Mix grill....

Mix grill--
you can't escape being a Buddha --

Day 1--

It was drizzling. In the wee hours of morning, cuckoo was singing hilariously and sun was playing hide and seek with some  whitish orange baby clouds. I was walking in the campus thinking philosophically on playfulness of nature. In my transcendental state of mind, i almost missed the petite figure of Aunt Gurnani who lived on 2nd floor. A half smile came on her shadowy old face, wrinkled with the wisdom of 35 years of government service...was she upset, i jerked out of my dreamy approach. Slowly she told me her son pleaded for mercy killing last night....! He was given a gift of second and then third life, by highly capable Doctors of Mumbai, in span of last four years. And he was also given (beside life) pain, suffering and trauma beyond imagination. Was it really worth living? A life without life....saddened footsteps walked away as i was watched them glued to ground. Another victim of cancer....not one child but the whole family....why?

Day 2--

Another lovely day. The car speeded through the green outskirts of my native city, Kanpur. A nostalgic smell filled into airtight luxurious sedan. I looked over my shoulder, side view was as beautiful as was in front. Fine trees, bushes and clean roads are not very common in Uttar Pradesh so a warm smile spread over my face. I took a right turn and suddenly the scene changed as if i was in an auditorium, watching a stage play.....now the whole footpath on left and right side was covered with small rotten canopies and sheets. Half covered grown ups and little covered children were trying to end the day with whatever they could get. I slowed down...a roti somewhere and a handful of rice in another leaf-plate...a piece of bread or ....even that was missing....why? ...how?

Day 3--

Do i really have the strength to tell the tale of my dying music teacher?....the night was ominous and so was the morning. He taught me sitar and was very close to my whole family. Time passed and a big gap came in between and we lost touch, then one day i saw him on road buying vegetables. The same white beared and same white, stained dhoti and kurta! He was not changed! Gradually i came to know about his daughter's death because he couldn't give her enough dowry.... because he was ill and poor. We couldn't do enough and that  night he called my husband because there was no one who could take him to his final destination.....the night and its breaking into a day when the sun came out from behind a curtain of smoke coming out of final pyre....i can never forget...

On eve of teacher's day should i be like a Buddha or do i feel like a young student ..... remembering the last days of my old, humble and poor teacher.... I don't know!

पृत्युत्तर

जब मौन उतर कर आता है

वर्षा की बूंंँदें टकराती हैं।

बाहर की अविरल धवनि सुनकर, 

मन का सागर लहराता है।

मैं सोच रही थी एक दिन बैठी

जीवन-जल के कंचन तट पर,

माला का अर्थ यदि नित्य नहीं

तो मोती क्यों बिंध जाता है!

यह पृश्न नहीं पृत्युत्तर था

स्तब्ध पृाणों के मंथन का;

कब वर्षा की बूंदों से मिल

चिर माला नित बन जाती है!

तब मौन उतर कर आता है,

और साँसें भी रुक जाती हैं!

Inward fire

Peeped through the greying cloud
Golden glow in western sky
Deeper it turned 
Orange then red 
Reflected every moment 
The shades of life.

Peeped through the dying ignorance
Northward journey of inward fire.
Deeper it turned
Orange then red.
Lighting and lifting
The Veil of Maya...

The true happiness....

'Happiness comes from within', is an old but true quote which has practically lost its charishma because of overuse.

Happiness- if outside, is momentary, which cannot survive the complex nature of human and its relation with outside world. A practical and authentic example of festivals can be taken to understand the creeping phenomenon that sucks the very breath from the life support of 'happiness' like a parasite. In every culture, across the world, festivals are celebrated with zest in early years of life. Then they are followed with dull enthusiasm based on aquired habit patterns, in later days. People drag themselves to perform the routine blaming the change of time going from bad to worse. They say the substance is missing...A big bang gradually submitting to diminishing echo, probably going towards a slow and painful death. Where does the element gets lost?

It is not a complicated enigma which it looks like if seen superficially! The reason is obvious. It is simply because, in due course of time, the quench gets hydrated before being satisfied...or we can say, of course, the other way....the river gets dried up before reaching the ocean....the flight of an eagle remains half hearted if it gives up its desire to swim freely in the sky only because its wings start aching! The idea is that the monotonous routine of anything, even if that is enjoyable, becomes cumbersome task in long run.

To break the cyclic pattern we look for something new and soon that too becomes old and thus boring. The only truth that remains constant in outer world is 'change' and yet that change is unable to keep up the dying spirit. Do we need a magical wand to rejuvenate, for every life suffer from this illness of mental fatigue some or the other time in one's life span?

Actually it only takes a speck of ray on morning dew to regain the lost beauty, a lightening in barren land or a musical beat in chaos of imposed silence to nurture the eternal quest....the True Happiness....! We only have to look for it...within'...for there it is constant...for there it does not need special occasion to celebrate....for there one finds Sat Chit and Anand.....the permanent Bliss!