About An Idea: Meenaxi

Meenaxi: A tale of 3 cities

I saw the movie last year and now a few days back again. I liked it. No, I didn’t like the movie, I like the thought it explored.

Minaxi was not a story being told. It was the story of how a story begins. How an image, a face can spark off a train of thought that lead into ramblings. But the image persists, the face beseeches you, then nags you and then forces you to follow it. To give it form, to give her shape and meaning.

Yes, it is a she. An idea. Who else can captivate and horrify in turn?

There is something near-hynotic about following the idea. Its very difficult to turn away from at first and once you follow, the path just goes on and on and you have no clue where it is going and if it will ever end. And yet, you still persist, you follow all her cues, you pursue her through all the mazes that she leads you into.

Every once in awhile she vanishes altogether and there you are left, trapped within a maze of words and feelings and vague thought-shapes with no clue just what you were pursuing.

If you are able, you’ll probably clamber out and shut your mind to all such fanciful pursuits. But if you aren’t…if you are too far gone, you’ll start to remember her and re-create her from the paltry clues she has left behind…foggy impressions, hazy blurs. And all of a sudden she’ll appear again, even more alive and magnificent. And the chase starts again.

An idea is a phoenix. A parasitic one.

Some people resist the lure. And there are those who lose themselves completely to their ideas. Did I say their ideas? No, they don’t rule the ideas. The ideas rule them. And they are artists, poets, writers, scientists, philosophers. The human sacrifices at the alter of intellectual growth.

We all have the double-edged gift sword of imagination.