FOOTPRINTS IN TIME...

“Earlier pre-occupied… Now unoccupied…”

“And I think that’s a clever reply. You know what I mean by that, right?"

“A criticism, Mr. Creative Director?”

He nodded.

“But that is the truth,” I muttered, nonchalantly. Sitting on the rocks made me feel like one and his questions fell upon me like the restless waves.

“I am not asking you on how you intend to win the Nobel, just what you plan to pursue-”

I had had enough of this. “Do we always have to pursue something in our lives?” My intrusion shocked him. “Why can’t I just be a Lotus Eater in the land of Ullysseses?”

There was silence and piercing through it were his eyes, combating disbelief.

“You, Ms Idealist, are telling me that food will fall on our plates? That hard work and dedication are just myths? Then, what is life if we do not have our footprints etched on these sands?”

“Only the best ones get imprinted, CD, and the rest, are blown away by the breeze.” All the turbulence in my mind was culminating in this conversation. “To be good is never enough. You need to be the best.”

“With you, it always has to be all or nothing, isn’t it?”

“And if doing nothing is what makes me happy then let me do that.”

I knew CD too well, he wouldn’t give up. “What then, is the difference between man and beast?

“I don’t need to know.”

“So you’ve stopped learning as well?”

“How do you know if whatever you comprehend is the way it is meant to be understood?”

“A question for a question, Smriti? A workaholic in school, I remember you disagreed with the Wrong Man in Workers’ Paradise… After 8 years, you disagree on work? Is this one of your crazy pop-philosophies? Then I’ll tell you what, it’s flawed...”

“I opposed the story since I felt if you prefer work and work brings you more happiness, then why not be a workaholic?”

“So where did the workaholic Smriti go? And what else have you stopped ‘doing’?”

The rock was trapped by water. It had run behind the horizon all its life and now suffocated, it only longed to be freed.

“Physics, philosophy, anthropology, astrobiology, writing, dreaming, living…” I could go on and make myself feel worthless. “Nothing seems to make sense any more. I’m interested in nothing. I’m passionate about nothing…”

A fissure was forming fast on the rock…

“CD… How is it that some people know exactly what they want to do in life? Why is it that I am still searching for that one thing which would make me happy? What if I never find it all my life, would I continue being a Lotus Eater?”

“Let’s put it this way… Some people are just lucky. But for the rest of us – we get to explore. Really Smrits, should life be taken so seriously? Can’t we just live, love, learn, laugh and pass away?”

“But I intend to live on… Live on through my creation but even that would be drowned in the shadow of the best. There would be no footprint of mine, nothing to say I existed here once upon a time…”

Water had by now plunged into the crevice…

“See these striae on the rock? Notice how water has cut through it and left behind ridges… We are like the rock and our creation is the water flowing through us… We never know when, why and how we pass on our creations but they are etched in time just like these striations.”

I understood what he meant. It was time to create a footprint...a deep one!