Do you think whatever happens to us is for ultimate good?
It is absolutely true. Although when we say this at our normal level of communication it appears to be a truism, a kind of hackneyed slogan. But as one goes on realizing more and more the whole meaning of life, and the purpose of our living and experiencing things, one understands that it is a fact, an ultimate fact at a higher plane.
He’s at war with himself.
What the deuce have I been doing here in this wilderness past few days trying to summit the eight-thousander? I can’t hang tough and brave the elements anymore, he thought.
In a low mood he was sipping tea at a roadside stall in their thriving small town, when he noticed a bridal party coming in his direction, accompanied by the brass band musicians, the sound of their drums rising to a fever pitch. There were people, both male and female, dancing by a slow moving car housing the couple just wedded.
In the hall, I heard someone trying to stifle a sob. It’s a young lady a few seats across. The film ended. People dispersed. We went out together.
My lodge and her apartment turned out to be two neighbouring houses. I accompanied her.
On the ordained day
In Doon Valley
I converse with the artist
In whose mind
Exactly the right word
Appears like the “leaf to a tree”.
He, our Good Samaritan, had forty eight hours left to live. Therapy reduced him to a mere skeleton.
You’re sitting like stone wearing a mournful expression. Anything the matter? Wondered my Muse.
A poet-pianist I interviewed not-so-long-ago passed on.
Years ago, reading a literary anthology compiled and edited by an English professor from Gaya College, I had an urge to meet him. Since I did not have his address or phone number, I could not make an appointment. So I decided to first visit Rajgir, a pilgrimage center near Gaya, keeping in mind poet Eunice De Souza’s line, “The hills heal as no hand does’, and then attempt to interview the professor.
I boarded Danapur Express from Howrah and after an overnight journey, got down at Bakhtiarpur. A couple of hours in a taxi took me to the heart of Rajgir, where I put up at a Standard Chartered Bank holiday home, its caretaker being a young Bihari priest. The priest and I got on very well mainly because he could recite from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata at will, which was quite amazing.
In this part of the world, we’ve a river to walk by. Ganges is to me what Seine was to Maupassant.
At dawn, when crowd is not, I stand facing it. Steps leading up from the shore disappear under water swelling by the minute. The water-level rises right up to where I wait.
