It was the unveiling of the Sardar Patel’s statue that made me think about the significance of human-made tall structures of our planet. The Statue of Unity thus becomes the Helen of Troy for me - The structure that launched the thousand shipful of ideas.
I found a wonderful connect to this craze for mega structures in the book 21 Lessons for the 21 Century which I am currently reading. Towards end of the book, the author Yuval Noah Harrai discusses another megalithic structure which is installed along the India Pakistan border at Attari. To quote Yuval ‘that particular Tiranga was 36 meters long and 24 meters wide, and was hoisted on a 110-meter-high flag post’
The Human desire to touch the sky:
The story of Icarus tells us about the human desire to scale great heights. Yesterday, while watching the documentary Above and Beyond: NASA’s journey to tomorrow in Discovery Channel, I felt that every minute human beings are redefining the heights that they can scale. We have come a long way from mythical Icarus to the scientific NASA. This fixation with height stems from the fact that human beings give too much importance to outwardly growth rather than the inwardly one. Shelley was one poet who wrote about the fallacy of constructing tall edifices. The nothingness of these phallic symbols( Freudian) is clearly stated in these lines:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
This bring us to the second part of the quote from Yuval and surprsingly the connecting link is again Freud. To quote Yuval again '(what would Freud have said about that?) The flag could be seen as far as the Pakistani metropolis of Lahore. Unfortunately, strong winds kept tearing the flag, and national pride required that it be stitched together again and again, at great cost to Indian taxpayers. Why does the Indian government invest scarce resources in weaving enormous flags, instead of building sewage systems in Delhi’s slums? Because the flag makes India real in a way that sewage systems do not.” He goes on discussing the way we can define what is real? and through that how we can shape our identity which will answer the basic question - Who am I? Let us come back to our primary concern here - The desire in the minds of some people to create an illusion of grandeur. The possessive forms in English grammar are quite significant here - My,mine,ours, and yours. The next section discusses the psychology behind these grand structures.
The Pyschological Move:
The tall figure in the form of statue or a buidling ( The WTC,The Burj Khalifa, The Aztec, The Mayan and the Egyptian pyramids) creates an awe in the mind of the beholders. The people identify themselves with the sheer size of the statue. This creates a sense of ego-fullfilment. It becomes an emotional response. Not all statues create this emotional appeal. Some of them prick our conscience like the famous Yakshi statue in Malampuzha gardens. Onlookers leave with a perplexed and thoughtful mindset. Some of them may not even look at the work of art which depicts a naked woman sprawled out on the garden lawns. Statues can be made in a easy to understand way or it can be a complex one which makes the audience uncomfortable. So there is a clear difference in the way statues appeal to the human mind. It is a ploy used by the political system to assert their identity or the identity that they want to implement in the near future. A clear case of Art for Ours Sake. While looking at the tall statue of Shiva at Dakshin Karnataka or the Murugan statue at Malaysia, the onlooker has a different emotional response. He is in the trance of Bhakthi. He may whisper - No 3G, No 4G only SivaG. The cinema culture in Tamilnadu and other Indian states makes it mandatory that tall cut-outs are placed to venerate the celluloid stars. The fans who are in a trance will do rituals to appease their Demi-gods. It is like a classroom scenario where the ability of the student to write lenghty paragraphs is regarded as a sign of academic excellence. Unless you make your students think critically there is no real learning achieved. Again, I would like to quote Yuval from his pathbreaking book 21 lessons for the 21 century where he discusses the ’the four Cs’ of (teaching/ learning) - critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity'
The Destruction and the Fall:
The statue of unity also brings to my mind how these tall edifices were systematically changed based on the law of the land. The classic examples are from the old USSR ,where the statues of Lenin and other communist stalwarts were removed after the fall of USSR. Even in Iraq and Libya, the statues of Saddam Hussein and Muammer Gaddafi were removed once their regime ended. Even in the Indian state of Tripura, the statues of Lenin and other communist figures were razed to the ground once there was a change in the regime.
What is permanent will remain permanent:
No great soul would demand a statue in his/her name. They never lived their life for these stupid human ego projections. Instead of highlighting the works of the past leaders, the present leaders should cultivate an openness to realize that stone or metal structures won’t last forever. It is the deeds that are important. We venerate impermanence. To quote from the November issue of ‘Infinitithoughts' a magazine from the house of mahatria Ra. To quote 'Mahatama Gandhi and Adolf Hitler were both great doers but the difference in the quality of their being made the Father of a Nation and the latter as one of the most feared psychopath in human history.’ He continues by saying that ‘ we have become more 'human doing' than 'human being'
