Omellete-paav in the hills...

Sorting through largely meaningless stuff on the Times of India centrefolds the other day, I came across a piece that said that Beyonce Knowles bought an island for about 3 billion US dollars for a personal holiday. I am no big fan of Beyonce (though I love “Beautiful Liar”), and I don’t even understand just how big that sum of money is. But the news got me thinking. I felt the sentiment that presumably would have led Beyonce to make this purchase nestles in many of us – to tear away from the humdrum and juggernaut of daily life, take a step back and to be able to reflect on life with a studied peace of mind, without the rush of life’s flow to flush us away.

Life is a busy enterprise. Every day dawns with the possibilities of new acquaintances, unanticipated experiences, soaring joys, crushing sorrows, fights, reconciliations, disclosures, discoveries, and a whole lot of surprise packages and/or routine deliveries. While we, in the spirit of living life to the fullest, try to take it all in as it comes, we sometimes tend to lose the essence of the moments that go past us, because we are too busy flowing with life. Get up in the morning, go to work, attend meetings, meet friend for lunch, go out with family in the evening, call parents after dinner, watch Dhoni hit winning sixes on television, read some pages of the latest novel, call it a day… not typical but a possible template. Swim with the flow, swim with the flow…

But how wonderful and refreshing, once in a while, it would be to swim to the banks, stand on the edge and just study the ripples and cascades in the flow. To analyze and assimilate. To reason and reflect. To learn and live. Imagine waking up at dawn in the lap of the hills, taking a leisurely walk around a mist-covered lake, sitting on a cold-damp wooden bench at the edge of the hill, sipping steaming milk-tea with omellete-paav (crisp rusk-cookies for the vegans), beyond the blinking light of the Blackberry and with the yawning valley as your confidante. There’s a lot you can think about in such a state of mind.

Your family. Your bedrock of existence. Your parents who train you for life and also give you pocket-money to go alongwith it. Your sister who dotes on you and takes more pride in your achievements than you do. Your brother who cries as a child as his toys are given to you but gives you his favourite Casio wristwatch as a present on the eve of your first board examination. Your spouse who takes diet lessons so that you can keep your cholesterol in check. And then there are the ever loving and giving grandparents, uncles and aunts who would always see you as an extension of their life and as a beacon of their principles. We owe our existences to the love, devotion and diligence of these personages. As we move forward in life and carve a niche of our own in this world, we knowingly or unknowingly tend to shift our focus away from them. We go for higher studies abroad and then make professional careers there, while our family continues to live back home. We take promotions and postings which advance our career goals but which mean we cannot always live with our parents and/or wife & kids. We work for long hours and even bring work back home because we are responsible professionals, but we tend to forget that we also need to be responsible offsprings, parents, husbands/wives, grandchildren and nephews/nieces. It is true that all those who love us also want us to be successful. But is success of any significance if you cannot share it with the people who have made you capable of being successful? It is an extremely difficult decision to make, but it definitely requires some focused thought and retrospection.

The love of your life. The person who rejoices in your smallest joys. The person with whom you can share your deepest fears. The hand you want to hold whenever you need to be loved. The shoulder you can cry on whenever life gets tough. Someone who senses the pain behind your smile and the joy behind your tears. Someone who understands things you can’t explain even to your family. Some people are lucky to find such soulmates very early in life, some have to labour a little harder but finally find their destination, while some remain travellers all their lives. In many cases, we fail to understand why we are loved and why we are not, which creates a lot of problems. In some cases, we realize the existence of love for somebody but fail to express or reciprocate it because we are unsure of feelings on both sides or fear losing a friend at the cost of trying to find our love. And in other cases, we fail to break the shackles of family, tradition, society, expectations and misgivings and thus give up on what we assume to be pure love. In other cases, we find and actualize mutual love but later fall prey to conflicts and demands of personal aspirations and changing environments. Love, without a shred of doubt, is life. Thus, when it comes to love, tremendous reserves of maturity, restraint and reasoning need to be harnessed before taking any decision. Thought processes need to be attuned to keeping love alive.

And then there is fun and enjoyment. As I said before, life has enough cards up its sleeve to keep us guessing all the time. But that should not desist us from breaking away from the mundane routine of everyday life and giving the child in us a chance to surface again. It does not come in the way of being responsible individuals or professionals, it actually bolsters it. Whenever you get time (in fact, you will have to carve out time), head for the nearest market and down some pani-pooris at the thela at the chowk. Call friends or family home and organize a cookout. Play a game of gully cricket with the colony boys. Run out in the rain and feel the drops on your face wash out your anxieties. Smile whenever you can. Give life a chance and you will be a better man.

These are thoughts that live in me but are not always actualized. But I guess they may/should live in most/all of us. Hope all of these see the light of day, sooner or later.