‘Life is
art without and eraser so be careful while taking any small decision about
valuable pages of life’
Or on the
other hand,
‘Life is
like a novel and every day is a new page. So if one page is sad, next page will
be happy. So don’t worry, turn the page and enjoy life’
Examples of the quotes that people send each other as SMS, usually in the mornings or
evenings.
Some like
to share quotes concerning views or guidelines for life daily whereas some
people, like me, are happy with less frequency. Nevertheless, exchanging these
quotes is a nice way of keeping in touch and communicating with friends.
Sometimes I also feel that the point of sharing the thoughts is in sharing than
actually following the views conveyed by the quotes. The advice may in fact contradict
each other resulting in that after reading a number of them, one gets easily
overwhelmed by all the alternative guidelines for life. On one day ‘life is art
without eraser’ and the next day ‘life is like a novel and every day is a new
page’. Both expressions are nicely
formed though, things that are well said.
Related to
the interest that people have for things-well-said, I have noticed many
people’s fascination for good song lyrics. People like to sing old romantic
classics and discuss about the lyrics -at least with me while they are
translating them for me, sometimes highlighting some specific expression as especially
beautiful or true. The old songs that
usually tell a love story undeniably deliver the message in a very nice form
and many people like to critisice the new Bollywood hits for the lack of depth and imagination. Of course, people everywhere share admiration
for good lyrics but somehow I feel that here (in India?) the importance of
putting thoughts into words or speaking well is emphasized.
Amartya Sen
starts his book The Argumentative Indian like this: ‘Prolixity is not alien to
us in India. We are able to talk at some length’. In the text that follows he analyses the
importance of heterodoxy and argumentation, having different kinds of ideas.
This is not exactly to the point but I do feel that the fascination for words
and things well said might be somehow related to putting high value on speaking
and presenting different kinds of views. Words in them selves are important if
they are well chosen.
Of course,
coming from Finland where every act of speaking and using words (which are
scarce) are considered as something that one has to cope with for the sake of communication
and where small-talk is non-existent, to me the extensive use of words may sometimes
feel like excessive. ‘Silence is gold', there’s a Finnish quote for you. I don’t want to go too deep into the national
stereotypes but I do feel that words are differently used and represented in
India, compared to Finland. Interesting case in point might be to compare the
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