Thursday, December 4, 2014

Musing on Shadows

As the sun hung low in west, my shadow lurked along the walls. The sky totally crimson, thanks to Doppler shift towards red zone of visible spectrum with lessening frequency to the perceptible eyes.It still didn’t seemed to have any effect on diluting the umbral section of projection. Owing to the canvas it fell on, the silhouette manifested itself into polymorphic form. Sometime it moved swiftly and later it stood still like dark permanent patch. Shadows are indeed mystery. It is dimensionless, mass less has no density but yet it is present. No form of matter can represent it.

I remember reading a story about how sun god and his wife got into rift because of constant heat he emanated. Finally she had had enough and left him by leaving her shadow in her place. Later on when sun god learned about it he went on a quest to find his wife, and finally found her in form of horse without a shadow. Not only that, even it is said in Ramayan, that Devi Sita was switched with her shadow before Ravan abducted her. Coming to think of it if that was the case, then whole incident of war that ensued was big much ado for nothing. Shadow has prominent place in mythology, especially Shadow beings is mentioned both in folklore and popular culture. There is one line of thinking calling shadow being as the Grey aliens a two dimensional creature. This idea of two dimensional creature though sound very absurd is equally plausible. Because as we humans are three dimensional creatures, we can’t therefore fathom the world which is sandwiched between two three dimensional cubes and its entire essence is within the bounds of that plane. So let’s give shadow beings a benefit of doubt.
Talking about shadow, Wayang Kulit comes first in my mind. It is a form of shadow Puppet Theater that is popular in Indonesia. With compelling story in form of shadow art the entire amalgam is real feast. Meanwhile according to Choctaw mythology, a native American tribe, there are two forms of shadows “shilup” and “shilombish”. Shilup is inside shadow while one that wanders with us is shilombish. When we die shilombish simply wander around as eternal damnation. How morbid.
Besides, there are shadow deals, shadow meeting and shadow relationship, which as being a citizen of poor and corrupt nation we all are well aware of. Also there is shadow pricing, which is actually a physical representation of Lagrangian multiplier in optimization problem, and is a foundation of entire aspiration for welfare state. 
As I was musing suddenly the shadow disappeared into thin air with looming darkness. All of sudden I wondered perhaps during night we reciprocate shadow people as there shadow and it is day there in shadow land.