Rolling Wheels

The train for Calcutta was scheduled to arrive at the station at 2230 hrs. Umpteen announcements about the coach positions preceded the arrival of the Howrah Express though the relevant announcements concerning the time of arrival and platform number were dropped out from the list. I was slowly getting wearier with each passing moment. My skybag seemed to bear a thick slice of my ennui as it had become crumpled from the edges with my leaning weight. I did realize this but apathy seemed to dominate my attitude towards its plight at that moment.

As I was leaning leisurely to extract certain vicarious pleasure from my immediate environment, something led my focus towards the other side of the platform. A cluster of people with  clamorous  sounds in what seemed to be a kind of hurried hindi dialect, were moving an abundance of luggage in between the mark-posts. An octogenarian lady with her docile sons and daughter-in-laws appeared to be guiding the whole bunch. There was her young twenty something grand-daughter who was actually trying to lift one of the boxes which surpassed her amply in both height and attitude.  I was still unable to get a precise view. Some hawkers moving their trolleys with shrilling announcements were obstructing my view. They themselves seemed to be unconvinced by their marketing strategy primed with their piercing broadcasts. I silently rendered loads of indignant curses to them.

                        It was around 2300 hrs when the Howrah Express arrived at the opposite platform. My ever vacillating mind told me that I was waiting at the wrong platform. I pushed out the extensible handle of my skybag and ran towards the connector rolling the strolley across the platform. Within moments I arrived at the assigned coach and found my berth inside the train. Shortly, had I began pushing my luggage under the seat when the overburdened-with-luggage family arrived at the opposite berth. And yes, it was my fair lady's seat too.

I started exactly where I had left. Putting on my ipod earphones to avoid losing my attention to the hubbub of incoming passengers and moving baggage, I began noticed her sparky lips with its hazing movements. Perhaps there was some fast talking going on with her bhabi beside her and those sounds were lost in the mellifluous song of Raajneeti pulsating within my eardrums. Wearing tracks and sweatshirt for the overnight journey did not make her lose any of her allures. A bewitchingly chiseled face with tantalizing eyes were the most dominant things governing her overall charm. Hand gestures were gracefully creating imperceptible ripples in the fragrant air surrounding me. There were a few more enthralled eyes nearby. I guess I got an inconspicuous angle of sight as I was reclining on the pillow. I maintained that. It was already past midnight and the main lights were out leaving the low powered night bulbs do their job. I guess the oculus adjusts impartially to both brightness and splendor. I was camouflaged enhancing my surveillance capabilities.  It happened one moment that my eyes reflected a pair of lustrous stars staring back. Perceiving certain lip movement and I promptly clicked my hands-free to a pause. I waved my hand in a little clockwise move to convey a denial of reception of any message. With a muffled yet honeyed voice there were two words. 'Hi' and 'Good-night'. I courteously returned the greetings. A loud cough of her grandmother in the upper berth put us both on high alert and gradually I fell asleep waiting for the coughing to subside.

The next thing I could realize was that the train had entered the destined station and a rush of red-clad porters came pouring in inside the coach. Sadly, I was unable to locate her and with an agonizing prick in my heart, I started collecting my luggage to walk across the platform. I went to the taxi-stand to purchase prepaid tickets to hire a drop to my apartment. Then suddenly a gradually accelerating Innova and an apparently waving hand came into view. The hand was very fair and the car was on the other side, for I could catch neither. I noticed the opposite berth girl gazing through the window, all excited and vivacious and then with a certain tinge of lament,  hiding her waving hand from the insiders yet with a sheer apathy towards the outsiders. I could only manage to return a smile which was promptly conveyed back.

Something else

Love, Stuck with a few Platonic Verses

An immaculately sculpted countenance with a definite verve for the ongoing turn of events suddenly refracted my languid eyesight on a focus. Being there for the last two and a half hours with a regressive mental absence of my sense of being, I recalled that it was supposed to be an 'enjoyable' reunion of our alma mater. Sadly, it was akin to waiting for a ravaging matador to rage towards a complaisant bull. I was waiting for a few known ones from our alumni group until that very moment. Till then, I tried to keep guessing the nature of magic potions being taken, by measuring the dynamics of different people when they were invited to the dais for the one 'big' talk- precisely from the manner of walking or rather snaking through the crowd when there was ample space beside, the way of greeting us with a legendary "hello" or the time lag between the syllables 'H', 'E', 'L' and 'O' and the basis of combining India's economic growth with the amount of booze available in this very party, as some of the necessary indicators of measurement among others. Still I would bet that only a handful had actually seen been to a dais before.

Returning to the focal plane, for the first few seconds, I kept wondering about the origin of this Aphrodite-like splendour. Chances were like (1) Girlfriend=80%- these  studs from our college make the most of it whenever they get even the slightest of  an opportunity after passing out, for they usually convert it having faced the negative side of the LAA(line of acceptable attraction) range for four excruciating years, (2) Daughter-5%, taking into account the family  type father figures who were not 'on a  so high' and the rest (3) 10% - an alien from Venus or a humanoid terminator who first attracts you and then terminates you because its whole mission is to terminate humans and things prevalent to these schools of thought.

                                                                             I 'star'-gazed my already moonstruck eyes towards this resplendent personification of beauty itself. Her hands were carved with a poetic finesse, which seemed to wave with a measured magnitude of impatience upon the ongoing conversation. Her eyes reflected a soothing sense of peace and humility, ears were accessorized with simple jewellery reflecting a strange sense of austerity yet serving its purpose, lip movements suggested an aversion to loquacity and the sculpted milky-white face revealed that she was not a direct alumna. She was wearing a glowing green salwar-kameez, with white dazzling sandals caressing her smooth pearly feet.

                                             
The other people in the coterie were an elderly man with a definite ardour for wisdom and another man with jet black hair, which was perhaps achieved by using loads of hair-gel, a dark complexioned face, frame-less spectacles and he probably had umpteen stories to tell, for his mouth seemed to be action-synchronous like sun-synchronous satellites with the valve for drinking water being frequented by guests. I realized that it had been twenty minutes of appreciating the beauty next door. Not to forget the swaying shiny black hair with a longitudinal free fall to her waist. A gusty wind was present to keep things in motion and for the hair at least. Maybe the breeze was inherently enjoying the sway. I was met with three mean stares from people at slightly different angles when I swerved my line of vision compelling me to look in another direction and probably at my watch. Within moments, the elderly man was standing in front of me. Perhaps it would be another hit and run case, but this time sans the BMW and Salman. The hair-gel black jack was also excitedly hurrying towards me like he was going to have a gala time watching my plight.  I mentally tried to frame up a defense in case I was first charged with ogling and was then hit.  Actually, I had spent an inordinate amount of time appreciating a ‘strange foreign beauty’ which was quite improper by Indian traditions.

Then came the words, "Hi, Sonik", with a curiously familiar accent. I could almost recall the semiconductor lectures during my sophomore year at NIT. He was Prof. Goutam Patnaik. On one side, I was elated that I was not being hit and on the other I anxiously anticipated that he would have just spotted me but not earlier than the moment of realization. The other man was one of my batchmates and branch-topper whom we lovingly called the 'The Dark Knight' for obvious reasons. I stood up and exchanged hand-shakes and pleasantries with the two. And yes, the prof took me to the lady in green to introduce her as his daughter to my utter elation and the three mean starers' envy. She belonged to that prefigured five percent to my absolute delight.  I happened to be Prof. Patnaik's favourite student as I could figure out from my introduction, with a feeble complaint that I was never quite industrious.  Had he given complementing marks, I would have lovingly missed a few bad grades. Back to her, the name was Sonal and she was doing some course in bio-technology which I failed to grasp as I was too busy getting a close up confirmation of my previous readings. With a surprisingly compact voice, I introduced everyone to my present job explaining about my technology and clearing the occasional doubts of the festering dark knight. Soon to my sheer relief Prof. Patnaik went to meet the other professors and I knew that I had to somehow engage this dark knight in someplace else. Probably, had to inform the ‘Joker’.  Then one of the three jokers known friends barged in with a stupefied bearing on his face which was similar to greeting an E.T crawling out of a crashed U.F.O. Even, I initially presumed that he had really seen some exotic alien creature. I pleadingly signaled him to engage the 'dark knight'. He was steering the conversation towards grade points which I had lovingly forgotten and had forgiven myself for. Somehow the joker succeeded in showing me the finger and taking the 'dark knight' away at the same time, on the pretext of finding certain soft-drinks.

My dream run had just begun. It was akin to Tendulkar batting in his purple-patch. Discussions started from technology and headed towards personal hobbies and common interests and even criticizing the boring conceited purview of the ‘dark knight’ to my joy. Even a shred of my vanity was chastened by her steadfast humility. We went to the ice-cream stand and both of us skipped dinner perhaps driven by the sole motivation of spending a few moments together. The discussion was pretty, making her look even prettier was her equally infectious smile. Then an exchange of contact details happened. All too soon, she was to get back home and was close to leave a parting kiss on my cheeks when suddenly the background was disturbed by a loud banging noise. With an abrupt dissolve of the immediate surroundings as in Harry Potter novels, I found myself lying on a bed  with someone shouting at the door. Probably, the last kiss was the ‘portkey’ to the real world. Whatsoever, in this other world, it was 0400 hrs and my roommate had just returned from his hometown. A brief span of forty five seconds of winking eyelids had created a wonder which I would be glad to barter with this reality.

Ethereal Reminiscences II - The Homecoming

This second ethereal experience has more or less defined my life's path. Let me try to concisely recapitulate the turn of events, that had manifested towards this particular encounter.  

Somehow lacking a sound sleep or simply after losing the motive push to get up from bed at 0800 in the morning (quite unusual for an early riser), I was still in a state of deep slumber, but was aware of it. There was also a gravity of feeling within this slumber, which could have been along the very lines of death. Breath drawn out, heart almost still, lack of any wilful control over my body. May be my own, may be not, but it was just powerful and it was in a sense, omnipresent. Add to that, my mind's utter ineffectiveness, as if held by a sudden uncontainable force, I was made to delve into a strange form of communication. Later someone explained this as an intuitive message, made possible via one's spiritual eye (point between the eyebrows). I was not able to decipher anything, neither about the source nor the medium of communication, till late afternoon. What could only be deduced, was that, it was an impending death with a sudden painful bereavement within my family. Someone very close! No visuals or anything similar, but in a way an irrefutable! And at the same time, I was certain that this was never a dream, it was a real-time precise communication, intended for a specific soul. And the thoughts of portending mortality supposed to occur in my family, filled all accompanying thoughts with merciless anxiety.

               Moments later, I got a call from my Mom, and she shared regarding urgent official orders from the Central Government for my Dad. He had to take one of the earliest flights to Delhi. And eventually reach one of the remotest villages in Uttar Pradesh (UP). It was to oversee that the running elections go peacefully. There had been some shooting incident earlier and one of the earlier observers had been injured by bullets. Of course, remote villages in UP or anywhere in India don't have airstrips. It had to be a composite air-road-air-road journey, with a hundred or more miles to be covered by road. After listening to these accounts, I was mentally shaking with fear. Dad had to take two flights and two cars to reach that particular village. What if my premonitions came true! Somehow I was sure of a death, but lacked any idea on the subject. Unable to tell any of this to Mom and with shaken prayers to God, I boarded a train back home. It was a planned trip and the tickets had been made a few weeks earlier. 

    Comically though, my accompaniment was Chetan Bhagat's new book then, 'The 3 mistakes of my life' to help cover these six or seven anxious hours, with some senseless comedy. After going through a few pages, a realisation dawned upon me, that it was perhaps Bhagat's fourth mistake to have written that book, in the first place! Bravely with scyllas of sarcasm and with an almost dispassionate reading, three-fourths of the book were completed. This was when my Mom called again, sobbing. I got to know that my maternal grandfather had passed away! So it was he, the soul behind the communication. Contrary to a relative scenario of losing one's parent, I felt an immediate sigh of relief and surety, that my father was safe from harms way. Along came the sadness, that my mother had lost hers. All I could do was to console her, with my heart and soul. She mentioned that she would be leaving with her sister at around 7 pm, which was roughly coinciding with the time of my arrival at home. I wanted to go with her, to help unfold this mystery. The rest of the journey helped give a thought to subtle (astral) forces, of which we become aware only when, we are not aware of ourselves (A tiny bubble of laughter I, Am become the Sea of Mirth Itself). Pretty concocted is the human being. Composed of the same elements as Earth or Stardust, how can (s)he be so misplaced to assert with ample confidence that the Earth & the Stars are just gases, without consciousness!

       And the last page of Bhagat's fourth mistake was flipped with a high dispassion for content. After reaching home, and having some food (devoid of any spices as per Hindu customs) and we embarked on a greater journey, back to that quiet place, where my grandfather, mom, dad and even I was born; the ancestral home where, grandfather gave away his physical being. We covered six more hours by road and it was well past midnight, when we reached the place. 

         Paying my respects to all elders present there, all of us went to pay respects to our late grandfather's physical body. He was lying on his usually unadorned bed, and I noticed a perfectly straight spine, and a remarkable expression of freedom & peace, on his face. Blood circulation had stopped, which added additional lightness to his already very fair skin. Some cotton balls were plugged in his nose and ears. Then, mysteriously while I was exiting through the other door, suddenly I felt a substantial force field (astral field perhaps) enveloping me. And it was felt, whenever I entered my grandfather's room again. Trying two or three times and it did seem certain, that an(many) unseen forces had been encompassing and enveloping that very room. It was a strange feeling, and there were doubts regarding these forces sharing the same origin, as to the forces which led the original communication. I can't help feeling that the room was surrounded by angels, blessing everyone, since it uplifted the energy :)

 My maternal grandfather had been a spiritual (not religious though) person throughout his life, keeping himself engaged in his spiritual quest through Kriya-Yoga (& meditation) for extended times. During the golden times, when we were kids, I can remember him doing Bhramari pranyam with long AUMs (pronounced OM), audible even at a distance, coming from the prayer room. My recollection comes with a photo-frame of Paramahansa Yogananda & Maa Kali, on his altar. Later I came to know from my mother, that he had received his teachings from a direct disciple of both Paramahansa Yogananda & his Guru Swami Yukteswar. In case you may not know, Paramhansa Yogananda is known to be an Avatar(ava - down, tri - to pass, or Divine Descent in human form) and the most loved author for many as well as for me, personally. He was assigned the responsibility to spread Kriya-Yoga in the West, by Mahavtar Babaji (below is a photo of the revered Babaji by late Sananda Lal Ghosh, a disciple & younger brother of  Paramhansa Yogananda). 

The most famous Yoganandaji's literary works is Autobiography of a Yogi (AY), which records a Man's eternal quest, played by a young devotee (he himself). The book has sold more than 10 Mn copies worldwide and has changed the lives of at least 30 Mn people across the globe at least in some way. Many successful personalities in creative and business fields, including Steve Jobs, George Harrison, Pt. Ravi Shankar among others, have been deeply inspired by the AY book. It is also known that, this was the only book on Steve Job's iPad and he used to read the book once every year. 

     This brings to memory, rather some funny anecdotes. Six years ago when one of my close friends (& engineering batchmate) had asked me whether I had read this particular AY book, I just expressed utter bewilderment, on who reads these kind of books. Later onwards, I did discover that the same book had been lying there in our bookshelves for the last 15-20 years. And when I had asked my mother, what brings joy, she first told me to study and get into one of the best engineering schools. Then again, after a few years when I asked the same question after completing engineering, she told me that may be I might be happy with further studies in one of the top B-schools. Then I asked again, and she handed me the AY book.  Six years later, I found myself gleaming greedily through this book's content again and again and again! My mom could have just given me the book and reduced those blind efforts of six years. For, Joy as I discovered later, is something that is within yourself, you just need to tune into it, by calming your outflowing energies through meditation.

The AY book though does not tell much about the greatness of the author himself, who was perhaps much greater many of the spiritual personas he has met in AY, and whom he has praised so generously, so humbly. That's when you want a continuity to know more about the author himself. This brings me to the second most prolific author with the same aspect of divine love & kindness, better known by the name of  Swami Kriyananda. I can recommend one of his books from my heart, for people who have loved the AY. Kriyananda authored The New Path. There is also another loved book Mejda by Yogananda's disciple and younger brother Sananda Lal Ghosh, which encompasses funny but deeply spiritual anecdotes of their childhood.

Coming back to the story, I still inwardly get a feeling that my grandfather was much more spiritually (a devotee in complete secret) elevated, than we could have possibly imagined during his lifetime. My mother was told that he did not have any karma left on the physical plane by the Brahmin doing the puja, since there was no mark left (An old Hindu custom where a mark left on sand decides what the next incarnation/form for a deceased one could possibly be, personally I am not the right person to comment on it). However, the fact he did consciously convey his death to his grandchild before it actually occurred, does give a strong enough reason to believe that he knew his time of leaving the physical body. A devotee in complete secret, who did bless his grandchildren with directions (including my maternal cousins & we together constitute one closely knit family), for our own spiritual searches, given respective spiritual inclinations: divine love for the devotee, divine wisdom for the discerning and right action for the karma yogi. Many miracles followed the event in the family, some decipherable other not so, close to our hearts. 

         This experience had established an alternate reality, with a much greater scheme of things, beyond the usual mortality of life & death and perhaps a vast array of thoughts and hidden inside man's real ambition. The following year I joined one of the B-schools, located in one of the most scenic towns of India - Indore. And almost every day of this rigorous course, I have asked God to give me Kriya. I could start on the path of Kriya Yoga only 4-5 years later and have been able to validate these experiences with different aspects of divine contact. Never knowing that my grandfather loved me so deeply, I am glad that he did in the same way Master (Yogananda) does.

Here is a picture of both my paternal (left) and maternal grandfathers (right).

PS: Some additions after six long years, when understanding is relatively deeper & after finally taking all four Kriya Dikshas. 

Ethereal Reminiscences Part-I

One of my inceptive experiences with the evanascent glances of the 'eye of intuition' occurred on the day my paternal grandfather passed away. Immediately informed about the incident by Mom, I took a bus back home on a nine hour long night journey. Those days were my student days in a far off place called Rourkela. It was after consciously closed my somnific eyes that I unconsciously started to converse with my grandfather.  My paternal grandfather had some of the qualities that are most difficult to emulate even today. A God loving man, who took upon the oath for seeking the divine at a later age when he had been freed up from his worldly duties and became a pensioner. He had made it a habit to lead his life in the most simplest of ways, non-fussy with his daily readings of Bhagvatam and Bhagvat Gita. A person who never ever spoke ill of anyone and loved his descendants unswerving. A golden hand in anything and everything related to household agriculture, be it vegetables or fruits :). He always made it a custom to bring sacks full of homegrown fruits and vegetables whenever he came to his our home. And alas! papayas again, which I grudgingly called durniti(english equivalent is 'corruption') as it was mixed with peas-potato curry cooked in our home, in the most camouflaged manner, for I was the one who always hated papayas, which substitutes potatoes. Like many my love was for that pristine peas-potato curry, unadulterated with durniti.

         That night with a slightly heavy heart and my mind focused on my grandfather, I consciously closed my eyes after being seated in the bus. After a few minutes, someway conversing with him started, through the middle of my forehead. None of the events was within the control of a sleepy mind, it seemed to be proceeding automatically and intuitively. It was love on his part which was manifesting, love for his grandchildren. Suddenly I asked him to take me with him if he so chose. And could never learn why such a unusual request! And that was it. A screeching pain occurred in the middle of my forehead as if something was being forcibly drawn out of it. Immediately screaming "NO! NO! " with out any external manifestation of noise, I could only then open my eyes. This was my first ever ethereal experience, after death of a close one.

And perhaps this was also a start of my belief in a higher reality which manifests besides this visible world.