From helping out his mother along with his brother to make out a living in the streets of London during the time of his childhood, to the time of his retirement into a small Swiss village and later when he’s welcomed back to USA after years of exile, Chaplin always maintained that zest for life.
He had been the sweetheart of people and press throughout the world during his younger days and with age has grown his popularity and his ability to see things rational too. This particular ability of his made him ‘sour in the eye’ of American Press and Government, esp. in those days of anti-communist frenzy; made Federal agents to stalk him, despite his declaring repeatedly to the effect that he’s neither ‘for-communism’ nor ‘against-communism’. He says his only bad is being non-conformist.
Though highly-readable is his auto-biography, the best part in my view comes towards the end when he turns nostalgic about all that he had to go through. It makes one wonder, though at a varied intensity according to one’s own perception of life, an extent of wretched hell the life is and what all one can make out despite it being wretched.
One interesting thought struck me during these last chapters of the book when Chaplin says ‘….the world has given me its best and little of its worst’. How many will be wise enough to realize and sincere enough to admit to this.
Buddha says about ‘Nirvana’ state and Gita say about ‘Stita Prajna’ state as the ways in order to transcend beyond the struggle of life. How much ever sublimity and truth they might have in them, it is the zest for life, I feel, that’s basic.
THINGS ..... 