Rishikesh-"Sanity Sabbatical"    

   

Dear Mom,

                                                                                                                        

Preface

It’s 1:26 AM in the morning.. while I am still pregnant with indelible memories of the trip ,I thought of putting the  pen to paper..

How do you even begin to describe all this….

Observing Different cultures  always makes up for a therapeutic write…

Over time we build “stock-emotions” so these breaks kinda rejuvenates them.. start afresh.. refill ourselves... we let life happen a bit..!!

Funny things happen to time…its burlesque.. here amidst ever-burgeoning city life, time slow motions itself…In the same moment there in the lap of nature, hours are gushing past us, as if ,

we are running on a time tread-mill and apparently we start savouring minutes and  seconds!

ACT 1

The journey started around 11:30 PM the scheduled date…There were no humans to be found on our bus…only the Fun-Zombies….

Whoever said..” Journey is more fulfilling than destination”…I could automatically catch the pulse he was talking about…

Fun.. Frolic.. songs.. dances… mimicry.. sarcasm  were what the moments were composed of…age was just a number floating around.. After rounds of drinks.. even that blurred down to its bare minimum…

We Reached….

It’s market day Mom! And it seems Rishikesh is an ongoing  party where everyone is invited. Cliché’s converge at the navel of this city.

I almost want to laugh, but can’t help feeling that these Rishikeshians know more about life than we do. Everybody here is a free thinking heretic.

Chaos, culture….it’s all celebrated within the confines of Rishikesh .It only demands one thing of people ..to be truly awake!..

My tea gang Mom ..that I often keep mentioning about…Ankur,Ashish and Deepak...sneaked out of the Hotel in search of a tea stall…and what happened there was a profound lesson on  life..

Which rekindled our “grey matter” and left us equally in raptures!

Down in the hinterland..there stood a small shop..dingy…almost decapitated…fighting with dusty winds and a filthy flowing river nearby.…or just say, it had every natural ingredients that adds taste and smell to a herbal tea..

With few resistance from two friendly heads…we entered…

We were struck by the image that stood before us…Though we ordered our tea..we were still giggling about it!

It was a dwarf in his late 50s…albeit, He looked older than mankind itself…the cold harsh hand of time had wrinkled him beyond recognition..

I still could not take my gaze off him.. He looked funny to me…or let’s just say..I made a grave folly of judging the book by its cover…

While he added the nonessential ingredients and nature its own(essential ingredients) into our tea…He mouthed…”Ghumne… aaye ho yahan”…stern…poised.. a baritone voice..

..”Haan Baba..”…I replied..

Deepak…verbal diarrhea that he suffers from…instantly spewed “…Baba life sahi hai..Tension nahi hai..” ke bilkul viprit chal rahi hai…”whhhatt to do..”…??

We just laughed ..never surmising an answer out of him…

“..What we have is a Rhombus…..Life is a rhombus…patterns..routines…goals...a wheel of aspirations…until the disruptions we long for, comes along and that Rhombus is broken..”..Go seek that disruption…!!

Our eyes popped out ..literally… !.. it was like jabbing a knife into the dicstionary and coming out with the most appropriate and subtle definition of something as profound as life..!

He continued…

“We could live a million years and we could spend every minute of it doing  important things…But at the end of it all.. We would have only lived half a life..”

Go..Start living spherically in many directions…”…I just completely lended him my ears…You know Mom, my propensity for the words of wisdom!

He just handed us our tea…and went back to his Chanakya spot…

I was liking this Five-buck oddball conversation…I poked him….again…

“Lekin Baba..kehna ashaan hai..it’s easier said than done…”..trying to be all erudite and englishy…

He retorted back as if reprimanding me through his words..“har aadmi apne Sandaas mein raja hota hai…we sit like one…we feel like one..”...instantly ,we spared few naughty chuckles..

“….You can behave the same as well…outside your boundaries of your bathroom.….”…he continued…

When you were climbing up here to find this tea stall..…try comparing it your journey through life.. you will get all your answers…

Journey of life is like a trek up a mountain…we spend most of our time putting one foot in front of the other…we get lost..we fall..we circle back..And sometime every step is a struggle..

Until the moment comes when you find your tea stall breather..when you are able to stop ..take a breath..and look up…And see how far you have come..and understand how beautiful that is..

And suddenly the air sparkles all around us…and the beauty cracks open in all its loveliness..”…

I was lost…we were lost…wishing they taught a chapter on life in our schools rather than all the junks about fill in the blanks stuffs….Billi Nau sau chuhe khaake________ chali....…As a matter of fact

In my innocence I remember filling it...Billi nau sau chuhe khaake tedhi medhi chali… and getting slapped for it…What an absolute twaddle!!....No offence logic says..900 chuhe khaake billi tash se mash na ho….

ACT 2

To be continued…( After we came from that eventful “art of living” session by dwarf baba)

                                                                                     An oddball Conversation with “GOD”

When the battery was empty…when my smart phone did not know my GPS location….When the memory card was full and pixels empty…

When the Facebook was clueless as to what I “Liked”.. When I no longer had to express myself in 140 words…When Watsapp did not predict my “last seen status”…

When instead of using my camera, I insisted on using my eyes to load mosaic of high resolution snapshots…

When the Google asked for a much needed break… I set out for a lone time with Nature.

Wearing my black shirt with my permanent dumb look, I Reached the River side ..All I could hear was the gargling frothing sound of the flowing water…

There were rocks.. gargantuan rocks.. I snaked my way up and lied romantically in her(nature)lap ,watching the bandage on a bleeding moon that we humans were responsible for.…

I stared right into the sky with a "fill in the blank" thought…myriad emotions rustled to fill that blank..the most prominent one was of ecstasy…In the blink of an eye I was teleported back to my Biology class…where we were taught about different hormones…I could vaguely remember My teacher’s backside and no face because he loved blackboard so much so that he just kept filling it with his scribbles and leaving immidiately thereafter…but I keep thinking of him all the time who would solve every damn questions in book but would never teach us how to do them..…but one thing that still reverberates in my head is ENDORPHINS…he called it "happy hormones"…

I wish Mom, I could manufacture these hormones outside our bodies and market them in bottles or make them freely downloadable as ZIP files..…Firstly it would prove to be a great moolah raking business…secondly I would contribute to  making world a"happy" place…but here amidst Nature..i could delineate this Environment with ecstasy hormones floating around.!..

Lying so peacefully in her lap,,I thought of having a tete-a-tete with GOD.

 ..Do you have a sense of humour ? ....I asked demurely with my eyes closed  and continued with the wisdom of an idiot…

You are almighty…you created this world..and if you had a sense of humour,this world would be frigging hilarious..

But its not…its stark and brutal..lies deceit..killing. Shark attacks..really?..nothing funny about that…

And if you were funny there would be clown attacks..tickling us to death…before our lips could form a proper scream..they would say…"The Lord works in a hilarious ways son…"…..that would be funny….

 Before "he"(Yes, God is a man!) could reply…I hastened…

And why..why..and why…only the serious lessons in Gita or the Ten commandments.."Karm kar phal ki chinta mat kar"…"thou shall not commit adultery"…etcetra…etcetra…

Why not like.."thou shall not wear pants on thursdays"..that would lighten the mood of the world and stop people from using hackneyed acronym TGIF(Thank god its friday) !

I made you…I must have a sense of humour..LOL..!...he retorted…

I shrieked on God LOLing…!

he continued…and the only thing funny with TGIF is that you LMAOing generation are thanking "us" for Fridays…instead of attributing it to earth's rotation on its orbit…

I could instantly hear the banter in his voice…!

…Buddy it's no fun being worshipped once you stop being an adolescent teenager..So I escaped here in Rishikesh!...he whispered into my ears..

How did that turn out for you?.,…I chuckled.. escaping to “ Rishikesh—the land of Rishis”…it was my turn to throw a banter on him!

Why can’t you put a happiness/Love predicting algorithm inside us?..I asked with an innocence of a toddler!..

You humans complain and whine a lot yaar…why this.. why not that..!

Should you have a bad day at work, think of the man who has been out of work for years!

Should you grieve the passing of another weekend, think of the man in dire straits,working 12 hours a day,seven days a week, to feed his children..

Should you notice a new grey hair in the mirror, think of the cancer patient in chemo who wishes she had hairs to examine.

Should you find yourself at a loss and pondering what life is all about,asking what is my purpose? Be thankful, there are those who did not live long enough to get the opportunity!..

…eh! you are back to your serious boring ways.. you could have only said that. Yes Indeed,Life could be a harsh punishment in a prison.. but who said you can’t serve the sentence in Style!

…I stood up and just walked away!..

Walking towards the hut..i could hear the stray notes of music and I knew.. My Favourite ”wear-the-dancing-boots” time was beckoning me …

In those revolving twinkling lights…that set the stage..”I was buoyed by a chemical madness and in the bed of my head I let my conscience rest..

from the vague memory that I have of the eventful night..i could hazily remember those beaming colourful lights focussing all around us..In my insanity I let my tongue out to taste the lights…

and the Red,blue,green,purple and yellow sweetness breaks open in my mouth..,and as I expected, its like eating hot grapes from the mountains..

I could even smell the coloured prancing lights and touch them with my hand and suddenly a wisdom dawned on me in those hallucinating moments-

“We are standing in a cesspool of verb “was” imagining our “will/shall” to be happily ever after..but we forget that the the verb “is” is the zen of life… and there on I lost myself to the ambience….”

..Before we could realize,we were occupying our seats on the bus that would take us back to the world of “BB shouting high IMs” and the world of “tickets and stories”…

The journey back was comparatively quieter with  amazing moments of philosophical take on life by Ganesh Sir..And as he says…

I’m good..you are good..everybody is good…Its just the perspective…!..that made me think about the stereotypical Bollywood villians..They are not bad..it’s the hero who has problems with his extra cash and all time

Jamboree partying…They want heroines…but,who doesnot?..can’t blame them for that…!

Below stanza is an apt rendition of my time in Rishikesh Mom…

….क्या बताऊं मा कहाँ हूँ मैं

(Kya bataun maa kahan hun main)

यहाँ उड़ने को मेरे खुला आसमान है..

(Yahan udne ko mere khula aasmaan hai)

कैसे तुझको दिखौऊ यहाँ है क्या

(Kaise tujhko dikhaun Yahan hai kya)

मैने झरने से पानी मा तोड़ के पिया है

(Maine jharne se paani maa tod ke piya hai)

गुच्छा गुच्छा कर ख्वाबों का उछल के छुआ है

(Guccha guccha kar khwabon ko ucchal ke chhua hai)

छाया लिया भली धूप यहाँ है

(chhaya liye bhali dhoop yahan hai)

नया नया सा है रूप यहाँ

(Naya naya sa hai roop yahan)

यहाँ सब कुछ है मा फिर भी

(yahan sab kucch hai maa phhir bhi)

लगे बिन तेरे मुझको अकेला…..

(Lage bin tere mujhko akela)…

All the Love,

Your son!