It is an evening of cool winter breeze flowing through the small gaps amidst the blocks of stone and pillars that define an ancient architecture. A small leaf trying to grow out of a crumbling rock on the side walls of a building is shivering and going green. The building overlooks a courtyard, which has a chiseled fountain right in the middle and the grass on the ground is as close to a carpet as can be created by a hand made lawn mover used by strong labourers.

From the other end of the lawn, our carriers of knowledge and truth appear to walk towards the fountain. The white and brown robes flutter in the breeze, under the furtive eyes of the shaky green leaf. The brown robe speaks first, while looking at the mountains in the distant.

“So we are back here eh?”, Plato in the brown robe says.

“Looks like. Or should I use the modern day phrase Appears so?“, the white robe replies solemnly.

“Quite some time has passed since we last figured here. What do you think might have changed?”

“A lot. And the same time, nothing at all”, Socrates speaks in a fluent diction without any hesitation whatsoever.

Alright, time to ask the question, thinks Plato.
“And what does that mean?”

“Time is a concept of the mind, of the universe, of the atom. It stands still when you do nothing, it moves when you try to measure it.”

“Didn’t know it was all that simple. Anyway, so we are back here and free to do what we want, once again.”

“Freedom is nothing. And freedom is everything”, said the white one has he moved towards one of the open corridors on his right. There, hanging from the top of the flat roof, was a cage with a bright green talking parrot. Plato never quite understood what the talking parrot spoke. Probably because it always spoke Greek.

Plato, trying to one-up his master, “Isn’t freedom a great thing to have?”

“Depends”, answered Socrates who was instantly unhappy with himself for using that word which was made popular by new age MBA graduates.

“Freedom is a perception, like the rest of the world”, Socrates added to cover up for his earlier answer.

“Of course not. I mean, look at this parrot. Wouldn’t it be happy to be let free? Wouldn’t it love to have the freedom to fly above the mountains and eat fresh green yucky things crawling on those lovely trees out there?”

“What if the parrot is in love with the cage?”, Socrates asked.

A momentary pause sets in and tries to restrain time from flowing. Plato experiences that sublime enlightenment moment which he has by now got used to.

What if the parrot is in love with the cage, Plato thinks to himself.
“Ah, I get it master. If the parrot is in love with the cage, then he being free out there in the mountains eating those fresh green yucky things crawling on those lovely trees wouldn’t make him happy would it? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Freedom is a perception. Brilliant.”

“You used the word happy in what you just said. Now happiness is a different story, for some other day.”

“Yeah. So, we are in love with this place and that is our freedom”, says Plato.

“Yeah”, says Socrates and walks off into the corridors which have had the privilege to serve this profound master of knowledge for so many years.

“Yeah. We love this place. We are free”, Plato murmured to himself as though familiarizing something to remember for long.

They both walk off into the depths of the corridor to discuss happiness, which, of course will be a different story here.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the return.

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The balcony overlooks a busy road. Honks of all decibels and tunes are heard above the din of the factories in the distance.

Plato walks nervously up and down the long balcony as Socrates wears a forlorn look.

“Aren’t we supposed to celebrate?”, Plato looks up at Socrates and then looks down at the bevy of party girls carrying confetti for the party.

“Celebrate what?”, asks Socrates with his gaze fixed elsewhere.

“The fact that the new year is here.”

“Yeah”

“Then why aren’t we out there partying with all these people?”

“We are old. And philosophers.”

“Oh yes. We give others reasons not to party”, Plato mumbles with loaded sarcasm topped with anger

“Do you see the horizon?”, Socrates asks, ignoring Plato’s juvenile bursts.

“Horizon?? What the…No”.

“What is the horizon?”, Socrates goes on.

Self-jubilant, Plato thinks “Yes, the Greek has finally lost it. No more cryptic passages for the world”.

“The Horizon..er…a horizontal line at the end of the world”, he answers with a smirk.

“How can there be a line when the earth is a sphere?”

“Well yeah, what I meant is the place where the earth meets the sky and you see it as a line”, Plato drops his jubilant note and quickly understands the old man is still stable.

“Yes, and now you don’t see the horizon because of all these buildings”, says the old man.

“The party starts at 8 pm tonight. Its Happy Hours as well.”

“Now, the horizon is where it all starts or it all ends. And if we have covered this origin of things (or conclusion of things) by our creations, what are we celebrating for?”

“I don’t think I follow that”, says Plato and immediately realises his folly in saying so.

“When there is no reason to be or to die, why party?”, Socrates puts it in simpler terms.

Dropping any hopes of jostling on the dance floor tonight, Plato resigns to his fate and sits down.

Socrates, in the meanwhile, spots a fight on the road. Around five to six people chasing a guy and then beating him up as the traffic comes to a halt.

“Celebrate?”, Socrates asks looking at Plato.

Plato shrugs and then looks at the sky, upward from the horizon. Three colorful kites flutter in the wind and make the world strangely brighter.
The horizon remained covered, but beyond it lay a world of freedom and joy.

The party is on.

Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen.

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Plato and Socrates come out of the movie hall. Around 200 other people also come out of the movie hall.

Plato is whistling to keep himself occupied. Socrates, as always, is in a pensive mood. The white robed master is walking ahead of his brown robed disciple.

Plato (catching up with his master): “Let’s talk about loneliness. Solitude rather, to make it seem more important. ”

Socrates is busy looking at the glazed flooring that looks so bright under the dull white lights enhancing the ceiling.

Plato: “Well?”

Socrates (continuing to look at the floor): “What about solitude?”

Plato: “Well, what is a state of solitude?”

Socrates: “Pedantically, it is a state of social isolation. It could also be a disposition toward being alone.”

Plato: “Disposition? You mean there would be a tendency towards wanting to be alone?”

Socrates: “The flooring is made of granite isn’t it? Yes is the answer to your question.”

Plato: “Explain this – in a crowd of 200 people watching a movie, you suddenly feel alone. How? Why?”

Socrates: “Disposition.”

Plato raises his eyebrows. A pretty skirt passes by.

Plato: “Isn’t there something more to it than just plain disposition?”

Socrates: “Did you just see that?”

Plato strains his neck to see the last flutter of that skirt go around the corner of the corridor.

Plato: “Yeah, pretty isn’t it?”

Socrates: “Well yes, but very geometric.”

Plato: “Er…What?”

Socrates: “The pattern on the granite floor.”

Plato: “Ah….yes. Geometric indeed. ”

Plato shakes his head and picks up coffee from the vending machine. Socrates switches on his laptop and the music starts playing.

That thing you do by The Wonders drifts across the corridor.

Plato: “How about a remedy to fight solitude?”

Socrates: “Disposition.”

Plato: “Disposition towards not staying alone, I presume?”

Socrates: “Could be.”

Plato raises his eyebrows once again. The coffee tastes like warm sweet water.
The song continues in the background.

Plato: “The geometric patterns on the floor are easy to comprehend.”

Socrates: “Geometry is always easy to comprehend. What is not easy, however, is the thinking that goes behind making geometry a regular pattern. ”

Plato: “So is the case with life, right? Almost impossible to predict the thinking that goes behind a usual regular pattern.”

Socrates and Plato walk off into the night that has already started receding to make way for the day. Night and day – just another regular pattern of an irregular life.

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Socrates and Plato are both in a pensive mood.
Plato is pensive because of the bad dealing he got from the HR babe.
Socrates is pensive because that is his nature.

Socrates: Well, priorities are what matter in the end of it all.
Plato (shaken up from his thoughts): But, does listening to music have a higher priority than having a conversation?
Socrates: Hmmmm.
Plato (continuing): And does a party have a higher priority than a conversation?
Socrates: Of course! They both are of a way too higher a priority than you can even think of.
Plato: Okay.

Plato is back to his joyous self.
Socrates continues to be his pensive self.

Socrates: It all depends on how one defines priority.
Plato (sensing that this is not going to be easy): Well, how does one define it?

Socrates: Normally, one would say priority is the status that one assigns to an event with respect to its urgency.

Plato: Yeah, I guess so.

Socrates: Therefore, the definition of priority hangs on what you consider as urgent. Which brings us to the definition of urgency. Urgency, for any one, depends very much on the current situation or the current frame of mind. In your current frame of mind, if you believe listening to music as more urgent (lest you might miss out on some musical piece) than making a conversation, you would reach the conclusion that listening to music is of a higher priority than making a conversation.

Plato (chewing some gum now and looking at the babes coming out from the BPO section): Yeah, I know exactly what urgency is now.

Life, for these two, resumes its journey through the endless turns that its path comes up with.