One Night in a hotel room

A nine hour long journey had tired me out,it was 7:00P.M. already dark for over an hour on a winter night.
No.316 was a big,well designed room;moonlight hitting on the bed producing murky shadow of the glass wall that stood between the room and the verandah.The verandah overlooked the lake that seemed to be all around it as if the room had been constructed on a peninsular land that insinuates into the lake.Inside the room,I saw a wooden staircase leading to a glass cubicle where there was a bunk bed,a television set and a small carousel,where the children could do their "LAKDI KI KATI".
A perfect honeymoon destination;a perfect place for a family holiday too,I was enthralled by the extravagance of this room...I was seduced by the ambience of the surroundings.I wished my kids were around me,even as I well knew I could not afford this room on a private holiday.There must be others more pocket-friendly,the room would not have been as exquisite,the lake could have been as placid,the moonlight could have been more soothing.I took a quick hot water shower,put on warm clothes, arranged a hot-air radiator and decided to spend the evening on the verandah.I ordered for a glass of "PINA COLADA" and nursed it for three long hours on tiny sips.
I remembered my daughter telling me,"Papa,though you are the real head of the family,mama is the real head".She used the word 'real'on both occasions but I understood what she meant.I wasn't the one running around footing bills,attending parent-teacher meetings,buying vegetables,getting electrical connections repaired,calling in the plumber or helping her in her home-works.I wasn't the one taking her to dentists or to doctors even for minor ailments when her dad was one.
I could neither make it on her birthday nor on her brother's first birthday. She knew her mom had planned a grand evening on her 10th wedding anniversary which had to be reversed in the last hour when I failed to turn up.
For no fault of mine,I was feeling wrong.I hugged her as tight as I could as if I could squeeze part of my guilt away and in a self defence tone,I said,"Think about the children who do not have any of the parents".The reality was that I was not there when they needed me.To them,I mattered,not what I do...I said to myself,she is too young to understand what is "Touching lives as you travel miles".I thought of ringing them up to say where I had reached. With my rapid shuttling of places,it had ceased to matter to them where I was...what mattered was,I wasn't at home.I changed my mind to ring up the next morning.
Though I loved picking up my meal from the buffet,by first judging the food with my eyes,I was getting too fond of this room to even part for an hour.I scrolled through the 'A la carte' and ordered for something I could barely pronounce,the food that came in was beyond my understanding,I would have preferred the PARANTHA at the road-side Dhaba.
I thought of Morrie,a character in a book "TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE".I thought of how the Lou Gehrig's disease was stealthily taking everything away from him and how he took it all...SMILING.I liked the lines that he wanted on his tombstone," A TEACHER TILL THE LAST".Morrie reminded me that teachers were people who could be so tender yet so strong,when the situation demands.I had seen it in my wife,I had seen a glimpse of it in my friend. He made me admire them all the more and for that...I loved him.
I remembered me not being me,I looked back to see how foolhardy I was.I knew the weakness was on my mind and that's where the real battle needed to be fought.Chaos,confusion,pain...but amidst all that hoopla,my inner strength was growing in leaps and bounds.I felt a sense of victory...a win over my own self.My heart was heading for a silent oath...the bow was to bear.And the final big lesson," You can't be rough with the petal of a rose...it shrivels".
I played my favourite number 'AGAINST ALL ODDS' by Phil Collins over and over again.I knew I could write a poem...William Wordsworth would have created another' Daffodils'..I wrote simple lines.I saw a simmering light in the horizon..a small boat...FISHERMEN OF THE NIGHT.
What do I say about this place...'AN OASIS OF SERENITY'..nay..beauty was beyond words.I wished the night never ends but the temperature was plummeting,the cold..disabling.
I changed the music to Kishore Kumar's no." Mere Liye Soona Soona",it was on this song that I last danced..that was a good 10 years ago.On this song, I could not stop myself...I danced again.The music had the rhythm,my dance was not matching it...it didn't match 10 years back too.
I lay on the bed humbly acknowledging,"All good things come to an end".I curled on like a baby,the music was now changed..it was 'Kenny G' playing me the lullaby.In my dream,in the darkness of the night,I was boating alone in the lake. A woman in a white saree walked on the water away from me as if the surface tension of the water was able to withstand her body weight.She never looked back,I never saw her face.
My mobile rang,I looked at my watch,it was 3:15 A.M.,which meant I had slept for three hours.I picked up the phone,there was no reply..I rang the no.back and the IVR replied "This number does not exist". 'So weird'I thought and slept again.The mobile rang again,it was 3:30 A.M.,again no reply.I rang back and again the same reply " This number does not exist".Phone calls at odd hours make you worry;small children in one town,ageing parents in another...my sleep was disturbed.I considered ringing them up but thought it was not right to disturb at such odd hour.
I must have dozed off for a while when the crimson rays of the rising sun penetrated the glass wall to hit my eyes.It was 6:00 A.M.,I hurriedly got myself ready. I was almost leaving the room..that was when I looked out for my mobile,I couldn't find it.In a fit of rage,I called in the waiter,"Who the hell is playing the prank with me?"I shouted.
"Any problem sir" he replied.
"Where is my mobile phone" I sneered at him "I was receiving calls on it last night".
He calmly replied,"How do I know,sir?Wasn't your room locked from inside?"
"Yes,it was locked but you must have opened it from outside with the master key and taken the phone away while I was asleep.I am talking to the Manager" saying this I walked out.
My driver was there in the lobby of the hotel.He said,"Sir,I found your mobile inside the car". I got even more irritated,"So,you are also part of this whole joke"I said to the driver who stood astonished.I snatched the mobile from him saying how can it be in the car when I was receiving calls on it last night.
I immediately checked the "Call Log",the last call I received was the previous day afternoon 3:00 P.M.,there was no call thereafter.
The waiter perhaps reported the matter to the Manager who came up to appease me.She called me to her chamber and offered me a glass of water.
"Dr Singh,you are the first one to occupy this room" she said.
"How's that so? Isn't your hotel supposed to be eight years old"I replied.
"That room was locked for 5 months..when it reopened you are the first one to occupy" she said calmly.
" Why..why was it locked?"I replied angrily.
" Inquest..forensic grounds" she said.
She continued," A honey moon couple came 5 months ago..the next morning the woman was found dead..her throat slit..the man missing,we need to perform some HAWAN".
I got onto my car...my next destination was four hours away.

A Humble Prayer

When the soul is weary,
and the heart is tired.

When you have that failing feeling,
that says " I can't take any more".

When you don't have the strength to lick your wound
and live to fight another day.

When there is no one to understand you
and you know you have lost them all.

When you are just about to give it up,
as your heart breaks into unrecognisable fragments.

That is when you go back to God,
Once again muttering your child-like prayer.

That is when the kneeling soul learns
that the listening Lord is there.

Mid Life Crisis

At the holy land of Puttaparthi,where I dare not utter a lie,I am being brutally honest to confess that I am going through my mid-life crisis.My colleagues tell me that I have been doing well in my new job.My bosses laud my acheivement which have been ahead of targets. I wonder how someone who has been doing so reasonably well, be so unhappy. On the inside, I waver between depression, feeling totally out of control and feeling like I am going to explode because I am so full of pent-up emotions.....confusion,anger,alienation. In the bloom of an apparently smooth life pattern, there remains a sense of emptiness,of unfulfilled dreams and guilt.There is a longing of an undefined dream or goal, a desire to relive feelings of my youth,a need to spend more time alone. This is accompanied by a sense of remorse,vaguely defined as having drifted away from my original life intentions,as having ill-lived life so far. Such feelings combined with the sudden awareness that life is finite can be quite unsettling.
But why does this happen?Does it hit everyone?Can it miss you?Has my home life lost some of it's sparkle?Has life become a hackneyed procedure?Overtime through the prism of experience, things become repetitive. Much of what one does has a stale taste of 'been there, done that'.Is it that most people go through this period but are not willing to acknowledge? Is it the fear of non-acceptance or of being ridiculed? In the small town of Shillong,I saw a balding man speeding away in a red new Merc and heard a passer-by mumble...see that man in his mid-life crisis. Can't a man at 35 or 40 find his happiness and love without someone ridiculing him? Isn't it a stage of one's life?Do we make fun of children going through the toddler stage or teens going through puberty?My view is that this man was flaunting his accomplishment of perhaps a dream that he nurtured since he was 20, but could never afford then and fulfilled only at 40. He must have worked hard for it and had every right to do so.
Is mid-life about distractions? 'To keep the dragon at bay,know the dragon and know him well'. We love distractions and the feelings that are associated with their wonderful instant gratification. 'No distractions are worth your time'....mid-life is certainly not distraction,it deserves it's time and a careful nurturing.
It is the point in life where your inner curious child ,the one that all of us have deep inside is ready to re-emerge and begin to influence your life again. Your inner child is saying to you that you are now ready for new and more powerful experiences and because you have gained so much knowledge and wisdom by living your life upto this time,you can handle much more.It is the second adult-hood and a chance to be the person we were meant to become.Midlife is where reality sets in and the old beliefs crumble under the weight of logic,experience and common sense.It is the time of increased reflection and introspection. It is the catalyst that trigger change and the time that you decide to either sink or swim.

We pause and think of our lives,whether it be about missed opportunities or just that we don't have another fifty years to live;the time for putting things off is over. The time is NOW...it's our final wake up call.

Paradoxically, in such a moment of profound uncertainity 'Follow your passion' can become a reality again.To quote Hellen Keller " Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all". 'To be or not to be....'....What did Shakespeare actually question? May be life boils down to taking risk or letting someone control your ambitions.

My mid-life has been beautiful. My 'Eureka moment' was born during this period.It is the time when I realised that there is more to me than what I do for a living.I deny to call it a crisis,I call it a mid-life awakening, a transition or maturescence.It is also the time I realised the value of practising moderation...the time I woke up to find that I don't need the cheese badly enough to put up with the rat race.As I grow older, I will look back at this period of my life with lot of fondness and nostalgia.I pledge to take this part of my life in a religious fervor and with this conviction firm on my mind I move on....a little sadder, a little wiser.

The Evolution of God

One December evening,I decided to spend some time with my night watch-man, a middle-aged person, illiterate, who had never attended school in his life. As he managed the bon-fire and prepared potato barbecue, I sat in the hearth and began asking him a few questions. The sky was bright and glistening with stars. I asked him "What do you know about these stars?". His reply was" They are all God,when a person dies,he becomes a star,my father is also one of them". Then I asked him " What about the moon?". He replied "That's our king,after he died he became the moon".Suddenly, I felt a gap of centuries with my friend for the evening, but saw a truth in what he said.
"God exist where the human mind cannot explain". The man of the old used to worship the sun, the moon and the stars. With the growth of astronomy and the resultant scientific explanation of the universe,the God in these celestial bodies diminshed.
Man also worshiped the fire,the rain,the earthquake,the volcano etc. When the striking of two stones sparked fire and when match was invented,the God in fire perished. Likewise,with the scientific explanation of these natural calamities,the God in them faded away.
Then,came religion and its authority,so much so that religion became more prominent than God,Himself. Believers began to offer wealth as a form of worship,the churches began to collect tithe from the followers. Religion grew,God became smaller.
Then,the custodians of religion,the priest,the brahmins etc. who were all self-styled symbols of divinity,who acted as people one step closer to God, charlatans...who devised methods of worship and who pretended to know the language of God. The extension of these people are the ones we see as 'Godman' today, mushrooming up in India....that's another evolution of God.
The faith in God is a very abstract one,it is about one's perception and it differs from one person to another,hence the debate on God and religion has been an endless one.
While one does not believe in idol-worship,another can worship a fellow human-being as God. Both are right from their own perspective,so long as they are true to their feeling.
However,the belief that one has,should not be imposed on another and that's what we call by 'True secularism'.

To my darling daughter

Saw you for the first time when you were a four month old fetus, on the ultrasound monitor; being a doctor I knew you were a girl.You were a delayed Caesarean baby as I was out of station when your mom's process of labour started. I wanted to be part of the team performing the Caesarean on her, little bothered what the delay could mean to you....to tell you the truth, at that time she was more important to me than you. When you were born, you took nearly 5 minutes to take your first respiration...the paediatrician looked at me and I saw doubt in his eyes. You finally gave your first cry...I would have never forgiven myself had that cry never came by.
You were 3 years old when your mom had an ectopic rupture with massive intra abdominal haemorrhage, followed by hypotensive shock, post-anaesthetic coma, pulmonary oedema....all the complications known to medical science. You did'nt cry as you knew that she was ill but you were craving restlessly for her. You could be appeased for a while by a piece of chocolate but once the taste of the chocolate was over, you would again crave for her. When the doctors conveyed to me that her chances of survival was dismal, I sat in silence unable to believe that someone who was absolutely fine till the morning was on the verge of death now. I looked at you, still craving for your mom...I was already imagining how to bring you up alone..motherless. But Sai Ram showed to us once again that 'Divinity' transcends ' Science' and she is still here with us.
I had always complained about your noisiness..your cycling with the 2 added wheels on the wooden floor and those three endlessly barking dogs running around your bicycle( or quadricycle) but your abscence leaves a silence that is more suffocating...the clock seems to tick louder and the dogs too seem to have stopped barking. A friend had told us," When your child comes back from boarding on her first vacation; she would show significant difference, would not be the same child you left at boarding; would be more mature, more independent, forgotton you a little bit, also will love you a little less".
Ironically, thats what we want. We love you so much that we don't want you to love us as much for the truth of life is that we are here for the first half of your life, the second half is all yours. The training should begin now on. I know you'll neither be able to read nor be able to understand what I am writing today but as you grow older, learn about computers and internet,you'll find what I had written about you when you left for boarding and you'll come to know how much you meant to us.
On this day, let me tell you that you might be just another girl for this world but for us you are the world.

My Guilt

As I walked down the lane through the meat market, I saw the butcher running a sharp blade on the neck of a goat. Blood gushed from the severed neck like a fountain and the animal writhed in pain. I did'nt feel guilty that I was also one who had come to buy a part of it......after all we had to eat it.
A thousand rupee note was lying redundant in my wallet, it was torn a little in the middle. During an urgent transaction, someone had cheated on me. I paid it to the old shop-keeper when I cleared my monthly bill. I would have acted as if I was unaware of it, if he discovered. But poor old man with cataractous eyes, he missed it. I did'nt feel guilty......after all, my money had ultimately moved.
The patient was groaning in pain, he could not void urine for the last 24 hours. All he needed was a urinary catheter to be placed, a simple job but the relief was huge, a 24 hour agony over in 2 minutes. I knew I could inflate my bill, knew his satisfaction would make him pay whatever I asked for, finally, charged him three times of what I normally do for such a work. I didn't feel guilty.....after all, it was my profession.
I saw my child beating up another smaller child of the neighbourhood for which I scolded her, she cried and went off to sleep. I looked at her while she was sleeping and she looked so innocent. I felt terribly guilty for having scolded her and apologized to her the next day.....after all, she was also a child, what did she know?
I said something to my wife, which unintentionally though, sounded a little like a sarcasm and she took it that way. I felt extremely guilty and said,' Sorry' on the next day......after all, she was my wife, how could I hurt her?
Its said," There is nothing good or bad, nothing right or wrong; thinking makes it so". We never feel guilty for the grossly wrong things we do to others but can't withstand the guilt that comes on the smallest mistake that we commit to our near and dear ones.
I am a little conflicted as to whether this is true guilt or another manifestation of selfishness and as I feel a little guilty writing this blog, I justify myself saying.....after all, it's a material world.

The Pendulum

The mind oscillates like a pendulum but in varying amplitude. One one side is 'Happiness' extreme of which is called the ' Mania'..on the other side is 'Sadness' extreme of which is the 'Depression'. At any point of time our mind fluctuates between the extremes of mania and depression....the less the fluctuation the better controlled personalities we become.
It is a Herculean task to acheive 'Level-Headedness', ' Mental Balance' and ' Equanimity of Thought' and ' Meditation' is the road to this goal.
Meditation delinks us from the physical world around us and takes us to a whole new world of absolute peace where the pressures of life cease to give us pain. A few minutes of meditation in a day can be so rejuvenating that one can come up with new confidence and energy.
While happiness is a positive feeling it is important that we learn to control ourselves from its extremes. It is said," Never be too happy when you are happy or too sad when you are sad".
The turbulences that we are exposed to in our day-to-day life make us extremely vulnerable to a nervous breakdown and a severe depression and thats the time we need to give ourselves the wake up call and say," Cheer up....Life is like that..enjoy".