passion...just something i thought about...

Passion….
Isn’t that what most of us look for in our lives? Look in the hope of finding that one thing in our lives that brings us such immeasurable amounts of joy? Don’t we all search to find the one thing that makes the world go round for each one of us?

Be it a loved one, music, the birds, nature, food, or for the more adventurous- bunjee jumping, paragliding, mud wrestling or for the more the eccentric and genius- math, atoms, ants and anything, just about anything you might be passionate about…..even designing bathrooms or repairing computers or whacking somebody even(if u really enjoy it…not necessitating the victim too though..).

There was a felicitation programme conducted for a Mr. kundrakudi vaidyanathan, a maestro violinist, that my grandfather was watching. While watching he happened to say that there were artistes, violinists better than him but none as a crowd pleaser or as entertaining as him. Most of the others, he says are almost mechanical.

I am of the opinion, as are many others, that music is capable of breaking barriers as no other one thing. But it is never just the music. The emotions conveyed through that music, by the artiste, the link between us and the experience, is only ten-fold more conducive to us enjoying that music. Passion for any one thing when witnessed by one can, if not make you so, move you to edges.

To live and breathe and become one and indistinguishable with that which almost symbolizes and sounds synonymous with you is something that cannot stay locked up in one person. It is an energy capable of wonders. It is so powerful that it can move you to tears, to make your stomach clench with emotion, a rollercoaster ride that tires you so but rejuvenates you even more. Such emotions are shared. They can never be bottled within a person. To cork and put up away such love would be equivalent to killing a part of oneself, to deny the world the chance to bear witness to something spectacular.

We have all gone through school not liking, literally hating, one subject, atleast. Ask for a reason, and its readymade to say ‘the teacher can’t make it interesting…she puts you to sleep…so monotonous…so unbearably dull’. Why? Math was never my favourite subject. If I did well it was because of hardwork and no hidden genius or latent love for the subject. It is true that once you do well in a subject, it is encouragement enough for later but it is never the same as having someone who loves the subject teach you. To want to make you love and understand the nuances of that tricky subject. To actually love tough problems.

I had a professor, Suchitra ma’m, last semester to teach me numerical methods. She loves mathematics. She doesn’t care too much for the respect you have to give her, she’d be happy if you just sat and listened in her class, and nothing made her so happy as students asking doubts. I suppose that is the mark of a teacher who considers himself/herself a advocate for the subject, taking it upon themselves to spread the joy of their subject to one and all. And suchitra ma’m actually got me to do work(homework!!!) because of the respect I had for her. She doesn’t treat you like a disdainful kid either, she treats you like a friend and doesn’t have even the tiniest qualms about saying ‘I am wrong’, of accepting improvisations on her methods, unlike most college professors.

To find something that would fill all your waking hours with joy is something beyond wonderful. The number of us who in our lifetimes will find such subjects that just engrossed us such that it gives us reason to live, a voracious appetite for knowledge, will, I’m afraid, be few and far between. But it is always the hope that this might be it, the one thing in your life that makes everything else fade into oblivion, that keeps each and everyone of us going…

It might not be a conscious quest, but it is a thirst, sub-consciously atleast….