Tag: silence

brown

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Everyday we drink tea, resting the tea cups on round jute coasters on a large brown wood coffee table with an even larger brown tinted glass surface.

The tint makes the newspapers below look 30 years old- as if they were fished out from our storage room, but of course they bear today’s day and date- neat and crisp.

The rusk often drips into the tea as we stare into our respective screens on quiet mornings of days’ that we know entail toil. The unuttered desperation for rest adds to the silence, broken periodically by the stunted cries of stunted sparrows. The sparrrows are smaller than they used to be 20 years ago. Their plumage pathetic now, dirt-like instead of the browns that we have preserved in our eyes.

A three-some of green parrots show up at the window near the dining table, overlooking the cemetery. Always in threes, and always silent for the fear of attracting a predator who’d claw them down.

Only once have I sighted a large hawk in our skies, gawking over the cemetery as if it was its land. How would I explain to it that that land is disputed property…

-Tanmay

training day; denzel; confucius

~ Tanmay ~ Leave a comment

Training Day is a cop movie set in downtown Los Angeles. Ethan Hawke plays a rookie cop- Jake Hoyt who is assigned into Denzel Washington’s unit. Denzel plays Alonzo, a crooked cop working in the narcotics department.

Alonzo believes in maintaining the status quo of a criminal world where cops are dirty and are in on the action. As per his own needs he chooses to arrest or murder anybody. He tells Jake to do the same, to follow his lead and one day become a detective who makes actual change. We can see that Alonzo is trying to manipulate Jake into becoming a dirty cop.

Jake resists and says this is not what he signed on for (of course the blue eyed white guy says that). However he is embroiled in a staged shoot-out and is used as a pawn by Alonzo who is also under pressure from his superiors.

The Master (Confucius) sighed, “Would that I did not have to speak!”
Zigong (a disciple) said, “If the Master did not speak, then how would we little ones receive guidance from you?”
The Master replied, “What does Heaven ever say? Yet the four seasons are put in motion by it, and the myriad creatures receive their life from it. What does Heaven ever say?” – Excerpt from Analects Confucius (Edward Slingerland)

I can see a parallel between what Alonzo tries to tell Jake, to let the status quo be and to observe him and learn. Of course I’m sure Confucius didn’t advocate lawlessness and murder. But if a value system is corrupt and validates what we consider immoral or criminal, then a large part of wisdom and a pattern of virtuous conduct could be adopted in the corrupt society. It’s as if the society won’t believe it’s corrupt and it’s just normal to be looted and killed.

But we don’t live in such a society right?

-Tanmay