The Swinging Sixties

The wild cosmic dance slowed down its whirling.  The stars and the moon snapped back into their places.  The earth returned to its orbit.  The attack of vertigo ended.

For those who have not experienced it vertigo is merely a word.  Perhaps the name of a forgotten film or a medical diagnosis.  But to those hapless creatures who are whirled around its little finger like a toy it is apocalypse. 

Why is the swirling dizziness so frightening?  The answer is simple.  Lack of stability.  We don’t value it till it is lost.  The stability does not have to be real.  Mother earth which is spinning like a top affords us a virtual stability like no other object in the universe.  And yet its value is realized only during those calamitous moments of an earthquake.

Then why don’t we just sit on our backsides and enjoy the stability?  The evolution provides the answer.  The moment man became a biped he lost all claims to a stable gait and was forever condemned to walk, run and fall and thus was set upon the long road to progress.  The unstable posture was an evolutionary choice.  A man can always crawl on all fours if need be but who has ever seen a goat running on two hind legs?  That is why the goat eats grass and we eat goats. 

Even so man has always sought stability in every walk of life.  This tempers the natural adventurous streak in humans and prevents needless destruction. As we graduate from the thrill seeking teenage to the more sedate thirties we abandon the motorcycle for the far stabler cars.   No one wants to stay in an absolutely still pond of water where every ripple is anticipated with a thrill.  But nor are we comfortable on the stormy high seas in a canoe.  Most of us would rather be on a river cruise with its gentle rocking and the musical lapping of the water on the side.  Those who achieve it have made it in their life.

Countries like Saudi Arabia are prosperous not only because of the oil wealth but the extraordinary political stability.  Iraq with nearly the same amount of oil is wallowing in misery.  Neither model of governance is particularly appetizing.  The controlled chaos of the Western democracies is far more appealing.  The current results of the Indian elections might nudge us towards that happy mean.

Do I want a return of the vertigo? No way.  I will not dare ride a roller coaster ever but nor do I want the boring arm chair.  I am now heading for the garden swing.

Haily Dalvi

6^th July 2014