Anonymity

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Prince or pauper, saint or sinner, student or teacher, everyone gets this terrific urge to run away from it all once in a while. This is perfectly legitimate and natural. No one need be upset with it.

When my son was about a year old in the deserted campus of IIT KGP, my wife once let out, with tears in her eyes:

"I am tired of seeing him and you day and night month after month"

I told her she indeed needs an escapade. Next week, I saw her off on Madras Mail to attend the marriage of her cousin, telling her that I can take care of our toddler son with the help of friends and neighbors. And asked her to return in a couple of weeks.

She was back in two days...and it appeared from her joyous reunion with us as if she was away for a year.

Since then I periodically give her a holiday alone with her folks without myself or my son hovering over her.

Nowadays, we are too old to take ourselves physically away; so I escape into my blogosphere and she into her 70-channel TV surfing.

And Ishani helps...it is her mom who needs an escapade once in a while and gets it.

I hope you watched the Hollywood Movie Roman Holiday starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. And the Raj Kapoor - Nargis film Chori Chori, both on this theme.

Well, this topic came to my mind when I read in DC today that a certain sidekick of an estranged politician, who had always been trying to grab the limelight in the tele-space has now gone almost underground.

Apparently he badly needs his Roman Holiday.

While Lord Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, was fully aware of his godliness and went about displaying it by sundry miracles and magic, Lord Raam, also an avatar of Vishnu, is supposed to be often unaware of his genesis and went about anonymously like a mere human like you and me.

But it is supposed to be sort of drama, as this story tells:

One day Shivjee and Parvati were traveling on their chopper holiday viewing the happenings on the earth beneath them patronizingly.

Then they find Raam and Laxman going forth in their futile search of Sita in the Dandakaranya forest, Raam in tears, weeping on Laxman's shoulder inconsolably.

Parvati is amazed at the ignorance and folly of Raam, the all-knowing Vishnu Himself, and asks Shivjee how God himself can be so miserable like a grief-stricken human being.

Shivjee smiles and tells Parvati that Raam is merely play-acting and asks her to go test it for herself.

Parvati then disguises herself as Sita and hides in a bush in the path of Raam and Laxman, who, while scouring the bushes discover her.

As Laxman goes into ecstasy, Raam looks at the fake Sita and asks her:

"What are you doing here in this wilderness, Parvati, all alone? Where is Shivjee? And why have you disguised yourself like Sita hiding in this bush? I do hope everything is ok in Heaven."

That about sums up our efforts at anonymity.

We can change our surroundings but can we change the baggage of our inner being?

I hope you remember the story of Hittorf I blogged sometime ago:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/05/dr-dracula.html

Here is the entry:

"Coming back to Hittorf, a Senior Professor of Physics & Chemistry at Munster, his brilliant young students gifted him the brand-new 2-Volume Set of young Maxwell's 'Elecricity & Magnetism' just hot from the Cambridge University Press. Hittorf eagerly carried the Volumes home and stopped coming to the University for a week. His colleagues and students were concerned by this unusual absence of Hittorf, and visited his Home. Only to find that Hittorf was lolling in his bed declining to eat or sleep. On persistent questioning, his wife told them that he turned morose ever since he brought those books home. He was taken to their Family Physician who discovered that Hittorf was depressed that such a Senior Professor such as he was, he couldn't make out a single Equation of the young & upstart Maxwell.

The Physician advised the students to see that Hittorf takes a Holiday for a month in a nearby Beach Resort.

And while doing a final check-in of his trunk, his students found that the 2 cussed Maxwell Volumes were hidden wrapped up in a long coat!"

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That brings me back to a question I am unable to answer:

"Why do some readers of this blog choose anonymity even when their comments are perfectly innocent?"



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