Observation

Train journey itself was a thrill during my kid-days. It was usually very long, taking 3 days and nights. No reservation of seat (3rd class of those years somewhere upto 1960’s). Entry was usually through a window (no grills then) and the exit through the door. Fully crowded were the compartments. There was a picture of a burning kerosene stove with a big X mark in red right across it, to remind that it was okay to use a stove a bit carefully (as I understood, looking at the passengers, who used it quite liberally in the walking-space near the doorways.) Somehow this practice got stopped without the need of any intervention by authorities, just as IT flourished in Bangalore, quietly, and the government came to know a bit late! There were “meals” stations, where the trains used to halt for passengers to have meals in refreshment rooms. Delays of trains were looked upon as ‘acts of God’ (resembling the exclusion clause of Insurance policies). The only occasion when they touched the ‘on time’ was when it was 24 hours late. And I could not understand why there was a practice of intimating ‘telegraphically’ about the date of reaching to the host-relatives. Usually, we would be there at the destination, when the telegram gets delivered. After paying a tip for the ‘prompt’ service to the ‘telegram’ postman, this hand-written transcript of the ‘dots and dashes’ message was passed around all the members of the family by the sender-cum-recipient, and the same was carefully read by all as if it contained some ancient veiled message, of mystic contents. Basically, some piece of paper with hard impressions of metallic-stamps from any government department did have an ‘air of authority’ and were handled respectfully, and carefully preserved in a wall-fixed slot-shelf or so. The elders used to repeat the very same words of ‘enquiries of well being’ during every visit, and it never tired either party.

The concept of ‘observation’ (or rather the ‘fine-tuning’ of it), came into my focus during one of such journeys. Till then, I was content of my better ability compared to a baby who could not even focus the doll being taken away from its very sight with a ‘swish’, and that needless reassuring comment ‘crow took it away’ uttering a ‘kooooosshhhhhh’. Sitting at the window seat was the sole item in the list of preferences during a train journey. Usually even strangers offered that window place despite that crowd occupying the bench tight-squeezed, probably because they preferred to avoid the tiny particles of coal dust from the steam engine, and also since kids needed just a few inches to park their tiny bottom, and the arms placed on each other close to the chest rested upon the open window offered the chin a cushioned resting place for long duration of continuous watching the sceneries fly past the speeding train. I could not get any glimpse of plants, flowers that were very close to the track. And those at a distance passed by slower enough to observe them well, but the ‘zoom-in’ was not available. I now insisted upon attempting to watch at least a couple of objects within every furlong. To do this, I had to stare out of the window, turning the head towards the train’s direction, fix the gaze on just one thing, and follow its rapid pace of flying past by, turning the head to the other side till it went out of sight. This new found ‘reach’ gave an immense sense of satisfaction. Back at school ground, I was tempted to reverse the process. Fix the gaze on one visual (a virtual one), despite several distractions appearing before the eye. Lots of children pass by criss-cross, and the imaginary visual within me remained focused even with my eyes open. It seemed like a game, which required no partner, no umpire, no scores etc. It worked well and offered lots of fun and proved to be a good pastime.

Some youngster happened to protest, saying that at times, some of my blogs required more than a passing glance, and it seemed to demand a steady, slower and focused reading that they were not used to. I was tempted to ask him what if he were required to fly a supersonic aircraft carrying precious lives of eminent people as passengers. He would have to alternate pretty fast between fast flying-by view and the several similar looking tiny dials in the cockpit, with utmost focus, not risking a passing glance at either! These dials represent entirely different values with the same digital forms of display. Failure to take adequate notice of even a small abnormality in these dials would prove disastrous.

Anyway, the observation is what requires a deeper look at before we can think of a deeper perception about what we observe. The mind seems to present the real hurdle with our capability of observation from evolving. When we are anxiously seeking someone in a large crowd, we search on a ‘scan’ mode pretty efficiently, and are able to focus rapidly on our ‘target’ without even ‘feeling’ the animated gestures of the people in the crowd which is enough to confuse that steady focus. But when it comes to searching for a simple thing like a comb, a kitchen knife, etc, amidst inanimate objects, we fail to observe the object looked for, over which our eyes would have crossed over several times during the search.

What seemed okay with a train journey seems to have caught up with our life style itself. Everything is now fast paced. Even movies have to match that speed. Slow movies of yester years seem intolerably dull. It doesn’t matter if it costs our observation capability getting stunted. Converting anything and everything into a ‘routine’ seems to take care of that lack of observation. We prefer a tight packed sight-seeing to cover as many places as possible in one go. There is always that digi-cam if anybody cares to challenge if we really did visit all those places. That too is just aim and shoot, auto focus, no need to spend time to focus meaningfully with our eyes.

I was wondering if there could be some conscious effort to inculcate that focused observation, as a technique that can be invoked at will, into the children so that they feel those ‘too many’ text books/variety-subjects, to be less burdensome.

(Over the years, I still seem to prefer a walk, or even a slow ride on the bike, to be able to observe as much as possible en-route.)
psn(18th January, 2010)