
Thank God, I had made only one resolution at the beginning of this year. It withered away long ago.
My best-loved trademark is ‘His Master’s Voice’.
This celebrated picture, which has become the icon of a gramophone record manufacturer, delivers a silent message: the nostalgia of a dog to the voice of its long-lost Master’s.
There is an irony in this trademark. When Francis Barraud, the English artist who conceived and painted this idea, attempted to sell it to Edison’s gramophone company, none of them were interested. Their objection was the dog! “Dogs wouldn’t listen to music,” they said. They were correct in their human logic, but grossly missed an opportunity to own one of the most beautiful trademarks humanities would ever produce. Here, in this painting, the fox terrier named Nipper is not listening to the music of his late Master’s but just taking a little interest in his Master’s voice! Nipper was just curious enough to look sharply into the trumpet of the gramophone and to correlate that voice to his dear Master’s
Scientists who study animal behaviour tell us that dogs cannot understand our language: our music, our songs, and our complex speech systems. Instead, they have a strong correlation to our voice, our looks, our smell, and our behaviour. It is from the softness and the toughness of our voice that animals understand our moods and our pitch. Nipper was trying to do that.
Looking at Nipper, let us realise the richness and the depth of individuality which hides in our voice. Nipper tells us that each of us is unique. Only when a voice is stilled forever do we realise the lack of it.
If all those voices that have been long lost in our lives, or in our times, were to come alive, what would they be? I wonder about it often: It would be a wonder if all those loved voices which passed away in time and long lost, and never recorded, come back alive in our lives. That would be thrilling !
(Many times, I wished to hear my long-lost Aunt’s voice... never recorded, I lost it forever! Sometimes, I try listening to her in solitude.)
'Nipper' is more than a trademark... it is the magic of a million emotions coming alive in sounds that awaken us to a life that we lived ago.
Long Live Dear Nipper !!
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--- Photo : My favourite beach at Kappad, Calicut.
The seashells washed up in the beach attract me. Some of them are alive... their owners are living inside them! Other shells have no life in them...their owners have left their beautiful homes forever. Most of these shelled creatures go back by the receding waves to the place they really belong: the blue-ocean...while others lay ashore. These relics of the ocean add beauty and life to the sands ashore. Without them, beaches would have been a poorer place... and we would have felt a little lonely.
One of the most absorbing sights that I see upon a beach is the numerous holes that the crabs make. These sea crustaceans’ excavate little holes and hide in them. The waves and the waters call them out of their hiding place. As waves recede into sea, these crabs too rush with the waters.
Aloneness and loneliness are two different feelings. Aloneness is to embrace solitude and isolation. It is a positive force to reinforce our heart. However, loneliness is being captive in one’s own heart. It is a killer of creativity and personality. Loneliness is a negative force that drags anyone to self-pity and death. Being in an empty beach or anchored in a quit landscape is to choose silence to cacophony.... to choose stillness to empty reverberations.
The most deceptive thing in the world is to imagine that they alone are strong who are noisy, or that they alone possess power who are fussily active.
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