Of Beauty And Its Beholders

She was trying to catch air within her palms and tried to intimidate her foe in her language. This is the best part of watching over a toddler. One can't help but get amused by their animism (associating every non-living things with the characteristics of a living). I have observed for I have never lacked babies to play with that all babies see air as their adversary but it was an experience of a much disturbed night that has made this quixotic chivalry very special to me.

Years ago, on one September night there was a baby in my house.  His mother was sleeping like a stone for she had worn herself out by the day's work but he had no inclination to imitate her. He climbed up and then down her, and crawled all over the bed. His crib was too small for him to exercise his talents, and on seeing the width and enormity of the bed he was delighted .I had to watch over him for I feared that he would fall down from the bed in his jamboree over his new found freedom. Very soon the lion had explored his territory and on being satisfied decided to direct his attention in some other direction. So he began to babble and throw fists into the air. It appeared like he was challenging some invisible forces for a duel. I was engaged. This memory would've induced feelings of a completely different nature in me had the cruelty of forcing a drowsy head to stay awake wasn't adequately compensated by the musical laughter of that little Don Quixote. A child's laughter is the most melodious of all sounds that the human ear can hear.

As I thought about him while I watched her reenacting the same tricks, I said to myself that this was beauty. And beauty always engages. I remember a classroom discussion over beauty. Khushwant Singh in his 'A Portrait of Lady' says about his grandmother whose pen portrait he was drawing that she was 'not pretty but beautiful'. And so we discussed that day what beauty is. Our teacher said that beauty has spiritual component attached to it and that differentiates it from what is mere pretty. I have always had reservations with the use of word 'spiritual' which is rather a favorite of literary critics. It is a kind of an umbrella term for anything that arouses emotions whose nature can't be identified. English as a language may enjoy many distinctions but even its most ardent admirer can't pride her for semantic correctness. This distinction must be reserved for other European languages. Perhaps the correct word for that other component is 'soulfulness'. Spirits are invoked but it is soul that can be touched.

Beauty must beyond anything, tranquilize. It must be hollow enough to dive in but not vacuous. So there must be something that holds you--the nature of which if can't be defined at least be identified. One of its easily identifiable characteristics is that it invites a second look. Secondly, even if only for a moment it must fill your heart with a sense of enormity by being invasive. That's why I said beauty involves the soul of the beholder.

Contrary to the popular beliefs, the eye for beauty is rather a widespread phenomenon. The only reason why the phrase is so greatly used for artists is because they are too flamboyant. This brings me to the third characteristic that is, it is personal. It could be a food joint where you had a good lunch after being lit on fire by hunger or a friend's face seen unexpectedly or sand-castles of childhood or many airy castles of adolescence! It reminds me of William Hazlitt who said in his On Going A Journey that on travelling one might encounter sights the associations with whom would be so extremely personal that the most worded of men would not be able to explain its importance to his companions. He tells how a certain river is important for him for he came to one of the most beautiful realizations of his life on the banks of it. One might've been feeling broken and saw a septuagenarian crossing a busy road or heard a child worry about not passing in a test while he suffers with a heartbreak...The next time when you see an elderly struggling with road, you'd be reminded of that moment and that grief, and since you survived it you know that the struggle on road is not a thing in passing. What would follow is a sense of enormity like any other creature would feel whose life is not just a moment and that makes us deduce the role of the autobiographical memory.

Our autobiographical memory is an important tool in our affairs with beauty. Beauty becomes from the beholder and is becoming of the beholder. I would not explain the epigram further for if the reader was earnest enough to survive the above paragraphs, he would not be lost to the meaning of my aphoristic conclusions. I need to tell you about the Prophet of Beauty, John Keats who gave to English Literature one of its most beautiful openings: 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever. I implore you to read it (the first Canto alone). I swear by my pen, you are going to quote it for the rest of your life. Keats is rightly soulful, indulging and personal (Keats's 'Endymion').

Can a face be beauty? Yes, if it tranquilizes, indulges and becomes personal. It all depends upon the meaning you attach to a sight. Humans are spectacular. I have my share of things of beauty and one of them is a man's face. He has a fine pair of eyes. I tend to look back at them and they have indulged me so much that I picked up my pen and tried to describe them but all my attempts to describe the impact those hooded eyes had on me were short of any significant success. Their beauty has become a 'bower' for me to resort to when I want to look for a face that is more than a figure for me. Since I've already said that beauty must be personal, the standards that social conventions set for us of what is beautiful are nothing but a dogma. It lacks that ethereal hollowness for one to fit in. Take this as a commandment: What doesn't involves you doesn't affects you. Therefore, Remedios the Beauty was not a beauty by convention (from my darling One Hundred Years Of Solitude). She never followed fashion and never dressed to be admired. In fact, Marquez has (quite brilliantly!) made no mention of her physical attributes. But those who tried to forcibly touch her like the man who peeped in to see her bathe, died. When you do not attach your personal legend to the sights that arouse you, what you gain is nothing but a complete vacuum or as in this case death. You can run behind a pretty face but what stays by you is beauty.

I am not going to end this blog by saying that you must go and seek those moments.with beauty. You already do that but you had been hitherto oblivious to it. But next time when you'd indulge into beauty you'd be reminded of this blog and then perhaps for a moment you'd look for the characteristics that I pointed out in your thing of beauty. Some excesses of memory might sweeten this blog further to you. Its loveliness would increase. And then one day you might realize that what discussed beauty to you has in itself become A Thing Of Beauty. Then you'd smile on realizing that there's a quiet bower for your to sleep in and dream.