I was sitting today, lazing on my easy chair by the window of my room, looking out into the approaching dusk outside. A group of birds flew past my window; the scent of the sunset still warm on their wings, calling out for all to return to nest.
The big house on the other side of the wall, whose rear gate opens just opposite my window, looked cosy and inviting, with its surrounding lawn, flower beds and a bower with trailing bougainvillea; the hint of gold on the tiles of the house scripting the epilogue to the day’s story.
The old couple, the owners of the house, were sitting under the bower, looking around apparently pleased and at peace. I remembered having seen the old gentleman personally tending to the garden every morning. The peace that this senior couple manifested was infectious. I too found myself relaxing, sinking into a strange sense of floating calmness.
Eventually as the light faded the elderly lady, apparently agitated by a swarm of mosquitoes, nudged her partner and the couple decided to retreat. I too was shaken out of the state of ‘nothingness’. The couple slowly walked the paved path to the door of the house. The walk was a slow one, almost a reluctant one, as though given a choice they would surely have liked to spend some more time in their garden. As the door opened, the old woman walked in. Her husband turned around a last time to gaze upon his garden and then he too went inside. The door closed behind the old couple.
I withdrew from the window, in a pensive state and lay back on my bed. A thousand fragments of thoughts cramming my brain and crying out for attention.
Day in and day out, we do the same things over and over again, most often oblivious of how time silently smiles and passes by. We are so entrapped, so attached, so blinded, so blunted; an idea, vague, of an illusory goal, coaxing us, saying, “Carry on.”
I lay back on my bed and like the small insect caught in the cobweb in one corner of the ceiling, suddenly felt trapped. I got the feeling that I was not doing enough for myself, my own Self. I have spent all my life pleasing others and enjoying false gains.
The sole purpose of this life is to be ‘Happy’. But where does one get true happiness? Wise men say, “Happiness is within you, you only need to look for it.” As I stand today at the cusp of possibly a third of my life, I realise that every time I did well in studies, it was to please my family, I courted the best girl in school, to earn jealous appreciation of others. I strived hard in sports to get approval of my peers. In fact every action, every small act done, was motivated by some such trivial end. The false sense of happiness that has pervaded me all my life was actually my inflated ego.
We live in a world (an illusion, some might say), where Relativity rules. Relative success, relative prosperity, relative income, relative knowledge and so on, have become our indices of Happiness (so called). Right from childhood, like wound up toys, we run round and round in this quagmire, learning to know and seek a false idea of happiness.
So, what is it that makes one really happy? What does our existence really seek out? Why is it so difficult to let go? What is it that is binding us? Which path is the right path?
With all these questions darting around in my head, I understood one thing. It is wisest to start seeking these answers so that, when The Time comes, I can let go of my beautiful garden with a smile on my face.
IN DESPERATE hope I go and search for her in all the corners of my room; I find her not.
My house is small and what once has gone from it can never be regained.
But infinite is thy mansion, my lord, and seeking her I have come to thy door.
I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky and I lift my eager eyes to thy face.
I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish-no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.
Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe.
- Geetanjali Verse 87, Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore
