Scraping the sky

Many of us have lived in, or are living in, cities that boast of skyscrapers. Manhattan, where yours truly is currently inhaling his moments, is an endless chain of such buildings stacked up next to each other, street after street, avenue after avenue, for a whopping 30 miles! Millions of people in their carefully-tressed getup trudge through its shadows, catching yards of sunlight here and there. One can almost imagine Spiderman swinging his way through and coming straight at me as I stand on my balcony and take in the evening chill. The city dominates the view, and also fills up the vacuous presence of time.

It makes you feel like a tourist who should be snapping his camera away, and yet reminds you that this is your new home. It reminds you of the little island in Asia which takes much of its architectural lessons from here and is one of your precious homes.

It makes you feel puny for being a weighable mass of insignificant human flesh and bone with a self-perceived ability to look up at the sky, and yet it makes you proud that without you or the millions like you, it would be a ghost, dark and useless.

It breathes in and out the envy, the thrills and the fears that each of its inhabitants have and makes you laugh at yourself for thinking you are a spectator to something dazzling.

The colours, the shapes and the flickering lights slowly make you feel that these are nothing but reflections of the people who inhabit them.

The minds that designed them, the bare hands that built them brick by brick, rod by rod, sometimes dangling on the edge of a free fall to a slow death, the years and decades of weathering every windchill and every event that coursed through their streets - these skyrises are a testament to our will, our promise to ourselves every day that we shall live to see tomorrow and that too, a better tomorrow.

The reasons why they remind me of ourselves are many, but I shall touch on three striking ones here.

Just like a skyscraper takes years to build with careful grooming of every drop of mortar and the sweat and blood of hundreds of men, so does a human life need the foundation of parents and other loved ones, the pillars of values, the cement of education and the architecture of adventure. With careful combination of these factors, a personality develops that strives to rise beyond its peers, that tries to see as high as possible and that ultimately creates a groove for itself that others find hard to fill. Such is the tenacity of a skyrise, visible even when it's beyond the horizon. Make any of these factors inadequate and you can end up with strange or unsightly buildings, as we often see. Gray and cold buildings that numb the eye, flat and characterless tenements that serve nothing but the purpose of survival, or even sometimes garish constructions that make you wish you had never seen them. Make the combination right and one has an Empire State Building lighting up the horizon, or hundreds of its lesser cousins which still prove a point or two each. Thus forms identity.

Different schools of thought exist as to why man started building skyscrapers. Aren't they more dangerous? Aren't they elitist statements of ego? Aren't they bold assertions of risk? The answer to all three questions is yes. They are, and so is the formation of our characters. The minute grey cells up in our skulls play around with the questions of existence and purpose all the time and we subconsciously look for ways and means to prove why we are what we are. Therein takes birth the urge to create. An urge that dies every day and sometimes after a few moments of being born. But like a modern-day Phoenix, it rises again and again. In all of us. That urge, over the centuries, has needed its repeated satiation without which we would have stooped down to trivial idiosyncracies. The desire to express one's identity by building things that are grand, tall, big and closer to the ultimate infinite - the sky. The desire to showcase the fruits of industry and enterprise by paying homage to the free spirit in a permanent way.  That is a skyscraper - and that is a metamorphosis of the ego.

Identity nurses the ego, and the ego is controlled by the human function of personality, which takes many shapes in a single person. What you see outside may just be the peel of the fruit, and as you peel away, you may find different layers - some bitter, a couple sour and some tantalisingly sweet. Such is a skyscraper. When I walk down a street held down by skyrises, the noise of the city and the bustle of daily life strikes me in the face. It turns from every corner in the form of loud ladies, it rushes out through every door with the face of a man speaking into his phone with excitement, it fills my nose and ears with the most distinct smells and sounds that a kebab vendor produces, and it rushes through my blood like the honks and sirens of the thousands of vehicles ploughing on the road. Go up a few stories and sit at a cafe on the eighth floor and you begin to see the relief that surges through the building. The relief to have your own space, and yet the freedom to open the window and still hear the sounds below. Such is the gift of the building which mirrors the state of our minds when we maintain formality with others.  Ascend to the 40th floor and you start speaking to the buildings around you, as if they were different people you have never met before. Your ego takes a serious whipping and you immerse yourself into the surroundings and the view of the river in the distance, as if a long-lost friend has met you for a reunion and you are pouring your heart out. 

Take the elevator to the 80th floor and come onto the terrace. The city is silent before you, with a slow buzzing hum which reverberates with your heartbeat. I look down and see the streets below far in the distance with cars that make my nephew Google's toy cars looks big. The sun is setting in the distance. My everlasting friend, the irrepressible Mr. Urge To Jump Off From High Places, stands there beside me laughing at me. I ignore him and take in the moment, with the sun setting in the distance and yachts on the water a few miles away. Somewhere, smoke rises in the city. The evening chill is more prominent here and I feel as if all self-worth is fading, just like it does at the top of a mountain. The city is but a mere vision below me, fading into the horizon. My feet starts feeling off the ground and the flicker of a smile appears at the left corner of my mouth.

Just then the door opens and an aged couple come out. They wave at me and kiss each other.

The layers in each of us - they make us weather the worst and enjoy the best. Such is the cushioning of personality.

This lethal partnership between identity, ego and personality causes conflict and stokes heartburn. Yet more often, it creates wonders and takes the human race a step closer to the next milestone in evolution.

I would never want to get off that journey. Would you?