Toes and stones

I was taking my usual rounds near my house, listening to music and thinking about few deeper aspects of life when my dear brother (cough) came along demanding that I should return back his flip flops, the ones that I was wearing, immediately. Sighing, I gave them back and did not make an effort to walk back to my house to put replacement chappals  on. I continued walking, bare feet on the ground for some strange reason. Curiously enough, I did not feel weird or strange walking bare feet on the ground. In fact, I begun to enjoy the experience. I paid close attention the sense of those cold stones beneath my feet, of different shapes and sizes. I sensed, closely, the granules of sand and I begun to discover so many small aspects about the ground that I was walking on. How the temperature differed slightly from one spot to another, the amount of sand sprawled across the ground. I begun to feel and notice every feeling that encountered my feet, the piercing sensation of stones, the slippery softness of the sand. Everything. 

That is when I begun to realize that if i hadn't removed the foot wear I probably wouldn't have experienced all these sensations on my feet. Do we even remember how the ground feels like at all? With our shoes on all the time, do we remember the sense of our feet? Of touch and feeling? 

For all those who haven't got it yet, i'm basically using walking bare feet as a metaphor. Somewhat. I wish to emphasize on the fact that we have somewhat forgotten what it feels like to feel and experience raw human senses. Something like walking bare feet, sitting cross legged (for those who are used to sitting like this), lying down lazy, etc. We as human beings, still find ourselves riveted comfortably with these raw human senses. Over the years of growth, materialization, we brought ourselves to a certain level of subtleties where we forgot how it feels like to be the core, raw you, experiencing all basic human sensations. Do you remember that time, when as kids we used to run around amuck and now we don't. Do you remember how, even picking your nose was pleasing at one point :P . Wondered why? Now we live in a time where necessities arose and we had to wear foot wear and it became a habit. Our feet have, somehow become numb, and forgotten the sense of ground, the earth. 

I'm not basically making this blog to criticize materialism nor am I supporting it in anyway. You can say that im actually talking about the sober fact that we have forgotten these senses. Of touch, and feelings as we grow into our own subtleties. Few of them, inevitable, and few others were something we choose to forget in order to please ourselves on some higher planes of living. Personally, I would say that it feels good, wait not just good, but eternally pleasing to sense these senses. Basically because, its just SO you, SO us, and SO each one of us. Get what I mean? 

Just last night I was having a conversation, discussing this blog with Shreeharsha and stumbled upon so many questions! I had even planned on not writing the blog at all since, well, I hadn't thought about this topic through and through. Or so I realized. Anyway, I decided to type down what I had in mind in hopes that the readers might get what i'm trying to say. At least few percents of it. =D 

~ Renuka Kulkarni