“Rajesh weds Meena”, “Mannu was here”, or simply “I love you”. If you see these beautiful words inscribed all over a ‘could-have-been-better-off-blank’ wall you see while exploring an age-old historical monument in India, don’t be surprised. It is very normal for us Indians to drink down the bitter truth of our “Heritage” being loaded with people’s names, addresses, phone numbers, and even long overdue emotions and feelings of love, hatred, and religion.
Some lovely people from India are obsessed with the idea of telling the world that they visited a monument, and they fulfil this compulsive disorder of theirs by ruining the walls of that monument. Or may be "Manoj" just thinks someday "Pinky" will come to this exact same place at this exact same monument and know that he loves her. How romantic! Have they lost their paper and pen? Or brain…
Being a writer I obviously think writing is a good thing, it is an art. Yes it is, but not when you’re ruining the only remains of someone else’s art created thousands of years ago. Or for that matter, even if the building has been built yesterday itself, nobody has the right to scribe their initials on it other than the creator. But NO!!!! We are here to create a history of our names and of those we love., on all monuments, buildings, temples, doors, toilet walls, trains, hospitals, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the moon, the trees, the newborn baby’s left hand’s little finger, and everywhere we go. We must leave our mark on anything we see. We don’t even leave the people’s plastered hands and legs. Wait, those people want us to write messages on their plasters…that’s another story.
But I digress. What is more important right now to see that some of us are standing up against this stupidity in a very subtle and gentle way, like Facebook recently did. Something similar to what was done at the Great Wall of China. Last year, Facebook created separate walls at some monuments for people to freely write whatever they wish to. Looks like they understood that our cute people can’t control the urge to write something as soon as they visit any historical monument, somewhat similar to what we feel like after logging in to Facebook. So they gave us a separate wall at monuments to register our gracious presence and write P luv K in cute hearts with arrow, without defacing the monument. The idea is to put boards close to the Facebook walls at the monument telling people not to write on them, which will encourage them to write on them.
My first instinct at this was to laugh out LOUD! Those people have got the brains, and totally understand human mentality of tending to do what is forbidden. I have never seen those Facebook walls and I know not what happened of those, but simply wish this wouldn’t be the case. Why can’t we be sensible and grown-up enough to understand such simple things by ourselves? Why can’t we take care of pieces of art that have been left for us with love, to look at with love, years after they were created? Why can’t we do good things and stop deviating without being told? To me, it only remains a question mark. Do you have an answer?
Some lovely people from India are obsessed with the idea of telling the world that they visited a monument, and they fulfil this compulsive disorder of theirs by ruining the walls of that monument. Or may be "Manoj" just thinks someday "Pinky" will come to this exact same place at this exact same monument and know that he loves her. How romantic! Have they lost their paper and pen? Or brain…
Being a writer I obviously think writing is a good thing, it is an art. Yes it is, but not when you’re ruining the only remains of someone else’s art created thousands of years ago. Or for that matter, even if the building has been built yesterday itself, nobody has the right to scribe their initials on it other than the creator. But NO!!!! We are here to create a history of our names and of those we love., on all monuments, buildings, temples, doors, toilet walls, trains, hospitals, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the moon, the trees, the newborn baby’s left hand’s little finger, and everywhere we go. We must leave our mark on anything we see. We don’t even leave the people’s plastered hands and legs. Wait, those people want us to write messages on their plasters…that’s another story.
But I digress. What is more important right now to see that some of us are standing up against this stupidity in a very subtle and gentle way, like Facebook recently did. Something similar to what was done at the Great Wall of China. Last year, Facebook created separate walls at some monuments for people to freely write whatever they wish to. Looks like they understood that our cute people can’t control the urge to write something as soon as they visit any historical monument, somewhat similar to what we feel like after logging in to Facebook. So they gave us a separate wall at monuments to register our gracious presence and write P luv K in cute hearts with arrow, without defacing the monument. The idea is to put boards close to the Facebook walls at the monument telling people not to write on them, which will encourage them to write on them.
My first instinct at this was to laugh out LOUD! Those people have got the brains, and totally understand human mentality of tending to do what is forbidden. I have never seen those Facebook walls and I know not what happened of those, but simply wish this wouldn’t be the case. Why can’t we be sensible and grown-up enough to understand such simple things by ourselves? Why can’t we take care of pieces of art that have been left for us with love, to look at with love, years after they were created? Why can’t we do good things and stop deviating without being told? To me, it only remains a question mark. Do you have an answer?
*gobsmacked* 😍
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Anuja :)
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