there was a reporter of a big name newspaper who went to interview a famous hunter in his remote estate. right from the entrance of the sprawling property along the winding road, the reporter saw many trees marked with the bull’s eye, and the bullet hole in the very centre of every circle.

the reporter was so impressed, that he became impatient to meet the hunter and ask him how could he hit the bull’s eye every time he took a shot.

he finally met the hunter, and after asking him with the usual questions, he finally asked the hunter about his hunting prowess. “well,” said the hunter, “i shoot first, and then draw the circle around it with the compass.”

it is almost like sherlock holms and his problem solving, both manufactured in the head of the writer. what may be a story that may be too suspenseful to be tempting to go to the last page to know what finally happened in the end is all very well planned art of the story writing. the beginning, middle and end of the plot, worked and reworked by the professional writers before it finally reaches the press. the dare devil circus acts, the gold medal performance on ice, or expert motions of finger on the piano keyboard or violin strings, the foot work of ballerinas on stage, which the audience is watching in awe, it all is the result of many an hour of vigorous training that enables the performers’ bodies to remember every intricate motion to become a habitual act. and yet, no matter how precise the coordination of motion and timing, it is nothing more than a repeat performance, new only to the audience, but ultimately boring to the performer, who despite the agile and limber body capable to move effortlessly, cannot move in even less demanding form in an unplanned, unlearnt way, the way a monkey swings through a thicket of foliage, a hunting and hunted animal sprints, jumping over bushes and crevices and under the trees, all on the spur of the flitting moment. and because in the motions of life off the stage everything happens just once, there is neither a framed time nor is there the need to learn to repeat.

spontaneity is opposite of the studied perfection. nor does it demand an arena of admiring eyes, for, spontaneity is simply flowing with the flow of action and response without a picture frame imposed separating the purpose of motion from the momentary response that an action is.

what every expectant parent only ardently wishes to have the perfect offspring, a chinese geneticist has succeeded in producing, the designed babies. now the chinese authorities are mulling over the fate of that scientist who had worked in his petri dish, adding and removing genes to finally replicate his desired perfection of a child. what may be objectionable today, may very well become a norm in near future, as many of the objects made in the scientists’ labs are what makes the rich look and behave different from the normal folks. what geneticists were trying to achieve by manipulating the genes, the experts in orthopedic surgery have been doing it with their surgical know how for quite some time, enabling the rich oriental youths to add a few inches to their height by cutting the legs at shin and transplanting a piece of bone in between the cut section; the oriental girls to lose their oriental slanted looks of their eyes or nose job done in japan and elsewhere; breasts enlarged with the silly cones – spelled silicone. even the united states of america “first ladies” and european princesses have a team of beauticians to make up in the looks by making it up, with the products manufactured in dermatologists’ labs. the recently retired first u.s. black lady, and a first black secretary of state had to have their kinky negroid hair ironed out to have their hair look the run of the mill european hair.

it is not just the rich women who are conditioned to feel compelled to torture their bodies from hair to toes to fit in the commercially standardized female form of the perfect beauty, but in fact, any one who earns a living as a professional plans one’s moves in one’s chosen trade. even the state of the union to be delivered by the president of mighty nation employs a team of speech writers and rehearses how effectively to deliver the speech. and uncertainty even makes the planners to plant the cheerers in the audience to induce the audience to cheer and clap.

now look at the above two pictures. it is all too obvious what the child is doing and why. he is immersed in the various elements forming the matter – his physical body and the bike, and the motion, that of bike and his body interacting with forces of motion and gravity and his sense of balance. the bearded man in the second picture is poised for the performance for a slow motion picture, cautiously aware of all anticipated motions of his and his tamed king cobra. all of this put together makes his a studied performance intended to impress upon the audience his special powers as a means to establish his superiority without which he cannot survive as a performer, a perfectly enlightened yogi or whatever his field of expertise.

and the modern living has increasingly encompassed all spaces that were once off the stage areas where even the professional actors could experience the feel of one’s nature given body before the ocean of conditioned sense of the imperfection engulfs one, and one seeks whatever minuscule forms of buoyancy one may grab to not sink further deep in the bottom of anonymity.

so does the euphoria of feeling high, the touching the finishing line, the wearing the crown of beauty queen, the olympic gold medal, the winning of the presidency of the mighty nation, all pale in the thought of the demands of that coveted position and one’s actual capacity to retain that. and the fear takes over once again.

self help is available to only those who do not read the self help manual.