In a journey, life reveals many secrets.

In a journey, life reveals many secrets.


Yesterday, on the website of ‘OBOOKO’ I read a statement that ‘There is a book in every man.’ I took the statement not so seriously, although I had appreciated the idea. But I learnt the truth by spirit when I moved to jaypore on a ramshackle bus on 18th December, 2010. This happened so......

While journeying we take all our vanities with us. We board the bus, the train, or the plane with expressions of tremendous self-importance. It is common among many qualified people to pose an air of superiority when they travel in a public-transport-vehicle, where most of the co-passengers are unknown faces. I have always felt so in me and that day was no exception.

I was sitting silently lost in numerous thoughts of my family, outstanding loans, petty salary, unrealised dreams and so on.

By my side the W.E.O. (welfare extension officer) of Khairput Block was sitting. His tongue was restlessly producing words to declare that he is an administrator and the identity of a lecturer is woefully the least before his job because his job has power and enough sources of income apart from the monthly salary.

His boasting tendency rang a bell in my mind. And I remembered many instances when I have sung my own praises before others. Such memories made me think, ‘I am no better than he is’.

I kept silent to his boastful words.

His snobbishness also reminded me how we struggle throughout our lives to prove that I AM THE GREAT. However, the irony is that we spare no efforts to put a label of GREATNESS outwardly, whereas the inner being is gradually degenerating.

The wheels of the bus rolled down. The wind from the side window swept away most of the officer’s proud words. My mind responded lesser and lesser to his utterances. I deliberately cocooned myself in my own thoughts so as not to listen his boastful words any more. In the mean while an old acquaintance of the officer’s, who was in my hind seat handed over a book and asked my comments on it. A cursory look over the pages made my heart throb in appreciation of the seemingly original work on the tribal community of undivided Koraput.

Out of curiosity when I inquired about the author, I found that the writer is none but the co-passenger who had handed me the book. My feelings of genuine surprise turned to utter amazement, when I learnt that the writer is a driver by profession.

It is our general belief that driving the machines turns a man into a machine-Lifeless and mechanical. We expect that the drivers are meant to respond to speed and traffic signals or at best, they are reflexive. But when a driver goes beyond the normal expectation of the society and can write an likeable book, he forces everyone never to underestimate human capabilities. The unconventionality manifests newer hopes to them who are constantly hurt by the so-called big shots of society.

Smilingly, I looked at the W.E.O and asked, “How many books have you written, sir? You work for the tribal community and what is your contribution to their art and literature?” He listened what I had asked but deliberately looked out of the window at the green trees, that seemed running hind ward as the bus moved ahead.

I got inspired with my own words.

I did not care the chilling cold. My mind prompted and my heart whispered me to set out for the hostel inmates. I opened up my heart’s feelings before the boarders and asked for their complete co-operation to make the up-coming sports meet a grand success. I inspired and at the same time, I got inspired with my own words.


You cannot brighten someone’s path without brightening yours.

I left the hostel auditorium. It was 8pm of wintery December. I came out to the vacant road. The inspiration continued to work in me.

For a moment, the world stopped around me. I became emotional because for two long years I have remained attached with the young boys and girls, all hailing from the lower strata of the society. Today they are sitting in front of me and listening with rapt attention to each word I utter. Tomorrow they will be distant stars whom I can see but I may not touch. Today they are sitting by my side with their body wrapped in woollen clothes but in a year, they will be the travellers whose trains have left my station and have moved ahead. Although in the coming days, I will still be engaged in like a stationmaster, still regulating the passage of other trains approaching successively, they will get down in a newer world carrying my message and my soul’s touch.

I brooded whether I am packing up the right stuff for the modern generation in the tender minds. I became unsure, terribly unsure of my capability.

The night seemed darker and the road seemed lonelier. I stood alone. Looking at the night sky, I raised my hands upward. The chilling cold kissed my hands. Dewdrops percolated my head though my hair. I closed my eyes, with two drops of tears rolling down, begged Goddess Saraswati to spread her whiteness overpowering my darkly littleness.

she will ever dazzle as a deity of love- a story

When I look back into the past to relive my bygone days, my memory betrays. I fail to remember clearly how that girl was like an inseparable shadow of me. I faintly remember those moments but get deeply nostalgic because I cannot preserve those moments. They are gradually fading from my mind leaving my heart blank. The slow but sure loss of my past feelings is making me hollow day by day.

Today, I am pained because after my marriage to another girl, my days are passing one by one and her memory is slowly disintegrating from my mind. It is not that I am unhappy with my marriage but I do not like to forget her numerous impressions, smiles, sacrifices, embraces, tears, kisses and the moments that we had shared together.

The painful truth is that human memory is fallible. It is devised to forget. I am also no exception. I very much realize how the waves of ruthless time has started to corrode many of her sweet memories from my mind. Now, I cannot remember those very incidents, which had deepened our relations gradually. I cannot remember when I first kissed her. I cannot remember when for the first time we had cried together holding each other tightly. I cannot remember on which occasions we had been to the seashore. I cannot remember how she cooked my food and washed my clothes and readied me for the annual function in the college. I cannot remember those numerous day-to-day happenings that had made her my sweet heart.

However, something of her will always remain in my life like indestructible particles until my last breath. It is because in her softness, I had first known the pangs and the giggling of love.

My mind may forget everything about her but my heart has preserved something precious about her, which neither time nor a failing memory can ever tarnish. Moreover, she will ever dazzle as a deity of love in my mental sky for all times to come.

IT IS BETTER TO BE TRUSTED THAN TO BE LOVED.

It is a great thing to keep one’s own words. If you commit something to someone, follow it with all your devotion. Because hope keeps the world going and shattered hopes, beget the criminals. A man who hopes and believes in the kindness and nobility of society can never become antisocial. Hence, the moral responsibility of each man on earth is to keep the light of hope ever burning in the hearts of every man.


With the word commitment, I remember the famous lines of Salman Khan, which he utters in the movie WANTED: “When I commit something, I never listen even to myself.”

Now the question is why commitment is so necessary in life. It is because commitment of one man kindles the candle of hope of another man. When hope of a man is fulfilled, it generates trust and trust is better than love.

In my college time, I loved a girl. She used to write very emotional and beautiful letters to me. The fine expressions of her letters used to export me to the other worlds. Until date, I believe that those imaginative flights and ecstasy are beyond all human description. I used to experience as if life was lived in an altogether different plane. However, god cannot tolerate when your love exceeds his expectations. Suddenly, the entire world went up side down. One day her uncle along with some muscular men surrounded me in college and demanded those letters from me. I could have evaded them but I did not do so. I handed them those securely preserved love-letters. I did so not out of fear but with an intention to make them aware that, the love affair is not one-sided. However, my every calculation went wrong. In home, my ladylove was severely beaten and her study was stopped for a month. That one month of separation was really excruciating. It was just like nursing a stabbed heart with the killer knife still inside. I was terribly upset at the so serious turn of the love affair.

One fine morning in the college campus, I detected my sweet heart after a long gap of 46 days. My joy knew no bounds. There was an upsurge of adrenalin in my whole being. Nevertheless, I did not venture to meet him lest her moustachioed uncle was guarding her. I could not sit in the class and I moved on the corridors in search of her. My eyes stopped at the college library counter. I caught a glimpse of her. She tried to ignore me. However, I went to her. Before I could speak anything to her, she painfully stated, “No explanations, I may love you but I do not trust you” and went past by my side. I was dumb-found. Tears rolled down because I realized that I have lost my credibility as a lover.

The incident taught me that IT IS BETTER TO BE TRUSTED THAN TO BE LOVED.

man is sensitive enough to respond to sweet words.

Yesterday I had been to the dentist. He took my money and a tooth and in return gave an excruciating pain. Next day in the morning, when I smiled in front of the mirror, I could see a side view of my buccal chamber through the newly formed gap. In the serially lined up white teeth, a member was missing. I resembled an old man. Instantly, I thought of my little baby who is yet to approach on earth. I wondered that she/he will initially express his joy in teeth less laughs and now I am slowly following his/her trail to do so. Smiling with no teeth!


Yesterday the dentist scolded me severely for tearing a part of his prescription. Unintentionally I had made the mistake. The situation was such that I urgently required a piece of paper to write down my Father’s in law bank account number. My wife was on the mobile. I was on the seat of my bike in the midst of heavy traffic and that prescription was the only available paper with me. Moreover, the dentist had left a considerable part of the prescription blank and I thought to use it.

Whatever may be, I admit that the dentist’s annoyance was justified because I had disrespected his profession but his reaction seemed to me an over dose. He became somewhat aggressive and flung hard words of admonition. I was pained but kept quite. At the very moment, his son who was sitting on the dentist’s lap started playing with the x-ray films of my ailing teeth. Suddenly I took notice of the situation and announced to the boy “Hey baby, don’t play with the x-ray films it is a disrespect to your Papa’s profession”. The doctor looked straight to me but I smiled internally because,”To err is human, to forgive is divine.” The dentist will not mind his son’s behaviour because his son is a part of him. However, he will not spare a patient because the patient is someone else to be admonished and prove doctor’s superiority. The life is like this. We derive pleasure when we crush somebody’s self-esteem.

The moral of the story is we all must be tolerant to other’s flaws and at the same time; we must use only the soft chords to bring a change and not hard words to teach a lesson.

As a teacher, I resolve to bring about changes in my students by the method of persuasion and not by punishment because man is sensitive enough to respond to sweet words.