Stream of Life

Stream of life is a touching poem written in Bengali by the great Rabindranath Tagore. Here is the English translation of the same...

Stream of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

I came to know about this great work through the song "praana", which is the music rendered for the amazing video "Where the hell is Matt?[2008]" . I would say, a must-watch.

This video is about a guy called Matthew Harding (Matt), who quit is game development job in 2005 (most prob) and started traveling (God knows why!). For some reason, he along with his travel companion started filming each others' weird dances at various locations. A slightly edited version of this video, which he posted on his site to share with his family and friends, became a big hit all over the globe and started to get an unbelievable 20,000 or more hits a day as time passed by.Later on he accepted the sponsorship by Stride and began traveling to different places and filming his crazy dance at every location. You might ask, who wouldn't if he was paid to do it! That is not the point. Matt came up with this crazy idea and has done a wonderful job in bringing together people from different parts of the world in a single video.

The 2008 video in particular is so refreshing that you can watch the video infinite number of times and still get a weird sense of happiness while watching it. The music, a song called "praana" containing the lyrics of Tagore's Stream of Life, greatly contributes to this feeling, more so if you understand the meaning of it. The video instills in you a rare sense of bonding and happiness, and makes you crave for going out and dancing in the open with all the people in this world. The feeling is very hard to put in words but ironically this is the first time I am writing a blog! :)

The 2007 video was, in fact, posted on NASA's Astronomy picture of the day (APOD) on July 22,2008, instead of the usual pic astronomy pic, with the following explanation:

"What are these humans doing? Dancing. Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing. Happiness and dancing transcend political boundaries and occur in practically every human society. Above, Matt Harding traveled through many nations on Earth, started dancing, and filmed the result. The video is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species. Happiness is frequently contagious -- few people are able to watch the above video without smiling. "

Go ahead and watch the video if you have not already.. :)

PS: My sincere thanks to Hiran, my nerdy room-mate, for introducing me to this great video.