Priyanka Choudhury
A management graduate with her heart in travel and humane issues,
Priyanka believes that life is most important. Everything else is
incidental to it. She wants to deconstruct the world into small
intelligible pieces for her young daughter to understand.
The Beauty of Discipline
Ever a nonconformist, I could never abide by any rule imposed, either by my
family or by my school. Frankly, the whole process (of non conforming) began
with me having a pretty high regard for my abilities. I always thought I never
needed to manitain notes, I never needed to practice arithmetic or poetry or
flex my vocal chords regularly. Regularity was for people who were not as
bright as me. I could learn my lessons at the last minute, understand the logic
behind calculations quite easily. I sang well, and wrote even better. But then
the cracks started to appear. As I grew up, and learning became more difficult,
I saw the sloggers do better than myself. Grudgingly, I conceded that discipline
is absolutely essential if one has to establish himself, somewhere, in the long run.
But I never had a love for discipline. Not until a week ago when I saw the
beauty that discipline could bring. I will tell you what happened. I had made a
trip to the Scottish Highlands. On the way, I stopped at a cozy place called
Inverness. The houses, as I had expected from my stay in the country so far,
were all similar. All of them were made of stone, stood at almost equal heights,
had slanting slate rooves. The large glass windows easily afforded views of the
rooms inside. The curtains, almost all of them in white or light pastel colors,
with floral prints were pulled apart just enough for me to see what was inside.
All the rooms had short drum-shaped chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. And
the walls were mostly beige, yellow, or had a wooden or stone-like texture. A
square framed painting hung unmistakably right in the centre of the wall facing
the window - clearly meant for viewing from the outside. All of these houses,
owned by different people, who I presumed were from different backgrounds
and tastes, were decorated in the exact same fashion. But it was the flowers that
really struck me. Bunches of tiny yellow, pink and violet flowers hung from
lamp-posts, outside the funeral director‛s office, crept over benches in the
church-yard, and, sat in black baskets on window sills of privately owned homes.
The same flowers. In the same arrangement. And almost in the same quantities.
The entire city was a painter‛s delight. I made a mental salute to the home-owners,
who, had the good sense to put aside their desire to make their home a stand-out,
and instead chose to be a part of a beautiful whole.
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