Cafe Musings 101

There is a quaint little cafe I often visit. Its beside a thoroughfare leading straight to the bazaar. Its noisy but one can see a lot of interesting things. Its here that my friend, a practicing Buddhist, whom we all lovingly call 'the thinker', often meets us to catch up and chat up.

"You often talk of a rhythm of life, that everything is part of some cosmic dance and as that dance ebbs and flows so does life go through a change of rhythm, at once agile, at once resting. Sure, but my dear friend, look at this street... where is that rhythm?, that flow?, all that I see is chaos, discord and cacophony....."

As I finished speaking, he just sat there, sipping his ice-tea and staring somewhere in the distance. My heart skipped a beat... had I done the unthinkable... had I finally stumped 'the thinker'. Striking him mute with my profundity? I guess not, his eyes slowly focused into mine and he mumbled, almost to himself..

"too many dancers and too close, way too close". I held my breath, I didn't want to anything to disrupt the sound waves as they carried his message to my eager ears. His eyes slowly returned to that point in the distance.

"The aakar, he continued, is neeraakar unless its seen in its totality. It does not exist meaningfully in bits and pieces. What you are seeing are those bits and pieces. You need to step back and then you will see the rhythm. Imagine a dancer, her eyebrows are shooting upwards while her eyes are flared sideways. Her fingers are splayed out while her hands are folding in. Her head is thrown back while her chest is pushing forward, her lips are compressed while her teeth are flaring... all bits and pieces individually discordant but step back a bit and you see a perfect execution of the Vibhasaa Raas. So it is with the rhythm of life."

I couldn't help smiling.... if one peers at an anthill from up close it appears to be chaotic but stand back and the same anthill is all efficient movements. But I somehow don't feel like giving in... not just yet. So I combat verbally.

"Come on, look at this street, no matter how far one backs up its still going to be chaotic"

He looks at me, his shoulders slump a little, he can see that I am being deliberately dumb and he could choose to ignore me.... he chooses not.

"The true essence of stepping back is to loosen your grip over the details without losing your sight of the form. One appreciates a form not by merely adding up the details but by sensing the harmony that joins the details into something more that just the sum of parts. To see the rhythm in this street one needs to look for the purpose, the essence. That's when one realises that much of the chaos is purposeless and therefore does not exist in the larger picture. What is left then is the purposeful actions of people with a goal in mind and their movements are therefore efficient. All efficient movements are always graceful, always beautiful, always rhythmic"

He seemed a little out of breath. Its rare when he speaks for so long and that too in a single breath. He reaches for his ice-tea. Its gone flat, all ice having long melt. We ask for some lemon juice and sugar syrup. His ice-tea always ends up being nimbu-pani because he takes so long over his drink and keeps adding extra lemon juice and syrup after regular intervals.