Croak of a Barsati Maindek

A Child – probably the most honest picture of who we are, well at least most of us. Before I started wanting things money could buy, before I cared what I looked like, before I thought twice of taking something apart just to find out what was inside or how it worked, before I even cared whether I care or not. There are remnants of that simple joy of just being alive. I still find joy in the colours of life. I still “wuv” my parents and friends. I still feel like there is so much about the world for me to know, and it has nothing to do with the social philosophies. And I still love the rain.

It’s magical when it rains. And for a moment forget that it has anything to do with evaporation and condensation and cohesive nature of water. And it is easy. Just stand with your eyes closed for a moment and feel the magic tingle your body with the sensations of cool drops on warm skin. Feel the cold breeze beginning to make your body shiver. The water slowly reaches from the skin into the depths of your being. And something stirs – something that we feel so rarely in the rat race. If you let it grow, you won’t take much time to realize what it is. And if you want to name it, I can only think of what I call it by – my Soul. And I feel... Free.

I am free to smile. I can dance because I feel like splashing the water with a groove. I can sing at the top of my voice because the drops have given me a background score. I can play and try to do all kinds of tricks, because I am not afraid of getting hurt. I can make paper boats and send them hurling across streams just to see how far their voyage lasts. And when it ends, I start anew with another boat. I can watch out for frogs and then follow them leapfrogging alongside. (I wonder if that’s why the “barsati maindeki” proclaimed me a “barsati maindek”). I can open up myself to the world, and feel that it’s mine.

And when I am all done, cold, shivering, wrapped in a towel, and sipping hopefully on something hot, I look around. It’s like everything around me is being washed clean by some universal will. The parched surface’s thirst is quenched. Flora and fauna are given a bath like a mother makes a stubborn baby sit in a water-filled oversized tub, so that he has no option of getting away. Rivers, streams and lakes are rejuvenated giving our marine friends a wider ground to play. Life, human or otherwise, actually has come alive. And you are as much a part of the coming alive as you are the spectator. World seems greener. The smell of freshly damped earth is intoxicating. Suddenly it seems that someone just lifted a black and white screen and the world has come back to colour. And against a grey background of sky, Mother Nature decided to paint a world.

In many faiths including the scientific ones, water represents giver of life. If we look into its properties we find them not only peculiar but outright exceptional. Still it is one of the fundamental elementals. What I find most amazing is, that somewhere, some point in time, it was chosen that rain would be made of water. Water, that seeps through even the smallest of spaces and still sticks together. Water, that makes up the ever-humbling oceans, yet reaches out to the land in form of small droplets. Water, that even though present in virtually unlimited quantities, yet is probably the most precious resource, along with the other elementals in its creative form. One would think we would learn something from a choice so made. I really hope we do in time.

Still as the cynics among us would ask, what is so special about rain? I say it’s the fact that life comes around. Sooner or later, in one form or another, it comes around and replenishes you, rejuvenates your soul. Maybe it has been a decade’s drought, maybe even more. Still one shower, and life is given the strength to grow. It connects our thick-headed consciousness to our soul, and asks it to come out and play. For sometime forget that world is filled with pain, sorrow and misfortune. Drench yourself and remember what it is to feel like a child again. Smile like there’s no tomorrow. Cry, like for once probably the world is crying with you. And come out clean.

Come thunder and lightning, come storms, nothing stops the rain from falling. The dreams, once buried, are reawakened. I shed my pretences and find myself wanting to climb up the ladder of raindrops and hug the clouds. Miracles don’t seem far-fetched anymore. And if nothing else, I will always remember the stirring of my soul, when the rain fell.

Tryst ... All over again!

Full-circle – That’s what life usually comes about. You don’t realize much about it until the circle is finally complete. What intrigues me is the fact that life is formed of so many intricate circles, it’s almost miraculous how universe moves forward without crashing upon itself. Probably the reason why some of the most gifted minds in the world are searching for the single law which guides the entire universe. Although my favourite argument for the same is if there is such a law, won’t it be governed by itself, and hence its discovery too, thus leading to the idea that could such a universal truth is without sentience. Anyway my story this morning is not about such a grand theory, at least not directly. It’s about landing up in a place in your life, where you thought you would never end up again. It’s about finding yourself doing the same thing which you had thought you wouldn’t have to ever do again.

There have been instances, or rather chapters more appropriately, of my life recently, where just in a span of years, if not months, I have realized that things that are easiest to let go off, are the ones that are easiest to return to. And the ones that are hardest to let go, are the ones that in time start to seem unworthy of any further presence in your life. And in many cases, some places and people just seem to be a part of your life, however hard you try to get away from them. Actually it’s the other way around sometimes. The harder you try to get away, the more intertwined your destinies seem.

Such a tryst, however much one avoids it, could in fact be fate. Karma that needs to be shed, some debt that needs to be paid – take your pick. It could be a business client, work location, some old school time crush, a relative, even a means of transportation – some I just keep coming across, even if I never thought I would see them again, some I even hoped not to. And I can never know when that share of my karma has borne its fruit.

Another possibility that comes to mind, and this one I favour, is that it follows sort of the Maze theory (another of my spontaneous inventions I must say) – As long as we keep making the same choices, guided by the same perspective, we will end up at the same corner. So it’s more a matter of how our choices come into play, however complex they may be, whether conscious or not.

When I come to think of the difference between the two, for karma is again a more esoteric form of choices itself, the two reasons distinguish themselves in their approach; former is reactive while latter is pro-active in their resolution. I can change the reiteration of the encounters if I change the choices I make. I can take the other turn, to eventually lead myself out of the maze. But if it is karma only, there is hardly anything I can do about it, till it is lived out.

Free-will is the means by which we let our conscious and sub-conscious traverse the cross-roads in life. Maybe it is also the gate by which we communicate with our soul. In meditation, one closes his/her eyes to touch that element of their soul. And it is free will that makes us close our eyes even while we are awake, to reach inside, when it is our instinct to keep our eyes open. My father used to tell me, that when I will learn how to close my eyes, my third eye will eventually open. Not as potent as that of my Lord Shiva, but the one that will be allow me to see for what things truly are. I asked him how long I would have to practice to achieve such a state. And he replied smilingly, it could range from minutes to years to even births. Now I realize the reason he said it so simply was because in such a state, time would just be road with milestones, and when the destination is sought, road is where we walk. It is the journey that matters.