These last few weeks I've been reading a lot about famous people. But not famous as in those that made it big from a capitalistic point-of-view but those that chased these huge abstract ideas and tried to ground it in a reality they themselves were struggling to accept.
Of course Nehru was first on my list for I can not imagine today's India existing without him. The 21st century Indian breed has quite readily forgotten his painstaking role in creating our secular nation. In fact, I sometimes wonder if he lives on more in the hearts of the Pakistanis albeit in a derogatory manner than in the consciousness of Indians. Martyrs are forgotten in today's swiftly changing world.
But then there is his legacy too. Indira Gandhi, a woman who remains an enigma to me and Rajiv Gandhi, an honest loving man who tried his best. But perhaps most fascinating is Sonia Gandhi, as she continues to rule the roost in her frank, if not blunt, manner. A young girl from a town in Italy chances upon a handsome guy in London and follows him to a country that ends up taking his life and along with it, all that she could have imagined for her future. Yet, she stays on and runs the show because she has found the courage to love.
There's Aung San Suu Kyi and Irom Manu Sharmila. There's Mehbooba Mufti and Nelson Mandela. There's Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.
Each one of them fascinates me because they make me wonder about the inherent strength of humanity that keeps them going as they struggle in a world attempting to prove them wrong. Who cares for them as they worry for their lives and their families and their freedoms? But it isn't about them. It never was. It was never about their limbs or hands or minds or bodies. No, for it was, they would have accepted defeat. But they don't. Suu Kyi doesn't as she is released from house arrest with no guarantee of a future or a life. Indira Gandhi didn't as she felt positive that she would be assassinated. No, it isn't each of their lives that is as important as...what?
It is difficult to articulate that commonality that binds these people together in their quest for freedom. It is difficult to truly understand their spirits. But it isn't impossible because I'm realizing, and I truly believe, that all they did was follow an inner voice, their gut, their instincts, their intuitions on a path of thorns. But the thorns could not deter them as they submitted to this subliminal meta realm and allowed the path to take them wherever they had to go.
They make me believe that there is strength in our capacities and hope in our futures. For hope and the earth is all we have to live by.
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