Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Iron irony and civilisation

'Iron has only made the world tough and dull' kaleidoscope said to himself. It lacked the lustrous colour of fresh copper or bronze and to make the matter worse it carried stronger cutting edge advantages. However, thought kaleidoscope, it is colourful when there is some rust on them. What about steel? Yes kaleidoscope thought, its equally dull and gives no chance for rust to settle in and make it colourful.

'Just a wishful and useless thinking it is' kaleidoscope said to himself. How can you allow rust to settle down on your steel made items.

With the advantages of tough and dull metal the kaleidoscope's world devised new constructs related to the dullness. Examples might include such metaphors as 'shining like steel' 'as sharp as steel blade' 'iron man/ iron lady' so on and so forth.

How would have been the domestic life in early iron age? We can remember the roundhouses of Britain (around 800BCE to 100 CE). These were thatched houses with a constant fire burning inside at the centre. The fire was a multipurpose one to keep the home warm, keep the flies away, keep the room smoky to keep the food preserved for a long time. Often people were accompanied by domesticated animals. Now imagine the smell and smoke that would have provided for a permanent or semipermanent settler equipped with iron we are so proud of!

Where is the change?

There has been genuine changes since then! Kaleidoscope was born in an advanced near late capital civilisation. He resides inside a home, teaches at a building, crosses and romanticise bridges, sees the parallel points merging at railway tracks, dines on a plate - all are made of iron. The dull and strong metal might have been discovered at many places thousands of years ago at the dawn of the 'civilisation'. How far has it been changed since then? kaleidoscope gave it a thought for a while.

Yes, now that chimney installed, there seems to be an absence of smoky confined spaces, there seems to be an absence of smelly world and with the advent of perfumes and roomfreshners there seems to be a complete absence of those smelly days replaced by smell of civilisation. Kaleidoscope is happily married with the dull and strong iron in his everyday life while the nations are happily playing with the steel to do extravagant jingoism. Kaleidoscope is sharing an increasingly smoky outside to install air purifier inside! His world demands iron like personalities, decision makers and perhaps unifiers (of late in India). But the question remains what has changed? When he looks at the dumped and increasingly vegetation engrossed rusty and lonely iron rods for constriction they smiles at kaleidoscope. Demands him to look at the tall blue-white buildings at the horizon to understand there is also a word IRONY.

For facts-
Flatman,j. 2015 archaeology. London: oneworld

Fagan, m. 1999. The beginning. Boston: little brown and company.

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