Locke, the English philosopher, had defined the mind of a new
born baby as absolutely blank- tabula rasa. Indians would like to put it
a little differently- the dough of a potter (in the sense that in the beginning
it is shapeless, and then it can be shaped into anything; also emblematic of
fickleness), or the frog of the well (koopa-manduka. In the sense that
the experience of frog in a well is really narrow, thinking that the well is all
the world; quite comparable with the child a little after being born). Both
comparisons are quite traditional and very effective. The new-born child first
lies on its backs, then it learns to sit down, then it learns to walk on all
fours and then learns to stumble- finally it learns to walk, an with each step
its world increases. On the first day of its outing, and the first day of its
school, suddenly the world has increased in a leap- the world is much larger,
and it houses many more people, many of them like me. The world keeps increasing
with its learning experiences- until it reaches a plateau (for most people).
Thus Tess, of Thomas Hardy, lived and died within a fifty kilometre radius;
Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders had seen much more of the world. And they were
all once the new born babe. Says Shakespeare:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with the satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwilling to school.
By the end of the poem, the child is at the threshold-
leaving the nurse’s arms, it is now poised to take the satchel on its back.
