“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” - John Keats
These immortal lines by Keats all but sum up our
overwhelming fascination for everything that is beautiful. Although the great
poet compares the eternal beauty of an object of art with the transient beauty
of mortals, it is amazing how literally we have taken his thoughts.
It is definitely neither my intention, nor do I possess
either the authority or audacity to comment on the words penned by one of the
greatest poets English Literature has ever known. But these particular lines
have always sparked several questions in my mind – questions that I always
suppressed – out of loyalty to my love for the poet and awe for the great
teachers of literature who were so passionate about their subject that to contradict a verse so lovely almost sounded like blasphemy.
But questions like these can never be contained for too long
– as they torment the mind and force it to ponder deeper, to delve into the
hidden recesses of our conscious and sub conscious experiences and arrive at a
conclusion that is your own – that you can believe in and live by.
Why are we comforted by Keats’ simple logic? Is the answer
to that question somehow connected with the fact that in all our beloved fairy
tales – across cultures and geographies – the protagonists are always beautiful
and the wicked witch is evil and ugly? So does that mean that beauty symbolizes
truth and all that is true is beautiful too?
Is that why the world is kinder to people blessed with
external beauty, quick to assume that beauty encompasses calibre, intellect and
even character? These are the first impressions I am alluding to – but often
times the first impression is the only one, if not the most important one.
There is no denying it then. We live in a world that is
swayed by good looks – where we base our judgment of people by the colour of
their skin, by how tall they are, how beautiful they look and uphold the age
old assumption that character and intellect necessarily reside in a beautiful body.The
media too plays its role by constantly bombarding us with pretty images that
fuel our desire to compare and compete. The old want to look younger, the young
want to look prettier (in the case of us Indians – fairer too) so much so that
even childhood seems to have fallen prey to the obsession with beauty.
And here's what's most unfortunate - the greatest irony to
have shackled our minds and enslaved our thoughts. Despite belonging to a
civilisation that dates back more than 5000 years, from where has sprouted one
of the finest philosphies considered to be the fountainhead of
ageless wisdom for all humankind, we seem to have plummeted to being one of the
most racist cultures on the planet.
Our ancient philosophy tells us that the body is a mere
covering for the soul – a vehicle in its journey towards salvation. Yet we
delude ourselves into believing the body to be paramount and it is this mistake
that distances us from our souls, from realizing the core of our being, from
knowing who we really are.
Although I cannot
change attitudes, I needed to make peace with my questions, needed to settle
the confusion raging within me, accumulated over decades, which has finally
manifested in the form of this outpouring.
This brings me back to the lines by Keats. What he really
meant was eternal truth – the divine truth – it was this truth that he equated
with beauty. And the body can never represent that eternal truth. It’s the
soul, the divinity in us that is beautiful. All we need to do is look beyond
the confining parameters of physical beauty and stay connected to our real
selves.
So over to the readers now - what's your take on beauty, truth and stereotypes? Is being beautiful an advantage in our super materialistic world? Have your reactions, choices and decisions been influenced by external appearances? Or can you honestly say that you are free of such prejudices?
