In
most workplaces, especially offices, there’s invariably that one person
whose eyes stray to one of two places: the seat of the immediate
superior and the seat of he or she who is directly below in the official
hierarchy. This is of course usually among executives but it’s a
phenomenon that can be found elsewhere as well.
But why?
Simple. The gazer is concerned about upward mobility, i.e. the seat
‘above’ and at the same time is worried about being replaced.
Nothing
illegal or unethical about it of course. Moreover if the said person
attends to tasks efficiently and maintains expected quality of work such
concerns should not bother anyone. Except of course the
would-be-replaced and the would-be-replacer. It could be unnerving for
some, but then again in such situations people can always grow a second
skin, cultivate a poker face, go through the day and bide time.
I
have wondered about eyes lately. Gaze, to be more precise. My thoughts
had strayed to what is arguably a rather boring mathematical
proposition: square feet. Essentially a measurement of area. Floor
space, mainly. We see the term in the classified ads related to rentals,
mostly with regard to office space but sometimes apartments and houses
as well.
It’s all about square feet. Area, But also feet,
literally. Space to move around. The prerogatives of feet. And that’s
two dimensional. There’s also wall space and that’s not about feet in
the walking sense. Which brings us to the vertical. And roofs or
ceilings. And therefore, to ‘spacious.’
All of these things would
probably bore to death an architect or interior designer for whom
anthropometrics is a topic covered in their first year in university. In
fact it was my friend Kanishka Goonewardena, then an architecture
student at Moratuwa University, who introduced the term to me. He would
later move to planning and eventually a reader of cities as political
space. Back then too, obviously, he knew of space but in a less
ideological sense. He got me thinking about the vertical. The third
dimension.
Feet essentially live in a two-dimensional universe.
Not so the eyes. They can wander left and right, slide down stairways,
climb walls and even dark across a ceiling. That’s in an enclosed space.
Step outside and dimensions expand exponentially. Yes, you need feet to
get you out of the door and to places of vantage from where gaze can
travel farther. Feet take you places. Eyes colour those places.
Then
there’s the mind. It is a device for extrapolation. And synthesis. It
allows us to ‘see’ that which is not yet visible or is no longer
visible. It moves in an intangible universe whose boundaries are defined
only by our own limitations.
The three work together or rather
are interdependent to a greater or lesser degree. They can be
independent too. You could, for example, walk mindlessly, totally
oblivious of the world around you. You could sit somewhere, close your
eyes and yet drive your mind to faraway places. Or let colour, line and
space repaint the mind as they will or prompt feet to move closer to
obtain detail or speed away in horror.
My inimitable travel
companion and photographer of island magic in innumerable combinations
of light, shade, colour, shape and texture, Tharindu Amunuguma, told me
once to let my feet do the zooming. A tip. Practical. Learnable. Feet
enable. Eyes soar thereafter or else dwell on nearby details —
footprints, scattered leaves, blades of grass. The mind translates all
into poetry. Sculpts. Re-sculpts. Constructs. Deconstructs. They are
companions on a journey whose pathways can be randomly picked, planned
or chanced upon.
There are of course individuals who are
perhaps disappointed, perhaps resourceful, perhaps pernicious, perhaps
ambitious, perhaps patient or impatient individuals filled with rancour,
hope or resignation with their eyes darting in one of the two
directions mentioned above. They may be missing amazing stories, but
then again one might argue that they’ve spared themselves unnecessary
distraction. There are others too. Fettered or unfettered.
A few
ago I watched Doctor Zhivago with a group of young people. Yesterday I
asked each of them who their favourite character was. Some liked Lara,
some Zhivago and a few were partial to Pasha Antipov. One, though,
mentioned Kostoyed Amoursk played by Klaus Kinski. He was a prisoner on
the train Zhivago and his family were travelling on, from Moscow to the
fictional town Yuriatin. Chained. At one point he rattles his chains and
says, ‘I am a free man,’ and adds, ‘I am the only free man on this
train.’
We are all prisoners of one kind or another, some, as
the line in the song ‘Hotel California’ goes, ‘of [their] own device.’
And even if unfettered unlike Kostoyed, we can be limited or limit
ourselves, unless we free feet, eyes and mind, and welcome dimensions
that have gathered dust or the passageways to which have remained
unknown.
There are vistas that await our feet, our eyes and our minds. Let us travel, then.
[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']
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