tshering
10-19-2013, 12:13 AM
Reading E.M.Forster’s A passage to India inspired me to write a short paragraph of my own as I passed one of the suburban areas of South India:
I hear the chatter of women sitting outside the porches of their low-roofed huts, edging the dusty narrow alleys, discussing the latest gossip of the neighborhood or the recipe of some new pickle. I see the half-naked kids, with soiled bodies and clothes, cheeks smeared with dried crusts of a previous meal, moving around aimlessly or playing with other kids. I see the paralysis of the afternoon heat and smell the pungent, fiery odors of some strongly spiced food traveling in the air. I walk through those dusty alleys feeling like a species completely apart from these people, not superior not inferior, just apart.
In what way am I different from these people? I think it is that I’m informed of a world bigger than the one I occupy. I know the earth stretches for miles and miles on every side and the universe has no limits. I am aware of the inconsequence of being a single organism in this vast multitude and yet my education also informs me that each life is significant and capable of impacting millions of others. I move in this world with all these and other contradictory and paradoxical views in my head, all of which I carry with perfect balance. I have long given up the desire to understand or interpret the world in strict rigid unopposable ways. Everything at times - views, perceptions, reality, knowledge - seems so very soft and pliable that one fears of drawing any solid conclusions really.
I'm learning how to improve my writing and would greatly appreciate your valuable criticism.
I hear the chatter of women sitting outside the porches of their low-roofed huts, edging the dusty narrow alleys, discussing the latest gossip of the neighborhood or the recipe of some new pickle. I see the half-naked kids, with soiled bodies and clothes, cheeks smeared with dried crusts of a previous meal, moving around aimlessly or playing with other kids. I see the paralysis of the afternoon heat and smell the pungent, fiery odors of some strongly spiced food traveling in the air. I walk through those dusty alleys feeling like a species completely apart from these people, not superior not inferior, just apart.
In what way am I different from these people? I think it is that I’m informed of a world bigger than the one I occupy. I know the earth stretches for miles and miles on every side and the universe has no limits. I am aware of the inconsequence of being a single organism in this vast multitude and yet my education also informs me that each life is significant and capable of impacting millions of others. I move in this world with all these and other contradictory and paradoxical views in my head, all of which I carry with perfect balance. I have long given up the desire to understand or interpret the world in strict rigid unopposable ways. Everything at times - views, perceptions, reality, knowledge - seems so very soft and pliable that one fears of drawing any solid conclusions really.
I'm learning how to improve my writing and would greatly appreciate your valuable criticism.