Travelogue - Rome
Some stories have to be told. Rome – the ancient city, the citadel of civilization, the modern world’s window to the old world evoked in me myriad ( end to end : in management lingo) emotions that convinced me that civilization has lost it some where.
That I was to visit Rome was a foregone conclusion after I had read “angels and demons” by Ban Grey (Just checking if you are not sleeping!). I had made the trip to Paris as my life’s goal after I had read “Da Vinci’s Code” last year – But that is another blog.
Here are few random snippets from the epic that was my Rome trip:
Place: Vatican City Day 1:
I took a photograph that would have change the world and won me a Pulitzer. The object in question was a “White” lady stylishly dressed in a white gown, looking serenely towards the vast city of Rome from the topmost floor of the Sistine chapel. She was wearing a saffron/yellow shawl with “Jai shri ram” written in devanagiri all over it. I was spell bound at the sight. I then captured the lady, the shawl with st peters square in background in digital for eternity.
To be continued….
Youth - an essay by sameul Ulman
Youth
Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of
rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will,
a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions;
it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity,
of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.
This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty.
Nobody grows old merely by a number of years.
We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure
of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy
of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a
wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer,
courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with the snows of cynicism
and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty,
but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism,
there is hope you may die young at eighty.
Samuel Ulman
