“Age considers; youth ventures” – Rabindranath Tagore What if youth? Is it about being young in terms of number of years one has spent on earth? Or is it a state of mind and an 80 years old Dev Anand can also be as young as a 22 years old actor in movies? An Amitabh Bachchan, a son of a Hindi poet – Haribansh Rai Bachchan, fought with his father and left home with almost no money for an alien city of Bombay to become an actor when he was full of youth. Will he do that now? Will he take the chances? Later the poet noted that Amitabh actually asked him – mujhe paida kyun kia? (why did you bring me to life?). The fight between son and father of this nature are rooted in the fears of a father who has seen the world in more details than the young son and the son who feels the restlessness of not being able to self-actualize and see his talent materialising. The idea gets more clearly depicted in William Shakespeare play and at one place he says, “Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame.” What Tagore was writing in 19th century India was written in 16th century England and also in 18h century Russia. Dostoevsky write in Brother Karmazov about the ideas of a 25 years old Ivan who shows how age old traditions have bound human beings with their believes about God. Though his young characters, Dostoevsky shows the relentless fight and energy they are filled with and again through old and dying characters like, Father Zoshima, he shows how age lets one accept religion and faith develops over time. Even the great 17th century economist, Adam Smith, noted in “the Wealth of a Nation” that, “the contempt of risk and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people choose their professions. He further gives the example of a soldier who gives himself to an army in his youth not thinking much about the fact that the job requires him to risk his life. What Ravindra Nath Tagore has noted in this simple assertion is the restlessness of the youth. And in this restlessness when a young man has to take decisions, he many atimes, goes with his inner call. Ravindra nath Tagore is known many atimes, stop walking and sit at a place for hours and not speak with his companions as if they were not there. The great poet, wrote many poems and other writings as well. He was writing in an era when the political environment in Kolkata was vibrant. Young men and women were trying new things and British rule was getting challenged every now and then. It was the time when the old ways of political activism were challenged by the radical young men and women. The rise of Tilak or Young Bengal movement do vindicate the idea of youth being more action oriented rather than patient and observant like there older contemporaries. Youth may not be only about age. Mark Twain once said, “age is an issue of mind over matter, if you do not mind, it does not matters.” Youth is rather a state of mind where one lets the importance of action supersede the considerations of possible repercussions. Youth is that state in which one ventures with his ideas. Albert Einstein is known to have turned the world of Physics upside down, by his seminal paper on Relativity in the year 1905. How old was he? Was the the Einstein we know – a man with grey, disorderly hairs and wrinkles covering his face? No. He was a clerk, working in patent office at Bern. He was just 26 years old. Andrew Welles, proved the Fermat’s Last Theorem in the early 1990s. A theorem that was there without any proof for centuries and great Mathematics too had given up on in. Andrew Welles saw the problem when he was 11 years old and made it his aim to solve it at that age. It took him a couple of decades to come up with a solution but the resolve to solve was born when he was just 11! Taking a brink walk in Mythology and History The great epic tra/bdition of India leaves us with atleast two voluminous epics – the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Both are filled with storied of valour and men showing extraordinary courage. In Ramayana, the younger brother of Lord Rama, Laxmana is depicted as person who gets angry very quickly and only the words of his elder brother can bring him to his senses if he loses his cool. There is a small incident when while the two brothers are in the courtroom of the King of Mithila, Janak, who had kept the condition of lifting and winding the string on the bow of Lord Shiva for his daughter’s swayamvar (wedding), along with sage Vashishtha. When not a single Prince or King could even shake the divine bow, the king utters words filled with pain and he came to conclude that the earth had become devoid of men with strength and his daughter will remain unmarried for the rest of her life. To this Rama smiled and Laxman became so angry that he stood up and came at the center of the courtroom to say, “in an assembly where even a single Raghukul vanshi is sitting, its a crime to utter such words of shame and you are talking about this small bow of Lord Shiva, if my brother permits me, I can throw the whole earth like a ball.”And he was not speaking with bravado. He himself was the incarnation of Sheshnag and according to the Hindu Mythology he can bear the weight of lord Vishnu, so earth was really nothing for Laxman. Similar stories are there in Mahabharata. Abhimanyu, who must have been in his teenage, for example, barged through the military formation that could have been broken only by Arjuna, his father, who on the day on which that special chakraviuh was engineered by the opponents was distracted away from the battle field. IN his absence no one other that Abhimanyu had the know-hows of even entering that formation. This young man did not let the elders submit to the opponent army and fought for the whole day valiantly, to finally get killed by seven great warriors – fighting alone. In Homer’s Illiad too we get to see Achilles standing alone in front of the walls of Troy and shouting the name of Hector, the tamer of horses for a duel. While Hector was no coward, he wanted a pact before the fight for the winner to allow the fallen warrior a respectable funeral. To which Achilles replied – “there are no pact between loins and men.” Gordian knot was not opened after hours of labour but by swing of the sword of none other that Alexander the great. The young warrior who wanted to rule the world and he did in a way while he was alive. He believed that impossible was nothing. He never kept that word in his dictionary. Napoleon was not even 30 years old when he held the world anxious with the blade of his sword always pointing ahead for march. If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son! – Rudyard Kipling
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 10:11:49 +0000
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