ABSURD TALE OF FLYING CARPET

                           Only Absurd Is Meaningful

I do not know what went wrong. It has stopped flying. It was made to fly. I had few wonderful journeys on it. I do not know anyone who can make it fly again.

This is no ordinary flying carpet. Half of it is woven with the thread of idealism and rest half has threads of realism. Though both the sides have many patterns. Like realism has patterns of Socialist Realism, Naturalism and American Realism. The other half, which is made of idealism threads has many intrinsic and complicated patterns, some of which though look beautiful are difficult to understand.

These patterns are called Classical Idealism, Subjective Idealism, Transcendental Idealism, Objective Idealism and Actual Idealism. Each pattern has the name of craft man on the corner of design some of which are very famous like Kant and Hegel.

The World is Conical and horizontally divided into two unequal halves, but my carpet is equally divided in two. But apparently one side is far more superior in look, texture, colors, aesthetics and designs.

It has a wonderful mechanism. When I want to fly to my native country Utopia I had to sit on the Idealism side of the carpet. When I want to fly to Dystopia I had to sit on Realism side.

I do not why both the patterns together were called Absurdism by people.

The flying carpet was very shy of others. No one else could fly on it except me. I could carry only that single female with me who loved me unconditionally. Consequently, I found no partner to fly with.

Once Ayn Rand wanted to fly with me. When she took her famous oath of Selfishness, the carpet agreed to fly. This is the first time I saw him breaking the rules. His realism side became active and a flower pattern which was marked as Existentialism and petals were made of Kierkegaard, Kafka, Sartre and Albert Camus had one more flower of Objectivism. That time Realism had more glamour than Idealism.

The flying carpet was really impressed that I was not ready to sacrifice my Individualism and due to my faith in Utilitarianism I gave preference to quality of pleasure.

The carpet was quite an amoralist. He never passed judgments about something being morally right or wrong. In a way he was Shakespearian "Nothing is right or wrong, but thinking makes it so".

Though sometimes he would tell sarcastic jokes, but he was never sarcastic about Black, Jews, Polacks, Blondes or Sardars. He was far above petty human weakness of Egoism.

I think that was his basic quality which enabled him to fly.

Once I heard about a strange country. It was known as Conscience. That was a beautiful island inhabited by a single individual who was a true replica of me. It sent me a message by telepathy that my carpet was infected with the  virus of Ego. I was shocked. I did not know how to cure it. Conscience told it had permanent remedy. He also told me how I can do some First-Aid to make it fly. Moreover the Flying Carpet did not know the location of Conscience. The Flying Carpet was thrilled that I would cure him. He was always afraid of ennui. He always loved new designs and patterns carved on it. Sometimes he allowed something new just because it was New, even if it did not have any relevance.

Flying Carpet would have looked more beautiful without any of pattern and weaved by single colored thread of Humanism. May be the source of that thread is not normal human intellect.

When I tried to convince him the superiority of quantity over quality and advantages of simplicity he became adamant.  He didactically tried to prove that simplicity is absence of quality, and is not a quality in itself.

Once he proposed me to find a way to increase his size. I told him that his size is just suitable for the purpose he has been made. He is obsessed with the conviction that Size does matter.

He became desolate and introvert after that conversation. Now I can correlate that so many pattern made him egoistic and that is why he wanted to increase his dimensions.

How was our journey to island of Conscience? How did we reach there? Could Conscience cure the virus of Ego? Or virus could infect the Conscience and tried to kill it.

Read more adventures of Flying Carpet in coming issues.

Other related post

Absurd tale of castrated bull

© Vipin Behari Goyal
Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India