“HOW COME?
It is leaning
SO MUCH…It should fall down at once! How does it stay LIKE THIS??”
I was in 5th grade and I had seen a photo of the leaning Tower of Pisa for the very first time in my social studies text-book. For the next 2-3 years I had kept asking the above
question to every knowledgeable looking elder I met. I had found that photo absolutely surprising and I hardly believed it to be true! I was so curious about this
mystery of the leaning tower, I HAD TO SEE it for real and CHECK THE FACTS for myself!!
As years passed, I
learnt new subjects and started taking interest in new things of life. Gradually, I lost all my interest in the tower; I started giving just a
passing look to its pictures in magazines and books. I guess it happens to all
– We tend to completely forget something we crave and fantasize about
desperately as a child.
Interestingly, in all these past years, I never happened to watch any video footage of the tower,
not even accidentally… Neither on travel channels nor in movies… Not also on
internet, even during my preparations for the Italy tour!
So, basically, I had
seen this famous wonder of the world only in pictures. And today, I was going
to see it directly, live, with my own eyes. But I was not excited! My curiosity about the tower had been
forgotten long enough…
Yes, I did “value” the
fact that I was going to visit a very “important monument of my Italy trip”
that day, and so during my journey from Florence to Pisa, I sincerely but
mechanically read whatever material I had with me about the history of the tower.
How sad…as we grow up, we start “valuing” things so much, sometimes even at the
cost of not savoring those things simply for what they are…In fact, we end up
running the risk of losing their very “value”!
After reaching Pisa, I got
off the bus and reached the site. Surprisingly, I still did not recall my once
upon a time curiosity about the tower. I just started to walk casually towards
the main entrance of the site.
It must be a distance of
few feet from the entrance gate of the site when I got the first
glimpse of the tower. Actually, the way the three main monuments are located there, you see the Cathedral first, the tower is behind it. But,
it is no ordinary tower, it is leaning…so, from this distance it looks like it
is trying to see you, even before you try to see it! It literally does a peek a
boo from behind the cathedral...
So basically, the first
thing I saw was not the tower itself, but, the fact that it was, well,
leaning…
