The 'Purple' of Life!

Never thought I will start writing about something that happned in a toilet few hundred  kilometers from civilization in the forest of Tadoba, which is so relevant to all those civilized  Homo sapiens, that can use computers and read some (??) blogs. But nevertheless, I am sure you can ignore the 'spatial' part and keep the thought-string.

So, there I was using the toilet as one would use except that it had no artificial illumination -a tube light-instead it had a semi transparent roof. It was transparent enough to allow direct light from the Sun, burning above in the mid March Indian clear skies. Not only it was transparent but it was Green. Outside temperature flirting with the thermometer around 37-42*C. It was really difficult to even just spend an hour out in the open and  windy fields without dehydrating and here I was incubating in this toilet oven and also, off course, dehydrating.

I have been dehydrated before and I know how disgusting the feeling is. You can't think, your head starts swirling, legs start shaking and your body shifts to high alert and starts protecting the vitals, which you don't actually feel, but then what you can feel is your visual reception shifting to tunnel vision. 

As I started feeling dehydrated, the tension was rising about the dinner plans. Well to tell you the truth, I don't normally eat spicy hot food, rather I can't. And last night's oily and spicy curry was making its presence felt really aggressively :).

All of a sudden in this mess, I was losing my colour vision. My hands were grey; my t-shirt was no longer red but some dark, grey mixed-colour for which I have no name. I was looking around and the only colour I could see now was grey and shades of grey. The Green roof was also going grey now.

In desperation I finished my business immediately in the toilet and came out. Finally, a breeze of cool-fresh air. And what I see is again indescribable yet I will try. Now everything around me was Purple. The sand, the parked Jeepsy, the trees, the fields beyond the compound and the grass; all was Purple or of the colour closest to it. I mean what the hell?

I will let the experts conclude about what I experienced; was it because of my retinal malfunction or my brain interpreting wrong signals or, like muscle memory there is now retinal memory too. The point is, a simple filter, unseen, unexpected can change what you perceive.

It is a scary thought. The world around is limited to our stimuli and response. The limits that our parents, siblings, teachers and our society decides. Conditioning from the childhood of an individual to see things in a manner that is not inherent but acquired is a part of involvement of society in our evolution. But the cost we normally pay for it very high. The cost, if recognised, that is.

After getting back to the Tadoba wilderness, I was enjoying the solitude that I was experiencing away from the city, mobile phones and internet. For the record, that is what normally (?) normal (?) people do when they travel miles in this hot Indian summer; in a metal box rolling on a meter gauge; oscillating with a very considerable irritation; to go to a declared National park.

The funny part was, the majority of, with whom I came, were behaving like fish out of the water. Every night many would go to the edge of the circle of light created by the Halogen lamp. The place I named as 'call center' and they used to keep talking on the phone for hours. As if then only they were able to sleep and live. As if, the only change occurred was that the backdrop has swiftly changed the city lights to deciduous forest. Who cares then?!

Was it the 'Purple' effect? Somebody put a filter for them so that they did not know there was a difference now. Or they were waiting for someone to remove the filter and tell them they can talk to and read the forest too.

This is really global.

Who? What? How the Purple effect comes?

Who decides morality? Who follows? Who builds the rules? Who always need to borrow? 

Why should one get married? Why should one not? Why can't there be a 'househusband'? And why can't I call line a dot? Why..........?

Staying barefooted is common in India but very offending in Italy, egg is strictly non-vegetarian and taboo in India but cow’s milk is sacred. Praising a God with an elephant head (at the first place, a God decapitated a child's head and then replaced it by killing an elephant baby and taking its head) is divine but  a couple in lovers hanging out before "marriage" is a sin.

You will find many such Purple examples around you and I am sure those will be even more serious than I have mentioned. But these raise many questions. Its difficult now to end as I have started it.

My friend's T-shirt says 'I was born intelligent but education ruined me'- and I can't agree more. What about you?

Is this 'domestication' of many humans by few other humans for profit or ease in running the world? 

I must tell you how ironic the situation was highlighting the 'domestication' situation in the wild. It was the last evening in the forest and as Hitchcock film climax can happen, it was last 20 minutes left of our time in the forest and we started returning to the gates with no tiger sightings.
Suddenly we heard Langoor and Chital alarm calls on the back road and we turned to see the four footed, clawed, feline reason of the excitement. A male Leopard crossed the road in front of us going up the valley. On the same road we also saw a Neelgai male standing indifferent to the commotion, chewing his feed (picture if you have seen Alan Border at 1st sleep chewing a gum). The story was that the Neelgai was, actually, raised in captivity and brought in the forest for... well I don't know. It was ironic wasn't it? A big, gorgeous animal who is evolved for hundreds of years to avoid and survive the only two predators-Tiger & Leopard- was totally in a Purple zone. Had no idea what was an alarm call? And what to do about it?

Having said all this, the end of the trip seemed to be a beginning too. On the way back we visited Anandban, the Karmabhumi of a great, humble and real activist Baba Amte. His son was explaining baba's life journey with very vivid and catching way. And there..there was the Purple again. The Purple that Baba used to start his lifelong work of poor and needy empowerment. The Purple was Potassium permanganate that Baba and his team used to treat ill, leprosy infected patients as a primary aid. To disinfect and cleanse the body (& soul). It’s more than a metaphor. Certainly more than the Rashtra Bhuashan, Templeton prize or Gandhi peace prize. 

Perhaps the 'Purple of life' completed.

 Misa.