A life in making. A life in the mid of no where....
‘How many roads must a man walk down
Before they call him a man
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand’
The eternal questions of mankind about who he is
and where he is going, when sung in the folk tenor dampens the heart and renders
the mind a unique kind of numbness. Reading about various kings and dynasties
that came and went, numerous unknown artisans and workers who worked laboriously
in building the forts and grand sculpture, which stand the heat of time
speaking to us the history of the mankind, I often ask, ‘how were they different
than me?’
The fact that death is inevitable is in itself
enlightening. Why to hurt someone? Why speak bad words? Why to fear? Why to be
proud about what we have and be sad about what we don’t have? Who are we, if not
food for insects and germs of tomorrow? We live as if we are to be forever. And
even if it is so, what’s the point?
Questions give rise to more questions. We chase
as musk dear chasing an odour coming from its own body till we get tired and
sit to meditate and look within to realise that ‘Truth’ is not without. And
what is truth? Well, to me, it’s a white dot that says, ‘be quite and observe’.
Answers have no meaning to the one without question. So why do I ask, ‘How many
roads must a man walk down?’
I have roamed around like a mad man in college
campus for four years. Always asking, what to do next? Never getting an answer.
I have spent nights with drunken friends on hostel roofs, watching them break
beer bottles and shout. I have played from dusk to dawn in sport complex,
bunking all the classes I had to attend just to bring out the rebel in me. And
do all this I just have wanted to know, who I am. Wandering around in the city
of Dhanbad, all alone, I talked to trees and wind at times. Everything culminated
as thoughts and thoughts seeped in into numerous poems. The obsession took such
a form that my wallet used to have more poem than cash, written on the back of
railway tickets, ATM machine receipts, tissue papers of restaurant etc. Each
poem asking, who I am.
I recall the day of our farewell day at college.
I was amongst the few who were asked to
speak about our stay at college. I introduced myself as ‘9550’ my college roll
number, as that was what I thought I was – a number. An element in the arithmetic
progression of our ancient college. Don’t know how many elements have already passed
away. The incremental nature of the roll number tells very evidently that a
student at the college is nothing more than ‘one more student’. I went on to
say that, ‘From here I can see shining faces and glittering eyes of my batch mates.
I don’t think we will be gathered like this ever again under one roof’.
Realising that I was taking more time than I was allocated as the faculty had
taken its precious time to come and bid us farewell, I cut short all that I
wanted to say and presented a poem.
‘antim din
jeevan ke yadi ye
Peer hriday ki
reh jaaye
Ke daud dhoop
me beet gaye pal
Preeytam se
kuchh na keh paaye
Praan kanth taka
a pahunche hon
Bhaav mukhrit
na hote hon
Bheed me
dhoonde man priya ko
Bairi nayan
dhundhla jaaye
Shithil padta mera shareer ho
dhamaniyon me ho maddham rakta prawaah
beete pal sab ik ik karke
mastishka patal par chha jaayei.N ....
(Now I was choking)
I could see
from there, the subdued eyes of our favourite teacher, CK Sir. I almost choked while putting
the last lines of the poem, trying very hard to be audible and clear. I walked
down the podium and the Golden Jubilee Lecture Theatre was filled with applause. The
walls of the theatre had heard a poem quite often. Sometimes back, ace poets of our time like Waseem
Barelvi and Rahat Indori were seen standing on same podium, from where I bid my
farewell to the college. I knew deep within my heart, that I had kept the standard
of poetry up to the mark and that the podium understood what I meant when I
nailed my thoughts in the final stanza saying:
Chitt chita ki
raah taakta
Mrit saiya pe
leta ho
Aage badh kar
daag de koi
Dhoonwa raakh
sab ho jaaye
Antim din
jeevan ke yadi ye
peer hriday ki reh jaaye
ke daud dhoop me beet gaye pal
priytam se khuchh na keh paaye’
Today things
have changed. People have moved on in their lives. I too followed the drift of
time but then came back. Back to my school level books, I find something new
every day. I find rulers, kings and kingdoms hidden n the pages of NCERT books.
The brittle, yellow pages of the books I once read in my school days, talk to
me. I feel good to see my hand written answers in the fill in the blank
questions with fountain pens. The shaky hand writing, I was always known for,
smiles back at me. I feel as if I have all the time of the universe these days.
There is no thought of the all India rank that I held few years back. There is
no thought about the job offers I had and the promotions I got at IBM for the sophisticated
skills that I developed in software field or the lovely farewell I got while leaving IBM. All I am today is a kid, with no
degree, no CV and no doubts about his capabilities. No vanity, no pride, no
expectation and above all no grief or guilt. Now, I am at a place from where I can
distinctly understand what the Nobel prize winning poet meant when he said:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one
turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start
again at your beginnings
And never breathe a
word about your loss;
….. If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds'
worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth
and everything that's in it,
And - which is more
- you'll be a Man, my son!
-Rudyard Kipling's famous poem 'If'
But do I
suggest the same to those who are at same place where I was few years back? I
would say, NO. It’s painful, and takes a lot of metamorphosis for the
personality to undergo, before one can really relinquish all he has (or he
feels he has). There is a beauty in
materialism too and there’s no wrong if one can enjoy it. For me I see an
untraveled road ahead and pulling up my socks to start over again.
