At Marine Drive without glasses

Vision. Sight. Perception. Sense. Looking for something. Watch out. Opened my eyes.. open your eyes... Wake up. Observe. Pay attention. Look keenly.

Among the five senses we have vision is one I think one of the most influential and most distracting, yet many people take it for granted.

Today, the moment there was an urge to cross the marine drive and sit by the ocean, I suddenly realised that without my glasses I would hardly experience the marine drive the usual way. It struck me like a bolt how an eye sight is fundamental to the way we create the perception about the space around us and the way to attach character, feelings and significance to certain places than other... Without vision our priority of places to visit for leisure might completely change.

Sight is one element fundamental to leisure ... That's why we travel to scenic places to enjoy the vista and climb mountains to enjoy the view.. the seemingly eternal mountain ranges, the sea of clouds gathering dominating the valley.. the stary night skyline..

Our sight is an apparatus that receive every light reflected from the surroundings in the visible spectrum yet our memory, dominant thoughts and feelings act as filters to highlight few things or attach meaning to what we see...

It's interesting that we only see or recognize colours that we know names for eg. Blue or purple ... It's fascinating that there is high chance we might ignore as noise, a colour that we never knew of before...

This really means we are looking at present from the prism of past.

Today as I sit at marine drive without my glasses I realise there are many things that I can't see right now because my eye sight is limited and for me that thing doesn't exist but in reality that thing does exist and for me to make assumptions based only on my ability to see things is a naive way of approaching a complex world.

Seldom, overwhelmed by the magic of light and colours, do we venture to grasp a place through other senses like sound, touch, taste and smell. When I closed my eyes at the marine drive, I could hear a constant endeavour of tides trying to match the pitch of the traffic behind me. As tides approached me from far the traffic came from the left and left front the right and then mixing with the traffic on the other lane. Wind kept the humid clim bearable. The platform was still warm. And smell I can hardly describe, I think for the lack of words I could never understand the smell and fragrance around me. I only remember the marked fragrance of perfume that people sitting and walking around me wore and a flowery sent from a distant blooming tree - a stong intoxicating one.

That was marine drive for me without my glasses.