'The Road to El-Dorado’. For a small kid, it might be an arduous
endeavour to decipher what the nomenclature meant when the series broadcasted
in Star Movies. A point in time meant for pointless, yet very pointed pranks.’El-Dorado’-the
name is mystical enough to catch the eyes of a commoner. It is actually weird
for a city of gold to be called such a name. But the way the human mind
progresses along its path, it refuses to put a “period” anywhere. If it encounters
a blockage, it does not even think about stepping back; a purposeful
provocation by itself-that is the ultimate impetus to it.
Every nook and corner of an ancient city made of sparkling, dazzling
chunks of solid, priceless gold. This picturesque description is more than
enough to drive a normal human mind wayward. It may even create a swing in the
so-called "devoid of material pleasures" people. Throughout history, countless
number of souls have been heard of, following the fantasy trail to the abode of
falsehood, only to know history made them its soccer ball and that it is too
late to even consider looking back. Still there are hopeful souls, who do
believe hypocrisy always takes a wrong turn around the corner.
The thought is interesting. Why did such a story arise in the
first place? It is too naive in its storyline, yet too complex in consequences.
Such a massive spread-out needs to have a solid reasoning proof behind it. El-Dorado
is known to be the name of a tribal chief who covered himself in gold, which
later went on to become the name of the "Legendary Lost City of
Gold". It seems it is engulfed in utter ridicule on itself. How does the
name of the person turn out to be the name of a city and that too, something
which does not even exist? Maybe it feels too extravagant to let the thought
loose now. But it was not so earlier, as proved by the number of people who
went after it.
Maybe the interpretation was wrong. Human mind learnt long before
to think out of the box. The person or the group who was behind this story of
El-Dorado might have aimed at a different kind of gold. They might have been, in
a way, testing the very special talent of human mind to encircle the bizarre
nature of the situation and figure it out-‘as physical as gold’ may have been a
direct correspondent to ‘as mental as goodness’. The sparkling priceless amount
of gold might have been meant to refer to the ultimate universal truth of
goodness and peace. But, here an irony is witnessed. Today, most rebellion in
the world takes place for money, the way-too-wrongly interpreted form of the
intended gold. Maybe, through the legend of El-Dorado, the clan behind it were
actually giving us an insight into what the future should be. People who
thought well in advance, people who saw the ideal future much before anyone
actually thought of it, or more appropriately, before anyone is actually
thinking about it, because the thought is not growing its roots inside us,
still. It is somewhere in there, but it is just having a masquerade.
This might have been the way Sir Thomas Moore thought of El-Dorado
when he coined 'Utopia' in 1516-a dreamland, ideal society where people lived
in harmony with each other. A more modern fictional interpretation of what ‘El-Dorado’
might have meant. He saw it, but could not realize the dream. The path the
human race is following gives no hope of a possible future Utopia. Technology
might grow, but evil will grow with it, while peace and harmony will stumble
upon boulders, thereby inhibited from moving at the pace of the world, forced
to retreat.
Else it might have been the work of a few people of radical
mindset, who thought the haywire nature of human mind should be controlled and
spread such a story so that people would instantly set out to search for it, and
eventually discover their own folly-that neither greed creates limits to itself
nor does fate volunteer to provide one. But even this dream of theirs is not
fulfilled. After all what has happened, there are still people believing in
El-Dorado directly or indirectly, through unhealthy human emotions. All work, intended
to make man realize his folly, in fact went into folly. The tryst with irony
comes to life again.
There isn’t much to do now, but to hope for a light which will
cure all diseases, not only external, but also internal. Even if such a city of
gold existed and people found it out, the next battle will be over the
ownership of that. Never-ending warfare, never-commencing peace-guiding light
beyond all perceptions, bow down before thee.
