Shelley is a famous early 19th century British poet. He wrote Ozymandias, a sonnet.
This is the backdrop of the sonnet: An exploratory traveler — this was a different time, more than a century before packaged tours became the norm — is in Northern Africa. He is traveling in a desolate desert somewhere in Egypt. He sees a large pedestal on which stood “two vast [large] trunkless legs,” broken off from the original statue of an imposing imperial figure.
Looking around, he sees a large head nearby, half-buried in sand. The head must have broken off the shoulder of the statue on the pedestal. On the statue, the large eyes with regal countenance told that he was a powerful king of that area a few millennia ago. The traveler finds on the pedestal this inscription: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Evidently, the statue was installed a long time ago to declare the grandeur of the kingdom and its ruler, Ozymandias, “King of Kings,” Emperor, Kaiser, Tsar, or Chakravartin. Around the statue must have stood a great city with royal boulevards radiating outwards from the statue as the focus. Trees must have studded both sides of these roads with parks and buildings, aesthetically built to enhance the grandeur of the “King of Kings.”
The emperor died like any other mortal. After him, his empire also declined.
Millennia of strong sandy desert storms, blistering summers’ dry heat and cold nights alternating relentlessly, and annual sparse rains. And then, internecine wars with invading local armies. All these took their toll on the metropolis built around the statue, now in ruins. Only the legs of the trunkless statue of Emperor Ozymandias were on the pedestal with his decapitated head lying nearby, buried in sand. Its stern looks and protruding eyes now look pathetic, grotesque, and bizarre. Only the African desert’s sand dunes with dry bushes scattered here and there punctuate the landscape as far as the eyes can see.
At the empire’s peak, the words declared, “Look at my great accomplishment all around me. O, visiting princes and dukes from neighboring places, if you want to replicate my accomplishments, forget it. You can NEVER do it, and so, despair.”
For the intrigued traveler, the inscription on the pedestal, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” with the statue now in ruins, brings out a great irony in sharp relief. Now, with the empire gone and emperor’s statue lying decapitated in ruins, the same inscription conveys quite a different and profound message:
“I was a great king and built this colossal metropolis with vast resources and dedication. Look at my empire now in ruins, and my decapitated statue. TIME takes its toll on all human accomplishments. Most people conceitedly believe they have accomplished so much, but pass on leaving not a trace for others to see. Such is life. Therefore, keep things in perspective and move on.”
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I grew up with my three siblings in a 1-bed room rented apartment in the 1960s in Madras, now, Chennai. In my circuitous life with many ups and downs and twists and turns, I reached many benchmarks that I could not dream of, even in my wildest imagination. Ignoring my “downs,” I was conceited at my own “ups” and “accomplishments.”
As my own Ozymandias (😀), I was looking at these benchmarks:
1. Going to a demanding US engineering grad school for PhD after a 10-year gap after my B.Tech, a gap sufficient for many to completely forget calculus, reaction kinetics, thermodynamics, physical chemistry, theoretical organic chemistry… …
2. Buying the BOM to SFO air ticket from my own savings while working in an iron ore mine in the rain-infested central India.
3. Finishing my grad school without paying a red cent as fees, and with decent grades as a married student with a kid.
4. Publishing many technical papers in peer-reviewed professional journals.
5. Letting my kids graduate in subjects I knew nothing about. Not that I had a choice! Conducting my daughter’s arangetram, something I never thought I could even dream of, while growing up in India.
6. Challenging a powerful Chem Company’s research paper in a tech publication in a peer-reviewed professional journal that was well received.
7. In the 1980s, first-time experience of sitting in Business Class flying from Portland, Oregon to Tokyo for some project work. For a hoi polloiguy growing up in a rented 1 BR apartment with three siblings, and raised by his mother on a widow’s family pension, sitting in Business Class for a long-haul flight was a fricking BIG DEAL. 🤣🤪
8. Publishing a community magazine in my spare time for twenty-nine years without missing even one issue with my erratic business travel, and earning notoriety in the community. And even making some paltry money, after paying all the bills for printing, mailing, software updates, honoraria for writers… ….
9. Getting several by-lined 800 to 1200-words-long articles in the American metro dailies on many topics. This was no mean achievement for a kid who started with a “vernacular” Tamil-medium municipal school in Madras in the 1960s.
10. Getting satisfactory feedback annually from my peers and subordinates on my tech skills, attention to details at work, my ability to communicate with technicians, peers, and managers using appropriate levels of detail.
11. Getting listed as a good mentor for operators and young engineers.
And then came the IRONY that hit me hard for my sophisticatedly camouflaged vanity and conceit:
1. Fifteen years after getting my PhD degree, I went back to my grad school, a top-ranked one. Out of curiosity, I went to the engineering library and checked out my own PhD dissertation to see how many students have checked it out. To my UTTER despair, only two people in fifteen years after my graduation. For ALL the four-and-half years of course work and tedious slogging in the lab, only two people interested in my work. 😜
2. In the 29 years of running the community magazine, I would have received only ten emails for bringing out all the 116 issues on time, with a few hundred articles on politics, society, economics, literature, spirituality and faith, culture… …
3. And when I stopped the magazine, not even one comment from readers at-large on why I stopped the mag.
4. And this was the Grand Finale: After my retirement, in the company where I worked for 30-plus years developing and implementing technologies and protocols for so many processes, I did NOT get even one phone call from colleagues. They would have justifiably felt that what I did while working with them was expected of me as a professional. Besides, I was compensated for my services. Was I not?
That is when I went back and re-read Shelley’s sonnet and the inscription on the pedestal of the statue of Ozymandias: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
I then realized that I have been a TINY Ozymandias in my own mind at the many “peaks” in my life, as the original “King of Kings” was at his peak. And in the autumn of my life, I see the subtle, and yet profound message in Shelley’s exploratory traveler’s interpretation of the inscription on the pedestal with Time taking its toll!! And with nonchalance, I moved on taking my “ups,” and “downs” as well, in stride.
And now, with more reflection and rumination, I have gone one step further. I see that my “ups” and “downs” were only my subjective psychological reaction to, interpretation of simple events in my life, with no reality attached to them at all. 😀🤣 ∎