Category: Quick Reads

Wish I could relive my childhood. Wish I could taste those summer mangoes again. That bliss of licking my fingers, sitting in front of that old khus cooler, watching those world cup matches on that tiny black and white TV ..magical. It can go on and on.Wish I was in college again and relive all those canteen moments, class bunks, late nights, gossips, rumors, and misadventures. Wish I could relive the celebration of landing up in my first job. The training, the first salary, first shopping, first flight back home…Oh this feels magical.Do we notice that our selfish and pleasure-seeking minds naturally take us back to the wonders when we want to dive into the past? We keep revisiting those high points. But what about the ebbs? Let us not leave the unpleasant behind. It is either all or nothing. If ever it becomes possible to do time travel, the totality of experiences will have to be rerun. One leads to the other. Happiness to sorrow and vice versa. Failures to success and reverse. The beauty of completeness lies in the black, white, and grey. Nothing happens in isolation. Let me not overlook the “dark” days hence.Coming back to Happy Childhood. How can I leave out those high fevers, school tests, morning risings, and exam madness? How can I forget all those times when I had thundered “let me grow up once, the world will see what I do to it. Let me escape this kid zone asap.” And the college, the less said the better. Those heartbreaks, encounters with life’s insecurities, compulsive competition, and the dark truths of life.And after those initial euphoric days, even that first job started itching. Not to forget the dumb clients, funny appraisals, never-ending client calls, wasted weekends, and house hunting expeditions.Time to be back to the present. What did I achieve by this ride into the past? Am I already dead? Is there nothing meaningful or engaging right now that I have to, again and again, pick and choose some random moments from the book of the past? This nomadic mind is doing me no good. Not a time to see the dead. The ghosts are buried with the fairies. If I am alive, let me play again. Let me taste those mangoes again. Let me find some life in today’s life. For I can’t recall any page which I would like to relive completely. Let me leave this travel to another day – when the body is frail and the limbs don’t obey. If there is nothing in the present there is nothing in the past. If I survived the past I’ll survive the present. If it is to end, let it end by the virtue of me writing those pages, mere reading is too passive. If there is no happiness here, it was never there then. Signing off with a Mahabharat quote:-“What is here is elsewhere, what is not here is nowhere”. Let me be alive. Time machines can wait.

Absolutely no sound. Silence all around. Or is it that “I” am silent?The mental conflicts have disappeared. I can feel life. Can feel my breath. I am alive. What was there in the past? What does future hold? Who cares. Let me live . Moving on is a way of life. But I want to be stuck here.I do not have to meditate here. This is effortless meditation. Without any programming of the mind. My mind is quiet. No toxicity. No worries. This is the natural state of the human mind. This is when Eurekas happen. This is when there is nothing but pure awareness.Whenever circumstances play their part in creating mental havoc, moments like these should push me to my natural state of awareness.There is no baggage here. Mental or physical. Why has my capacity to carry any baggage been reduced to naught here ? Is it that I am so much conditioned and accustomed to carry my insecurities and worries that I have made them a part of my existence?When you observe your worries and say “you are not that important , so not worth carrying”, suddenly some kind of bliss sets in and washes your existence.

It has started snowing now. The flakes do not make any noise but are adding to the silence and the harmony. I am one with the snow here. The snow is one with me. Who needs to talk when the expressions of nature’s play are so profound? How can one be incomplete in the lap of completeness? Only when I am not fully absorbed in the present does the need to have a company arises. I do not have such a space here . I am one with the space. Deprivation breeds only when you accept that you are incomplete. The light that illuminates me and the Sun doesn’t differentiate among beings. Why should I choose one experience over another ? Who am I to rate what life throws at me? Meanwhile I hear someone singing -“You come for sunrise , I will show you the snow. You expect yellow , I will throw a white.”

After a long time, there was a breakfast when I did nothing. No thoughts. Just the tea and the maggi, and the bread and the cornflakes.There was emptiness. No network of any kind . Human or mobile. The place was inside a wildlife sanctuary. No thought of the phone ringing or a watsapp message. The senses were denied their familiar fulfillment. Strangely, they were quiet too. There were no thoughts of getting late for the office, pending files, or the approaching weekend. No concern about worldly issues either.Everything then felt so complete. That moment was special. Devoid of the past and the future, life felt so complete. No anxiety.Only awareness.I realized that “doing nothing” opens up vast possibilities of insights. It has the capacity of taking us inwards, breaking open the areas where sensory awareness is absent.There is tremendous peace there.