 |
| Sunbyanyname in his own Zindagi Nahin Milegi Dobara |
There are men and women who do sky diving, suspended in the air as birds, opening their parachutes at the last minute. Then there are others who do tight rope walking between high-rise buildings defying death. One slip and precious life ends. However, they have this inner compulsion to accomplish the near impossible.
On 21st of January this year, Laura Dekker, a sixteen year old Dutch/German/New Zealander became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe single-handed. At that age she had the greater part of her life ahead of her. She started in Aug 2010, a year after she had planned, when a Dutch Child Care Council stopped her departure on grounds of shared parental custody between her about-to-be-divorced parents. Dekker later commented about the authorities in an interview, saying “They thought it was dangerous. Well, everywhere is dangerous. They don’t sail and they don’t know what boats are, and they are scared of them.” As soon as I read the news, the first thing that occurred to me was the mental set-up of someone as young as her, braving seas, known and unknown dangers alone, all alone for more than a year. If something was to happen to her, she would have died a solitary and lonely death and probably even her dead body won’t have been found. And yet, after she has accomplished what she set out to do, she would have removed a number of words from her dictionary: Fear, Impossible, Small, and Underage.
 |
| Laura Dekker the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe (pic courtesy: in2eastafrica.net) |
Men and women would do anything to live and soar, even die doing it. When I was in my teens Richard Bach wrote his novella titled ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’. The story is about the gull called Jonathan Livingstone who is bored by routine existence and wants to push his own capability to fly beyond what the seagulls can do. Because he wants to try something different, he is expelled from the flock. However, he persists and one day achieves perfection. “You’ve got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull.” He realizes that you have to be true to yourself: “You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.” The idea of Richard Bach’s novella fascinated everyone immensely. Neil Diamond brought out a complete album of songs named Jonathan Livingstone Seagull with such songs as: Be, Flight of the Gull, Lonely Looking Sky, The Odyssey, and Dear Father. Here is Neil Diamond’s ‘Be’ for you:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, there may be other good reasons for men and women to go out on a limb. But, I have given you what I believe to be the best reason to do so.
2 thoughts on “THE LURE OF GOING ON A LIMB”
Comments are closed.
There is a certain category of people Ravi sir, in this world, who would always look beyond obvious. People like you or for that matter Saresht Kumar belong to this category. Don’t you think, in the hindsight, you could have been successful in any profession you would have chosen 40 years back? Why it had to be Navy? This is a common streak among people of this category that they would love to tread the paths less trodden! In fact normal is boring for them since their appetite demands risk of the unknown. Most people live only once…some twice but some live every moment staring death in the face. Nothing else can explain this other than this is THEIR way of living life !!
Thank you very much for your kind remarks and appreciation.Ian Fleming’s observation comes to mind,”You only live twice: once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.”