Walls of wisdom

There’s something humble, selfless, magnanimous even, in graffiti messages, you know the good ones scrawled on bathroom stalls and big city walls? Because a lot of them border on the brilliant and some are just pure gold. Curiously, none of them (like the proverbs ) boast authorship. No bylines, no ‘these lines brought to you by’, nothing. They are anonymous, often accurate, and absolutely mind blowing.

There was a guy named Nigel Rees, if I remember right, who went around collecting graffiti messages and published them in a series of short books. I picked them up at the roadside bookstalls that used to flourish near the Fountain, Mumbai. Lost them, bit still some of the lines are etched in my mind. Like the ones below:

1."I used to be a schizophrenic, we are ok now"

2."The meek shall inherit the earth, if it's ok by you"

3."Amnesia rules, O... (in the series of ‘graffiti rules OK?’)

4."I'd give my right arm to be ambidexterous"

5."Misspellers of the world, untie"

6. "God is dead" - Nietzshe. "Nietzsche is dead" -God

7. "To do is to be" - Socrates. "To be is to do" -Sartre. "Do be do be do" - Sinatra.

8."I didn't believe in reincarnation the last time either"

9."Progress has gone too far"

10.Dyslexia lures, K.O

11."Is anal retentive hyphenated?"

12. "I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive ..."