It’s Different from different points

Once one of my friends, Munshi Sharma and I were having arguments on certain issue. I was firm on my view and he was firm on his. Being wise and intelligent, Munshi suddenly said: “Let’s agree to disagree.” The voluble situation turned into a quiet one. Since then I am reminded of these words whenever I enter into some hot discussion. Of course, we cannot always agree at everything nor do we need to agree because everything has many dimensions and can be viewed from different angles varying from zero to 360 degree. You rotate the thing or you vary the angle, your point of view is bound to change.

When the TaJ Mahal was built, it was acclaimed as one the wonders of the world, but Aldous Huxley disparaged it as marbles covering a multitude of sins, Rabindranath Tagore extolled it as a solitary drop of tear on the cheek of time, yet Sahir Ludhyanvi lamented in one of his poems that by erecting the Taj Mahal, the emperor made a mockery of the poor lovers. So there is one Taj Mahal, but different and opposing points of view.

There are many perspectives to a thing. Can a round ball become a wide ball? A big NO to this can put you in a spot of bother because even a perfectly shaped round ball becomes wide ball at times while it is in play in cricket. If a shepherd saves sheep from the wolf, sheep call him saviour of their lives and liberty, but wolf calls him a destroyer of his life and liberty. Of course, sheep and wolf are standing at extreme opposite angles. After spending a day with his child at Fun World, a father may lament: “A day wasted!” But the child may exclaim: “The most wonderful day of my life!”

We often form a view about a person and then stick to our judgement as I had once formed about a student. I had developed a block in my mind that he was not sincere and was not respectful to the teachers. However, after two years on Teachers’ Day, I got a greeting from him: “You are my ideal teacher. You always inspired and motivated me.” A feeling of guilt pricked me for nurturing wrong notion about him. To pen-portray a person, we have to look at different dimensions of his personality. Ghazal composer, Nida Fazali, has poured much truth into his lines - Har ek aadmi mein hote hain das-bees aadmi, Jisko bhi dekhna. kai baar dekhna

In Middlemarch, George Eliot says: “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” We oftentimes forget that when there is day in the Northern Hemisphere, there is night in the Southern Hemisphere; the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere is the Summer Solstice in southern; the Spring Equinox in Northern Hemisphere is the Autumnal Equinox in Southern Hemisphere. It depends on which part of the world you are residing in.