Sometimes...

Sometimes, not always, there’s a clear dancing shaft of light that pervades one and makes one feel hopeful and cheery. Maybe I’m delusional but one does actually walk with a lighter step and almost hums a tune as one goes about doing minor and major tasks, takes joy in the mindful tasks, reminds oneself, for better or worse, of ‘ma phaleshu kadachana’ and yells out to one's trusty fimh just to make sure. Maybe it’s because the very short winter has departed and the Spring breeze is what has lifted one’s spirit? But that’s not the reason. One can almost risk laughing without worrying frightfully over whether one will have to sob or be stoic even in private until one can’t help it. One has gotten to be more circumspect and cautious with age and experience. One has gained a piece of wisdom. If the sudden laughs do arrive utterly unexpectedly like the first sudden Spring showers or as words from a tale or a voice known – then take joy in that. Close your eyes and soak in the bit of bliss and say ‘this and the cause of this, which I know of and realize, I will not forsake’.

A couple of eves ago, my old friend reminded me that there are 3 stages of ‘doing’ something – like a piece of work (a project or a mission or a vision that one is giving tangible form and shape or some mix of work where one is introducing pre-existing material but presenting in a different box). There’s the ‘yeah, I’m going to do it’, there’s the actual ‘I’m doing it’ and then there is the loud ‘see, I’ve done it?!’ feeling which beats almost every other feeling. It’s not very often that that feeling comes about (and even if it does, it might not always last a very long time) for me. But when it does, by God, it justifies every bit of agony that one might have gone through or even imagined (there was a great and famous scientist who said and without apology that ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ – so I shed my feeling of shame, in this instance, at least). My friend didn’t put it in quite like that – but that was the gist. I was grinning suddenly and almost interjected but held my troublesome tongue and foghorn of a frog-voice in check. But his brief exposition reminded me of more than a few funny pix I’d collected off the net almost a year and a half ago.

The first pic reminds me of my school-days. The others have memories and more. The pix made their way into some powerpoint slides. It feels, by God, like an age ago and also, like a great part of last year didn’t quite happen or was a journey through limbo although I travelled more (to physically real places) and met and talked with more human beings than I had in a decade.

And four years have zipped by since I made my last New Year resolution upon being suddenly inspired by my then-young friend. When the last year melted into this one, there was a gong and repeated gongs in my head – no matter how hard I pretended to ignore them – for it meant that I’d officially spent four years since that year. And that year was significant (if in a somewhat bizarre way, to put it in mildly). Even my fimh reminds me sometimes of the same. That carefully put-together earnest New Year list got completely topsy-turvy and that made me merrily shift tracks in work and life. It was an experience which I somehow suspect is not granted to too many people, no matter how many people, on the surface, have engaged or are engaged in a similar-looking task. That’s just a superficial similarity. I failed, at least, at a hundred of other things and some make me feel like an absolute wretch – but there’s one thing I did indeed experience through more than many months – and not just in my head either. I’d meant to emit a visible and audible ‘yay’. I felt I deserved to emit a ‘yay’ but I actually forgot to emit the ‘yay’ once I was done because my trusty fimh (friend in my head) probably told me my time to emit my ‘yay’ had not yet arrived. The ‘yay’ should be used judiciously – not in a casual manner. I had argued, most likely, saying, ‘if not now, then when shall I emit my yay?’ But as luck had it – I forgot. After it was done, I had walked the walk and heard music in my mind and looked around a full and yet empty auditorium and had a real but virtual conversation. It seems now that it happened to someone else. The humdrum of regular life, an inexplicable and sometimes faintly familiar hollow, the terrible and incessant worries returned like hobgoblins broken by the then-regular sparks of life – and that whole experience, which lasted about a year and a half from the middle of a snow-sleet and black ice winter became something of the stuff that dreams are made of. The ecstasy, the slow delight, the agony, angst, the doubt, the serious wonderings of whether one or perhaps another was an absolute loon, the incredible and deep delight, the surprises beyond comparison became a part of one’s memory capsule but not merely one's imagination capsule. Sometimes I wonder, and now, while walking back and forth and in between meeting and talking with general human beings, what the real difference is. Early-ish last year too was memorable for me, if in a different way. This is because a book, which I happen to carry around, like my personal King James Bible or my very own The Little Prince (even when I’ve felt grumpy, dejected and disbelieving of almost everything) was published. Once I can tick off three to-do things from my to-do list of life – I sometimes wonder with audible chuckles whether ‘my pilot’ and ‘maker’ might even dub me a saint. Ha! Of course it doesn’t matter whether I tick off things from the list and Somebody disagrees. That’s another piece of learning I’ve gotten knocked into me and that is purposeless cheating anyway. And in any case what will beat being dubbed a ‘saint’ is to see my old friend clapping (and not just in my head)…

Last year, at some point, while making notes and putting things in powerpoint slides in a military fashion, I was browsing through a translated version of Ramkrishna’s teachings and in an entirely, ‘now, what can you tell me that’s useful to my predicament?’ frame of mind, I opened a page. The page and subsequent pages went on and on about how work was merely one way of getting close to God. No really sensible person, according to Ramkrishna, could see ‘work’ as being anything else. As it often happens – the pages which I needed to read did hit me – only I neither knew nor realized that. I merely ‘grumffh-d’ and said ‘this isn’t helpful at all. I don’t know what he means. How is that of any help to me and my situation?’  The ‘…get back to doing what you need to do now’ sort of made sense. I simply went back to plodding on what I was doing. And so it goes on…

There was a line from a Baul folk song that had been playing in my head for more than a week some weeks ago, ‘tomay hrid majhare rakhibo – chherey debo na…’. The song lyrics brought to mind a quote that has been jumping around gently in my head every now and then. It was a quote from Hari Vansh Rai Bachchan, ‘mann ka ho, to achcha hai, man jaise na ho toh zyada achcha hai.’ The first part isn’t confusing but the second part was bringing the deep furrows to my forehead when the meaning was clarified by Amitabh on the documentary I had been watching sometime last year. Apparently it had confused him too until his father had explained it thus: if things aren’t working the way one’s own mind wishes or desires – things are working according to God.

From experience I know that it’s alarmingly easy to believe that things are going according to God’s plan when things seem to be going according to some broad plan of my own understanding if not active machinations. I remember particularly sudden and unexpected experiences especially from my early twenties and even rather late twenties and well, even early and mid-thirties...There were/are certain surface differences in the experiences while the kernel started glowing more deeply over time. But at the very extreme end of such a scale everything comes across as a gleeful adventure or is laden with great meaning. Even the unpleasant stuff seems to be mere fluff in a tale. Ghastly fear grips the soul but is plummeted away. Even pain is seen as leading to greater awareness. Peak experiences become a part of everyday living. What cannot be understood or comprehended is seen as being a part of the ultimate puzzle that will be clear by and by. One’s mind makes millions of lightning fast connections out of which some actually make sense when recollected later or when one reads something later that reminds one of one’s own experiences. Some parts of the self undergo distinct transformations. One feels both young and ancient. One experiences a profound love.

But by God - when one is shrouded in an incomprehensible, meaningless, soul-wrenching greyness – it’s impossible to believe that there is any plan in place. I feel abandoned. I fail to keep doing everything with unflinching and cheerful stoicism. I fail to keep moving along holding onto the laughing belief that after all is said and done there is the ultimate truth, love conquers all, that the whole game unfurling on the worldly stage is lila…unless there’s a clear light for me that pierces that evil murkiness.

I was reminded of a poem, which I was compelled to look up for I do not have an eidetic memory about too many things. The poem is by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922-1941) and one can find more about the poem and the poet on the Wikipedia link. It is called ‘High-flight’ or ‘The Airman’s Ecstasy’. The poem appears in a film The Man without a face that I watched for the first time when I was in school and then in high-school. I rented the video cassette more than a few times because the film had made a mark on me, for reasons that I won’t go into here. The film, back then, had made me think intensely, escape the manifest ‘bonds of earth’, swirl the ‘skies on laughter-silvered wings’, and had led me into the realm of high imagination and romance. It was all great fun in the mind until one very late eve’ I had the sudden and sharp thought: what would I give in return to ‘the man without a face’ (or to the man with one…) or to my imaginary friend who loved me? I didn’t have a thing about me that the other would consider valuable. I wasn’t even like the little drummer boy who could sing a song. And that was that. I was determined that I wouldn’t dream silly dreams. But I couldn’t really help but dream some even if I felt rather silly for a long time…

If anybody told that 17 or 18 year old me about where I would be now, I would have told the person to buzz off. Yes, it's true that not all dreams come true but it's true too that strange things happen in life, a few dreams if dreamt hard and long enough do come true even if they don't quite click in the exact way that one had envisioned, a few rare ones come about in very odd ways (and who can speak of what shall be in the future) and there are within the earthly space even, lo and behold - miracles! The years have come rushing through while in the midst of ‘doing something’ because of my clear note of light and I put up this post because I know that ‘once I was lost…and then I was found…’. In fact, I've gotten lost and then been found quite some times. The ‘how’ is a different matter. 

I’ll sign off for this post with 'The Airman’s Ecstasy' by John G. Magee. I wouldn’t tell every person that I have ‘done a hundred things You have not dreamed of…’ and no, I never did get around to learning how to fly a bi-plane even but as for the rest….

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth 

   And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 

    Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth 

    Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things 

    You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung 

    High in the sun-lit silence. Hovering there 

    I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung 

    My eager craft through footless halls of air; 

    Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue 

    I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, 

    Where never lark nor even eagle flew; 

    
And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod 

    The high untrespassed sanctity of space, 

    Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.