I’ve thought about it before also but somehow never thought enough to reach a definite conclusion and an end. When I was in my engineering then also I thought about it at length and I was convinced that the answer lied in the man himself.
I’ve studied a lot of them including myself since then and the process itself assumed an independent direction than the purpose. Infinitesimally small and yet infinitely large number of events or experiences throughout the path has served as a spectacle so wide and varied and magnificent in itself that the perplex of it has taken its own toll and for almost six years I never realized the purpose which had necessitated the entire process. I’ve ended up admiring a man beyond all human boundaries and even tried a failed attempt at a movie on him. But probably man always manages to outgrow everything, even him-self.
I couldn’t read it on my journey home. Couldn’t read at home cause was busy! And I couldn’t wait to come back. It was like waiting for Pete Sampras to win the last four points of a grand-slam, like the title of RDB appear on the black silver screen with the wild madness of the beats of Rehman, My journey was a journey towards a dream, through a dream and I was back with the book in my hand.
I cried at places, but they were tears of the profoundest of happiness one can only think of. The sort of happiness you can’t contain inside you, which flows through every drop of blood that fills your heart. And at times I chocked. I was happy and I could not contain it, couldn’t prevent others from seeing it in me. Every word of the eloquent silence of Howard Roark and every brick over the other in the shaping felt like the music in the foggy sky of the blue morning. At nights I couldn’t sleep, so sad I became, at Roark’s fate. I prayed if the author never wrote beyond the first fifty pages. I couldn’t believe that the book could have been any more beautiful. I had read “The Alchemist” in College and I felt cheated. All the words and all the sentences I would ever write. The story I lived for four happy years and here they were written on paper by someone long ago. And I felt the same thing happening, all over again.
But this time I was wrong. The book only started getting better and better all along, with every fresh page it became more beautiful. And I realized in the moment of truth that if it was never written beyond those fifty pages I would not be writing this today, or I would have never believed that anybody actually could write beyond those fifty pages; that man is God.
Man has never seen God. I don’t think any body will ever. But here in Roark, AynRand gave us public rights to not only see, but meet, know, appreciate and learn from God. I think it’s the most tangible feeling of God or for that matter, man that man has ever got.
It’s quite funny but after I finished the book I asked myself what would one do if God was granting him a meet? Reverence? It puts the worshipped above and us below. Pity? That puts us above and the other below. How a man of Fountainhead meets God could be best illustrated by the fable of Alexander the Great and Puru the emperor. After the victory of the battle as Alexander asks, “How do you expect me to treat you?” “Like an emperor would treat another” was Puru’s defiant answer.
It’s that answer that “The Fountainhead” teaches you to give when you ever happen to meet him. There are only few things that are selfish; thinking, working, breathing, eating, digesting etc. Because here, you need the self, yourself. All other things like ruling or being a gangster are selfless. Because that’s secondhand. You need the other first and you then. To rule, you need the citizen, to commit an act of violence, you need the victim. It’s always the other first and you then and hence secondhand. Ten brains can never think together. Ten brains can come to a common decision, but that’s an average, a compromise or a victory of the majority. Every new step of a thought process is essentially selfish, confined within a single head. We can only use the product of such processes. Like we can inherit wheel but not the hundred thousands of thoughts going on its inventors mind. A lot of what I wrote in the above paragraph is plain paraphrasing of Rand’s content.
Originality and the will of the soul is the principle behind all ingeniousness. Isn’t it pure madness to not step out of your home and still want to know what’s happening in Antarctica? But it’s the will behind it and the lack of judging, whether it’s reasonable or sheer blasphemy that makes it reasonable today or going to moon for that matter. Roark’s statement “ I inherit nothing from anybody, I don’t stand at the end of any tradition, in fact I might be standing at the beginning of one” is a confirmation of the same.
The fact that the justification and the purpose of an action starts and ends inside the action is probably the most forgotten one. “The work is its own reward”, probably anybody reading the book will realize that the above sentence was never meant to be the cliché it’s become. Probably to do justice to the essence of this statement, the person who said it should never have said it. Roark’s statement that “ I want you to know that I don’t exist for you” is probably the only way to stop the same essence from becoming a cliché.
A particular conversation that I don’t think I’ll ever forget is when Troohey asks Roark “ What do you think of me?” and Roark answers “But I don’t think of you”. That’s the indifference, the detachment that we have learnt over the years to be known as ‘spirituality’ and yet never understood it.
“I am a selfish person”. Roark probably illustrates whatever was left with his defense argument in the courtroom when he said “ Defense rests”.
The most tearful moment that I experienced in the book is the following paragraph when Dominique stands in front of the under construction ‘Wynand Building’ and sees that one thing.
The Fountainhead
She stopped. She saw an object she had never noticed before. The sight was like the touch of a hand on her forehead, the hand of those figures in legend who had the power to heal. She had not known Henry Cameron and she had not heard him say it, but what she felt now was as if she were hearing it: "And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world--and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer."
She saw, on the fence surrounding New York’s greatest building, a small tin plate bearing the words:
"Howard Roark, Architect"
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And I feel I can’t write anything about the book after this anymore, it’s there for anyone who wants to read it.
So long, six years and 1635 words later, I come back to the original quest that has necessitated all the above words. Why did I need in the first place to tell you about the book? Well, it’s because unless you read it you won’t know what I’m telling, or for that matter, what I want. If I were to answer the last two questions, I would require to write a book at least as good as the one I’m referring and I honestly believe it’s quite beyond my faculties.
Will meet you some day.
Subhasish Chakraborty.
https://coldspark.blogspot.com/