. When we are in a corner by  ourselves, it is then that the friends we make, our relationships, the good  & the bad we do everything reveals itself , which the light outside had concealed so far.

It is perhaps the irony of these lines that has stayed with me over the years. We always give light a positive connotation. It is symbolic of everything that is upright in the world.  It is symbolic of hope, of inspiration, of courage, of a well-fought fight, and of numerous other metaphors that poets and novels need to create meaningful quotes in their tomes of literature.  Then again  I read the following lines in one of the plays written by Tagore that again made me look at darkness in a new light.

“How small is this earth and confined, watched and followed by the persistent horizons. The trees, houses, and crowd of things are pressing upon my eyes. The light, like a cage, has shut out the dark eternity; and the hours hop and cry within its barriers, like prisoned birds. But why are these noisy men rushing on, and for what purpose? They seem always afraid of missing something, the something that never comes to their hands.”

The image of darkness as that of infinite freedom and the light as the martinet struck a chord somewhere. Without taking a philosophical viewpoint,  I just thought of how the restful night looks like a little freedom after running the errands of the day. The light did seem as the hard taskmaster who walks around with a schedule and a watch in hand, and we run always afraid of missing something..

Somehow it is thoughts like this that make the boundaries of black and white fade into a little shade of gray. I have not really been able to keep my sides on a number of issues that confront us in life. It would be a lot easier if we could call out the dark from the light.  However the confrontations continue and the blurred gray is all I see on a second look..
The above image does justice to my argument with its somewhat gray/grey treatment. Interestingly the word gray/grey again has a different acceptable spelling depending on where you are in the English speaking world. So i wonder who really gets the last laugh the black, the white(light) or the capricious gray/grey!!

creative input: srk