“If no one listens to your call,
Walk alone
If in fear they cower, mutely facing the wall,
Open your mind and speak out alone.”

Grown up listening these lines, while walking on the busy roads of the Chandigarh city in the wee hours of the evening after office, I was suddenly reminded of my parents and my mind started wondering for a reason to be here away from home.
Walking further down the road, I was thinking if my parents were feeling the same back at home. I looked around the wide roads with glazed eyes, every thing was just moving so fast and reminded me of Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘Departmental’, where he writes-
“Ants are a curious race;
One crossing with hurried tread,
The body of one of their dead,
Isn’t given a moment’s arrest.”
Overvaulting ambition and materialistic success which has perhaps reduced us to a status of an ‘atom’ was indeed killing me deep inside.
Wondering if relationships are increasingly mediated through money. After all, how much money do we need to be bonded with our roots is certainly a million-dollar question?
I don’t really have a peer group to hang out with; the warmth of the parent’s love and affection is waiting miles away. All I have with me right now is my ‘goal’, my ‘ambition’ that was years ago.
An upwardly moving society is on its toes in search of better prospects. The loss of primary relationships like family and friendship are perhaps looked down upon.
Talking to a family friend here, who is a mother of two grown up children-daughter working with one of the top rated IT companies in India, at Pune and son practicing law in Delhi, said, “When it is time for the children to give wings to their dreams, we can’t afford to disappoint them by clipping their wings.”
This reflects a larger picture in Joseph Conard’s ground-breaking novella ‘Heart of Darkness’, where the protagonist Marlow says, “I would wish to keep back for the salvation of another soul.”