it may be a moonless night but innumerable stars are twinkling

Today is HOLI, the 20^th of March 2011. Tomorrow is my birthday. Tomorrow I will touch the 33^rd year of my life. Today when the world was splashing in colors and celebrating life’s joys, I spent half of the day in a serene atmosphere of a remote village in a small hut. I was at Samarthaguda, a place that may not have its existence on the maps.

I rested there for some time with my eyes closed and analyzed the course of my life. My thoughts were unhindered and sprouted naturally. There was no noise of the vehicles. No distractions of a modern life. No electricity and no electronic devices that rule the minds of the elites. It was a place where I was with me. I spoke to myself and heard my own voice responding to each emerging wave of thoughts in the mental pool. I was thinking and re-thinking about my life’s course. I attempted to draw a comparison between my potencies and my achievements.  The more I thought, the more frustrated I became. I became poignant. I very much saw sands of time slipping out of my hands & my high ideals crumbling down like a house made up of cards. For a while I felt suffocated. I came out of the little hut.

In a mood of melancholy I came out to connect myself with Nature around. Outside, the world had something very special for me. The radiant sun and the lines of shady trees produced a beautiful feast to the eyes. No human form was visible and I stood alone with those silent enormous trees. From a distance I saw a tender-aged boy. He was half naked because his shirt was wrinkled and tattered. But he was rolling a worn out tyre replete with perfect happiness. His happy movements elated me from inside. I subtly experienced some of his happiness in some corner of my heart.  Without his knowledge, I went on looking at him. By the time I took my eyes off him, the meaning of my life had changed.  

I understood that Life is not what happens to us. It is rather how we perceive it. The tyre was worn out. The boy was half naked. The surface was rough but life still had the ingredients of enjoyment.

The nearby rocks corroborated this truth with green moss shinning on them.

In the preceding years my life has stagnated. I have remained in the same place and in the same situations. Many contemporaries of mine went ahead of me or changed their courses of lives but I remained as I was like an old banyan tree. Still in the depths of despair I have sufficient reasons to smile and sing. The 32^nd year of my life gave me a son and made me a father. Last year my sister was given in marriage to an engineer. So I can say, it may be a moonless night but innumerable stars are twinkling. The night may be too dark but hope is twinkling.

Walk the walk with confidence and will power

It was an evening in the mid March. The moon was scattering its silvery light upon earth. A gentle breeze was breathing life into the world. And the tall trees all around looked heavenly. They were dancing gleefully. Leaves were dropping unto the ground stoically. In their free fall there was neither a rush nor a resistance. Finally the leaves kissed the ground……… I moved through them ruminating over my career which had stuck to this place for the last 5 years. Like those leaves I left my life fall freely. I enjoyed my fall and I stayed at the ground. Today I am still on the ground motionless waiting for a gust of wind to stir my inertia. I aspire but lack the will.

Recently I have been blessed with a son. And I resolve to teach him that for a man will power is next to oxygen. To be full of talents and special qualities hardly count if there is no will power. Will power drives us reach our potentials. I will show my son the stars, the sun & the moon and at the same time I will prepare him to walk the way with the staff of confidence and a map of inexhaustible will power.

Inflated Condoms

For two months I have not seen my baby. He is happily growing under the care of my wife at his grandfather’s. I am missing his soft touches and the peculiar milky smell that all babies have. I am informed that the baby has attained requisite strength to play with toys and other objects.

I groped my memory and my past experience with the view-point of a kid to choose a good set of toys for the little one. My imaginative retreat into the past when I was very small revealed me that I was most joyous when I inflated condoms and played with them as balloons. I used to demand before my father everyday to bring a lot of NIRODH (a brand of condom but for me it was balloon) by the evenings when he returned from office. I remember that my mother used to warn me not to go outside with those condom-balloons. She used to frighten me that if police would see this type of balloons in my hands they would carry me to the lock up. So my home used to turn into a play ground and I would kick or box those condom-balloons and would see how they rose up and touched the roof. 

I clearly remember that those balloons were far better than other types of balloons available in the market in those days. Today time has changed. In the hi-tech age the children play video-games and there is a variety of electronic gizmos and other entertainments. So who would now pine for condoms as balloons? But till today I certify that the response of inflated condoms to the playful touches of a child will be sheer joy. Try it once if you have a kid. If my words do not hold good, there is nothing to be worried because your condoms can be used otherwise. Of course not with the kid but with ………..

A father in utter frustration

Yesterday I was watching a movie named ‘C COMPANY’. A scene touched my heart where a father entertains the customers of a big shopping mall by playing the part of a cartoon-cock. Poverty makes him jump like a hen. His son is unaware of his identity and when he confronts his father’s status he hates and leaves that place in disgust along with his mother. The father, who has just taken off the mask of the cartoon- cock and stands in utter despair and agony, is all in tears.  The mother and child left him alone in a deep sea of frustration and heartache. He is agonized because he could not prove himself to be a good father-he is a miserable weakling, completely defeated by the ruthlessness of society.

Tears sparkled in my eyes. My heart was purified in such an impeccable presentation of human FAILINGS. I saluted the actor RAMPAL YADAV for his powerful acting skills. He is a dwarfish actor but his size proved to be a strong point in driving the act straight into heart……. SIZE DOES NOT MATTER, WHAT LIES INSIDE DETERMINES THE RESULT.

I would like to spill some of my feelings that have a parallelism with the trampled father. ……………. No I won’t but I must say that I love my wife a lot because with me she has lots of insecurities and no guarantee. Still she is struggling to welcome a fine morning when the sky will glitter with a radiant sun and the birds will be happily flying.

After a three-day-break from updating my blog, all of a sudden a variety of feelings popped up in me taking a definite shape. And the nucleus of those emotions was our newly declared examination centre for conducting the AHS Examination. After a 5 years’ wait our college was accorded the exam centre. The students of our college appeared the exam under our invigilation.

Today is the first day of examination and the exam was conducted very smoothly and strictly. After the examination duty when I was returning from the college I was really proud because we had given due respect to our profession and the examination code of conduct in both letter and spirit.