pure souls

This past week, I happened to meet a few people who I could describe only as “pure souls”.  Brilliant in what they do, child like, no worries about how they look or talk, mostly in their own world, but warm when they include you in their world. Not “normal” – since most of us adults are conditioned to navigate this world with masks and not having masks feels like not normal, but then what is really the definition of normal and who defines it.

First of them was someone I was looking forward to meet. He used to call me for silliest of reasons like can he try something which he found interesting, why wouldn’t that be possible etc. He didn’t seem to understand some things which I wouldn’t have to explain to others. There was a crowd, someone said there is him, he comes over and first thing I notice is his socked feet, no shoes. I wanted to ask what happened to the shoes but luckily didn’t. He is like a gentle giant, with large frame, long hair, long thick unruly whiskers. He introduces, didn’t say much, I asked him something, he didn’t really understand and I left it there.

In the evening, a colleague who was sitting next to him at dinner exclaims after some time – “He can speak!”. We get talking finally, about languages, culture differences, his life changing during and after Covid. He was telling a story of his eight year old daughter asking something like when the monkeys transformed to humans, him going into a rabbit hole about the recorded history of humans all the way back, his wonder about thousands of years of history of how we evolved and that we still know only a fraction of it. We asked him who the role model for his long whiskers is, whether it is some Harry Potter character or someone in Beetles band – he didn’t seem to know.

Second was in a formal meeting. There was someone whom I am meeting for the second time in three months. He seemed bored, stretching, yawning, standing up, walking in and out of the room. In between, they asked him to explain something, he went up, finished it in 10 seconds and sat down. Later his main agenda came up and everyone got a masterclass. It was like watching Sachin hitting a smooth century or Messi hitting a hat trick. He has his own way of explaining, ending many sentences with “Correct aa?” and says “Super” when topic changes. These are rare times when you feel like why things make sense beyond the common quibbles, times when one can see what more could be aspired to, more levels to reach.

I tell a few colleagues about this goosebumps experience, and they want to meet him as well. He came down and got to talking excitedly. He says he works from a farm in a village, but of late having to come to the city a lot more. He tells stories of things he considered amazing, but getting challenged even more. He asks us if we are getting bored of his talk, we say no way. It is getting time for him to catch a bus back, we agree to talk more later.

Most people we meet are like those described in the song “Sweet dreams are made of this” – some of them want to use you, everybody is looking for something. But there are those who just are. No intension to use you or be used by you, they are in their world, with their thoughts. If you are interested or interesting, the worlds may overlap briefly and then everything is good. Pure souls.