That was his assured assessment of the elder son!
With all due considerations and thinking done Ranchi was considered the safest bet. Added benefit (as was cited to me later) was the climate of the place (once upon a time, Ranchi was called the Summer Capital of Bihar...I do not know when...)
But I had altogether a different view. "So girls of Ranchi are not as beautiful as that of Delhi!" This was the melancholic conclusion of a teenage boy. Alas! my faculties were deprived of natural evolutionary mechanism that would have empowered me to appreciate natural beauty in full glory and precision!
After all it is the natural law of evolution of thoughts and emotions and feelings; firstly love to appreciate then appreciate to love...
Hmmm!!!
I'll never forgive my parents for this irretrievable loss. Alas! with mall-nourished and under-developed faculties I moved on!
After spending three of my precious (curtailed evolutionary) years in the dry lands of Ranchi's heartland I came back to Deoghar, my native place.
While in Ranchi, my old friends who too came from Deoghar, enlightened me about The Theory of Hidden Beauty Treasure in Deoghar. The theory, by these friends of mine who were more adventurous and less God fearing (the latter is my assumption to simplify the narration) than I was, stated that there are hidden beauty treasures in houses adjoining the narrow lanes of the Panda-Gali in Deoghar. These Goddess of Beauty gave darshan to their bhaktas only on auspicious occasions of Chatt-Puja, Rakhsha Bandhan, Durga Puja and sometimes even during Saraswati Puja.
My friends, and I can call them enthusiastic scientists in their own capacity, patiently waited for these momentous episodes of time to successfully prove and reprove, with never failing zest and zeal, the above mentioned theory by satisfactorily applying the well established scientific procedure of Experimentation, Observation and Inference.
Unfortunately, I was always deprived of these well deserved and hard earned darshans (by my own Self) because these were the occasions when I begged the Almighty for redemption and forgiveness from all sins committed (in action and/or thinking), one of being harboring the desire for these darshans. My friends would boast and cherish those darshans with heartfelt joy. Here I was every time in guilt for the self and curse for them. They were evolving and I was stagnating.
Therefore, I could never undertake those experiments. Hence, their theory (which eventually became a Law for them after being verified, time and again, on generation after generation) remained just a myth for me; even then and so now!
In the mid of year 2002 my fate took a different turn. I got admission in MIT, Manipal (known to be mini America in my part of country). To me it was opening up of new vistas of opportunity and above all freedom from shackles of ....You understand... It was my liberation. Like the Jonathan Livingstone Seagull now I could "feel" the skies above me as my destination I had dreamt of so often. Now I could feel the exuberance in my spirit in anticipation of more sophisticated, free and visually-enlightening darshans of damsel-goddesses down the tinsel town.
One opportunity (right under my nose) was lost. It was a lesson worth remembering for this life and beyond.
With all hopes and aspirations and ambitions and dreams and fantasies I landed on the moon of Manipal.
Wished reality could have been as flamboyant as our spirit!
From day-1 much sought after darshans started. The engineering campus was as deserted as the Sahara or the peak of Mt. Everest. The increasingly enervating journey (semester after semester) of engineering abyss would have been fatal had the damsel-goddesses of medical and hotel management colleges not intervened and rescued me (and others too). I owe my life to them!
I was very much satisfied by the near and far darshans at free-will in Manipal. It was more than I could ask for.
The frog of well was now learning to swim in sea (taking into consideration the fact that the specific gravity of sea water is more than that of well water).
Life moved on. The next stop was Bangalore, the fashion city of India. But I landed up there as a software engineer, the most pathetic, unruly and pardonable creature God as ever made and will ever make. The not-so-glorious 3 years in B'lore came to an end without my inkling.
By now I had reached my late twenties. The vigor and valor of late teen and early twenties was missing. The tipping point was reached when I started receiving emails and calls from my friends; some happily informing about their marriage and others about becoming father!
The darshans no longer looked glamorous. Building castle in air is not at all deplorable but things start getting blown out of proportion when the castle becomes too high to be stable in mid air. These darshans had overcasting effect on me which I started realizing slowly. I was drowning into schizophrenic world. I had to come out of it and that too soon. (An another story some other time!!!).
Finally, after crossing the age of 28 I got the much cherished dream, of my teenage, come true.
On Fool's day (1st April, 2009,) a fool was coming to the city of wise, the center of power and the symbol of justice-DELHI.
Before or as soon as I reached Delhi I came across a news about Delhi's female population that has gone up to 1004 every 1000 male. It was a good signal or a welcome gift, I thought.
More darshans in store!!!
1 comment:
well done Baba :) just i can say is that you have expressed it in beautiful words and it's funny too.
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