Beauty of the Desert
Both desert and water can hold me spellbound. I have
stood in front of a lot of waterbodies in awe. I grew up by the side of a
stream which not only bathed my childhood in its serene coolness but also
taught me about its destructive potential in the season of monsoon. But I am
yet to see a desert except in pictures and movies.
Water and desert. Opposites that
generate two different longings. One, to dissolve into something fluid and dynamic.
The other, the longing to stand alone before ultimate silence. The desert creates
thirst and water becomes revelation. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery put it unforgettably:
“What makes the desert beautiful is that it hides a well somewhere.”
The first thought that came to my
mind on seeing the following WhatsApp forward from my friend Rev Jose Maliekal
was Little Prince’s statement quoted above.
Seen from the beach, water is scenery. It is abundant, overwhelming, almost taken for granted. But in the desert, a single drop acquires meaning. Acquires life.
We, human beings, understand things
most deeply through deprivation rathe than abundance.
Loneliness teaches the meaning of
companionship.
Silence teaches the value of words.
Illness teaches the miracle of
health.
Exile teaches the warmth of home.
The ocean makes you admire water. The
desert makes you need it.
Does abundance dull our perception?
And scarcity sharpen our consciousness?
The desert makes us search more than
the ocean. No wonder the Biblical Yahweh made the Jews wander in the desert for
decades.
No wonder T S Eliot wrote
lines such as:
Here is no water but only
rock / Rock and no water and the sandy road.
And
If there were water / And
no rock / If there were rock? / And also water”
Absence of water is spiritual agony in
Eliot’s poem. No wonder why so many sages and mystics rushed to deserts for enlightenment.
It is Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince that returns
to me again and again, Eliot’s agony notwithstanding. After mentioning the
beauty of the desert’s well, Little Prince goes on to say: “Whether it’s a
house or the stars or the desert, what makes them beautiful is invisible!”
The visible world is only the surface
of deeper realities.
Beauty begins where appearances end.
Desert would not be a Desert, except for the Oasis hidden in it and the Mirages, it engenders. It is the play of water... The vast deserts were once upon a time, courses of running streams...
ReplyDeleteDeserts can be more treacherous than oceans, I guess. It is said that Ibn Batuta purchased a guide for a thousand mithqals of gold while crossing the Sahara. Blind guides were expensive because eyesight was deceptive in the desert. People believed that demons mislead those with sights. Illusions and delusions and mirages... Deserts are fantastic. I would love to visit one.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteA wonderful musing on the meaning of absence - however it manifests. How, because of our inquisitive nature, we can find ourselves searching for that which is not yet revealed to us... YAM xx
I think spirituality is a kind of restless curiosity. Have you ever wondered why Camus's landscapes are barren like deserts?
DeleteA universal truth. Many such examples. We know the value of light only in darkness. We know the value of good health, only when we are ill.
ReplyDeleteWhen we speak ofdarkness as an absence of light, it becomes rather mediocre. Suppose we imagine someone who starts thirsting after light in a dark dungeon... I don't know how to put it. But what I mean is certain absences make us seekers - and that's where spirituality begins. Not in huge constructions as India seems to imagine these days.
Delete