A HUNDRED RUPEE NOTE, A TIFFIN BOX AND A CERTIFICATE

From the pen APN 

My son knows well how to demand things and also knows how to get them fulfilled. Whenever he requires anything, he would pull my face close to his face, just keeping bare minimum distance, and looking deep into my eyes, he would speak to my daddy-heart about his requirements. Every time he does so, I feel a sort of hypnotic message put into my brain and sparing no efforts, I do my level best to fulfill his demands.  

His recent demand was a costume of Lord Krishna. Three days back, his school had declared a fancy dress competition on the occasion of Janmastami. So he was extremely excited about it. He gave me an impeccable description of the requirements like feather of peacock, crown, the flute, armlets, anklets, bangles, Chains, necklace, floral garlands, etc. Every hour he added new items to his list and accordingly the list grew bigger and bigger. 

As I stay in a remote village, procuring the enlisted items from the local market was next to impossible. The nearest town where such things can be available is about 55 kilometers far from my work station. And the pitiable thing is that a visit to that town will demand a valuable day of your life. So I was reluctant to go there. But I had to eat the frog because every child thinks his/her father to be a superman who can fly to the skies to bring new planets to their little ones.  

In the morning time, my son had made the demand to me and by the afternoon I threw an application at office seeking permission to leave Head Quarters. After a couple of hours, I was at a big shop of a big town, choosing costume for my son from a variety of options. Almost all his items were neatly packed and I rode back home.

The smile that I saw on the face of my son was broader enough to engulf both the exhaustion and the distance between the town and my village. I smiled back and I saw how delicately my son was examining all those items in his small hands with flickers of smiles on his face. 

Next day he was all Krishna. Clutching his flute, in his new avatar, he left for the school and I left for my office. When I returned, I saw him sleeping on the bed as Krishna. Besides his flute, a new spanking tiffin box was laying beside him. He was asleep like an innocent little angel and in one hand he had clasped a hundred rupee note. My wife came silently and embraced me. Before I could understand anything, she smiled and handed me a certificate which stated that my son was second in the school for his costume and performance.  

The little Krishna was still asleep and the proud papa and mama were silent in a deep embrace. They never knew that a hundred rupee note, a tiffin box and a certificate could make their life so heaven-like.

“I love you deeply but I will never meet you.”

From the penAPN…..30 August 2015

 

When a beautiful lady informs that she stays alone for the next few days in your town, you will be unfailingly overpowered by a bright eyed and bushy tailed feeling. Suddenly, you may feel butterflies fluttering around you in variety of colors. And if you happen to be a man of normal testosterone level, you will feel activated and charged for embarking on a romantic adventure. And that happened to me when the voluptuous lady, who was once my co-trainee in a short journalism training program, accidentally met me and told that she had come to my town to attend a youth conference for 3 days. 

I was enchanted and dumbfound because she had been the lady for whom I always used to feel an irresistible love-attraction.  A few months back during an orientation programme on journalism I had first met her. And there she had caused me the deepest and fastest heart beats of my life. The programme had ended by clicking photographs and awarding certificates to the participants. In the same line, my love affair also ended that day when she had left the training programme clicking her boots and awarding a big zero to my unborn love-imaginations. She had abruptly vanished from the range of my radar and as an obvious consequence I was plunged into a gloomy sea of despair. And the most poignant thing for me was that she had not even taken note of my name correctly because whenever I had found myself in her presence, I used to become utterly speechless and dumbfound. I mean I was never noticeable to her. 

But this instance, when I saw her in my home-town, I dared collect her number. I saw her smiles and they were as magical as they had been before. Her beautiful cascading forelock and child like face made me fall in love with her again and again. For the first time, she talked to me standing on a pavement of my home-town and I talked to her using my bike as a prop. With a modest smile she gave me her number and went away to the lodge where she was staying. I wanted to stop her and say that I loved her. But neither did she turn back nor did I have the guts to express my love. She slowly thinned out in the crowd and I stood looking at her departure as it had happened earlier in the orientation programme.  Her physical form disappeared but she lingered in my mind. I never knew her particular address because I had never asked her about it. What I knew about her was that she was extremely beautiful to my eyes and her name was Jasmine.

The next two days were the days of intense pressure. I rang her phone a lot of times but she had not picked my phone. On the third day I got a message from her number that said, “It is needless to call me because I love you deeply but I will never meet you.” I got confused at her response. I was both happy and sad. I was happy because I had not expressed my love to her but she could sense it. And I was sad because she had given a premature death to my love before it could blossom.

That night I looked into the sky. The sky looked unfathomable. In the moon lit night, sitting on the terrace, I vividly remembered her smiles, her ways of glancing at me and those speaking eyes. It seemed to me that her eyes contained in them a sea of love for me. I was utterly perplexed because she had expressed her love to me but she had never wanted to go with it. And I failed to figure out the reason. The more I analyzed her ways, the less I understood her ways. At last, I was completely baffled and utterly confused like a helpless baby amidst strangers. 

And at the same time I was truly thankful to her because she had understood how I felt about her. Although I tried hard, I failed to understand her perhaps because ‘women are meant to be loved, not to be understood’. Now I clearly knew that she is never mine but in her memory on a page of my diary I wrote, “Men play the game but women know the score. And it is the women who give the final judgement”     

Meditation and Creative Visualization

From the pen APN, 27.08.2015

Recently I came across two techniques. First one is ‘MEDITATION’ and the second one is CREATIVE VISUALIZATION’.

By meditation I understood keeping the mind blank and effecting into a state of non-thinking. I practiced it for 10 minutes for 3 days. I saw many thought bubbles being formed but I ignored them and they eventually died away. This activity taught me how to ignore my thoughts and see my thoughts die calmly by my non-participation and non-reactivity. This helped me free myself from the unstoppable process of incessant thought bubbles surfacing in my mind. I could see my mind in non-action.

Then I came to know about the technique of creative visualization. It is better expressed in very simplified terms in the famous dialogue of Saharukh Khan in the movie ‘Om Shanti Om’ where he says, “Kehte hain agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho….to puri kainath use tumse milane ki koshish mein lag jaati hai.” The same idea is put across in Paulo Coelho’s famous novel, ‘The Alchemist’ in the lines, “When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you achieve it…”

I felt that this life-changing idea, when put in action, is CREATIVE VISUALISATION. There is a beautiful book written by Shakti Gawain on the very title, ‘CREATIVE VISUALISATION’. In that book, the author says, “The moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart truly desires must come to you.” This is further corroborated by Norman Vincent Peale, in his famous book; “The Power of Positive Thinking”. The author says that man can be immensely guided to reach at his goals by following the techniques of prayerizing , visualizing and actualizing.  

I experience that a combination of Meditation and Creative Visualization can work wonder. Use meditation to clean your mind and eliminate confusion as the first step and then take the second step. Activate your power of imagination and use your imagination to create the clearest and the best picture of your dream life. Think with emotion and involve your heart to feel for the changed new life for which you dream. The creative laws of nature will work and soon the universe will restructure its creative forces to accommodate your dreams.

Is it not fun to create your desired life? Then why delay? Take the best idea and go on a voyage to discover the best life.