AudaCITY Majaal
Audacity. A city with balls. A city of towering ambitions. Like Babylon. Bab-illi. The gateway to the gods. A city reaching out to the heavens with its sky-scraping ziggurats. A city of mighty kings and courtiers. A city built on power. A city like New York. And its goddess, standing erect and towering. Mocking at the God-fearing with her crown of horns. Her torch and book. Audacity is the statue, Liberty, the provider of licence and unnecessary freedoms. Like Babylon, the whore of the Old Testament.
Audacity is also Majaal. A something done in opposition to qualification, experience, standing or better judgement.
Majaal! The muse of warriors and adventurerers. It's that 'CAN DO BETTER' demiurge sitting on the shoulder like a screeching monkey. It's the tingling in the gut before an unrehearsed strike. Majaal is the mind's whip. Angry. Hungry. Seething, almost. It's a 'WILL SHOW YOU' throbbing ache in the temples. The arched eyebrow. The famished smile. That knowing, in the core, that success is an act of WILL. Nothing else.
It's that Devil-may-care toss of hair. The fierce squeezing of the eyelids. Majaal is blind. Like Arjun aiming his maxed out bow at the fish, seeing nothing else but the fish staring back.
But where is this city, Audacity? She's not really a place, a city. In fact she's Nature's wild child that each of us battles each day to live… and let live.
Audacity is also Majaal. A something done in opposition to qualification, experience, standing or better judgement.
Majaal! The muse of warriors and adventurerers. It's that 'CAN DO BETTER' demiurge sitting on the shoulder like a screeching monkey. It's the tingling in the gut before an unrehearsed strike. Majaal is the mind's whip. Angry. Hungry. Seething, almost. It's a 'WILL SHOW YOU' throbbing ache in the temples. The arched eyebrow. The famished smile. That knowing, in the core, that success is an act of WILL. Nothing else.
It's that Devil-may-care toss of hair. The fierce squeezing of the eyelids. Majaal is blind. Like Arjun aiming his maxed out bow at the fish, seeing nothing else but the fish staring back.
But where is this city, Audacity? She's not really a place, a city. In fact she's Nature's wild child that each of us battles each day to live… and let live.
How strange that many Asian cultures, while pushing the limits of economic audacity, squeeze every bit of social audacity out of men and women? Think Shanghai and Singapore.
ReplyDeleteMikra,
ReplyDeleteInteresting observation! But I guess both these examples would see this lack of "social audacity" as a rigor/discipline needed to achieve a collective "economic audacity". I think Eastern (Asian) civilisations were never short on audacity or ambition. Think Chenghis Khan, Timur, Darius, Ashoka or even our minor hero, Puru, who despite defeat is supposed to have told Alexander to take a walk.