The Grinder & The Gods

| 2 MINUTE READ | Migrant Life and the Mesmerising Maya of Change

It was earlier than usual, when a small set of men arrived at the work site. Four of them quietly scaled the barren scaffolds, to heat the weld joints and prepare them for the welders who would follow. The last one, older than the rest, carried on his shoulders a grinding machine and ascended alone to the top. His grinding wheel set in place from the previous evening when he began work on uncovering a defect in the weld. He plugged his machine and lay down slowly at his work spot, beneath the curved inside at the top of the sphere. Adjusting himself into position so that he was steady with enough elbow room to focus on the small amount of finishing work left to do.

It was the summer of 1972. In another two weeks he would wind his way back home. To a village 2000+ kms north he had left two years ago, soon after the birth of his fourth child. A six-day journey by train, bus, bullock cart and foot – at a pace that would keep slowing down, over a path that would keep shrinking – as he approached his destination. There was no longing or wistfulness. Just a mental check that it would soon be time to return.

He rigged his hand lamp, adjusted it close to the weld but away from his movement radius, and turned on his machine. As it roared to life he heard an unusual sound as the spinning wheel spat off the machine and ricocheted onto him. He twitched in a reflex, jerked off the platform, slipped through an opening in the dense structural network below and hurtled down forty-five feet. By the time they reached him, his body was limp and his face awash with blood.

My grandfather received the trunk call at home an hour later. After placing the receiver back on its cradle, he returned back to his room and sat down on his bed. His mouth felt dry as a deep self-loathing arose within him.

The pace of global economic growth resembled a flat line through most of human history, that began an upward surge only two centuries ago. Giving rise to the age of the Entrepreneur and the Corporation. The human race has yet to adapt to this fundamental shift. By reinterpreting what makes us happy to be convergent with what keeps us comfortable, we have learnt to measure our lives by how well adjusted we are to this relentless evolution of expanding conveniences. Leaving in its wake many who feel detached and removed from a life of profitable priorities.

All outward facing reconciliations are fragile. Whether economic, social, political or personal. It is hard to truly make sense of things. A simplistic big picture view obscures the fact that nobody has any clue about what is actually going on. The only certainty is in this moment before us. Sometimes it fills the heart for no apparent reason. At other times it weighs the mind with imagined confusions and uncertainties. When our bodies perish, the world and all that we conjecture will become of it, comes to an end. What remains when everything comes to rest, is what existed before everything began.

The enigmatic source of all existence.

Long before the industrial revolution, there was an inner revolution. A glimpse beneath the multiple layers of separation – of me and you, right and wrong, good and bad, true and false – that brought us face to face with what we are. A small spark – of mystical wonder, of transcendent intuitions – burning into a forest of delusions.

Amidst an upheaval of changes on the outside, its anchoring changelessness remains within. Like an ancient and enduring memory.

Reminding us 0f who we are – A timeless presence, wrapped into a passing story.