William Shakespeare

Every time I see a tramp I am reminded of William Shakespeare. Both of them understood life better than all of us. The great English playwright calls it a meaningless idiot’s tale. The tramp’s response to life indicates that he too thinks it’s an idiot’s plan and doesn’t merit any kind of attention or any kind of execution.  

Because it is an imbecile’s blueprint he expects nothing from it and lives out life on his own terms. He displays total disregard for the ways of the world as reflected in his appearance.

His boots rarely fit him but that doesn’t bother him because he knows that all our steps are uncertain. He is absolutely right because our domain is uncharted. Direction is man’s unwanted intervention in an order in which he has had no hand.  

The tramp’s clothes are always dirty but he doesn’t care because he believes that dirt is the ultimate truth. He doesn’t bother about his destination because he is convinced that the real one doesn’t have an address. Can we question him on his stated position? No.   

Because it is an imbecile’s blueprint he expects nothing from it…

He constantly emits love, he is always seen exchanging grins, smiles and hugs with all he comes across.

He laughs, never at others, but always at himself. Himself, why?

Because he thinks he has been fooled by his Maker into undertaking a walk that is in essence meaningless and aimless and passes off as life only among the materialistic, who don’t bother to remember that on the last day of their lives they will have to leave behind every piece of their possession, which they use up a lifetime to acquire. They will have to leave behind every little thing whose pursuit made them strategise often shamelessly at the cost of ethical values; made them employ the most sinister of means and sometimes made absolute monsters out of them. We do keep hearing stories about people killing each other over money. And, of course, killing over power is legal in many ways, something that I have never been able to understand.

I wish I had Mr Shakespeare and the tramp’s insight. If I had that ability I would have swaggered through life, like the tramp, with no worries about fixing the roof above my head, about flowing water, about boiling grains. And, of course, the perennial search for unconditional warmth in human relationships.