Hello Sir! When you have rested and recovered, please tell me the story of this terrible and strange world, as seen and as walked by you!
Allow me hold the doors for you. All I can do is to hold the door open for you, so that you can walk in easy. You look and drenched with perspiration. I may have walked in your shoes. I may have tried to imitate you. Both i.e., walking in your shoes and imitating you can never make me you. Your God given uniqueness can never be imitated. It can never be got by walking in your shoes.
Look at your shoes sir! Your shoes are well worn with ugly holes in your shoes. What the world calls as ‘ugly holes’ are the most beautiful holes any shoe can ever have. Your shoes are dusted and laces busted. I can see your toes through the torn leather holes on your shoes. Looking at your shoes, all I can say is that you have lived your life; had your shares of challenges in your inimitable life.
Your shoes further indicate your brave fight for that life you have aspired. The path you have once walked cannot be walked by others. Your life cannot be seen through others eyes. Any attempt will be a sure failure! Your strength is torn under the weight of your story. I have never lived your story. I can never live your story of life. The layers dirt on your broken shoe says it all.
I understand now sir as to why shoes are given such an importance in our mythology. Since price Bharat understood that he can never walk in his elder brother king Rama’s shoes, he kept them on his head, walked his own life in his own way. Keeping his brother’s shoes on head is a symbolic method of conveying that no one can walk in other’s shoe!
When you clean the shoes in the “Jora Ghar” in the Sikh religion, it is the beginning of understanding the fact that everyone’s walk is unique, can never be imitated. We are respecting, by cleaning their worn & tom shoes, their walk filled with sweat and hardships.
The celebrated and revered shoemaker Guru Ravidas understood every individual’s unique walk. That is why he became immortal.
Let me hold the door for you sir. Your shoes are worn, feet are dusty. You have finally walked through the doors of life. Allow me to wash your feet, this is the least I can do for you, my fellow traveler. When you have rested and recovered, please tell me the story of this terrible and strange world, as seen and as walked by you!
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
