The Mystery Called Life!

Quite some time ago, a friend of mine called and complained non-stop about his boss. ‘Rakshas hein rakshas, juice nikhal deta hein! (in Hindustani, a fiend who drinks your blood!). Kabhi kabhi man karta hein, bhag jaon yahan se (feel like running away from here!). Like in all such situations at work place, he also had a ‘friend’ to pour his heart out (apart from ‘tele’ friends like me). Since it was some time since we had spoken, I rang him up to say ‘hi!’ He almost broke down on the phone. Here is what he told me.

His sister was due to be married and everything had been arranged. As the marriage was to be solemnized in the groom’s city, a bus was arranged to convey the bride and family to that place. The joyous melee in the bus turned into a nightmare enroute. Driver lost control and banged into a huge tree. Apart from others, the bride got crushed between two seats. The rest was mayhem.

An sos was flashed for the treatment. Some help came from here and there. The ‘trusted’ friend of his office was no where to be seen. Considerable money was locked up as advances to the hotel, marriage hall, caterers, et al. He was in a spin.

And then the ‘rakshas’ appeared in the hospital. After confabulations with the doctors, he handed them a cheque sufficient to see her through o her health. As the dumbfounded friend kept looking on, the ‘rakshas’ wagged a finger at him before leaving and told him to rejoin duty the day she is stable!

‘Yaar, mein jaan bhi dei dun uske liye, tho bhi khum hoga (I can even give my life for him, friend). Bloody hell, to think that I was cursing him all the time those days!’

Human beings are the most complicated things that God ever made. Though HE is supposed to be in every thing, how He will manifest, what He is capable of doing and in whose heart you will find His reflection – well, that perhaps is the mystery called life!

St Francis of Assisi

Long ago when in college, I happened attend the college chapel on a Sunday. We had an elderly priest, who chose that day to speak about prayer.  What he said got embedded into our hearts for a very long time to come:

Actually it does not matter to which faith that we belong. What is important is to have faith. What is important is to believe that we can be instruments of God to spread the message of love, joy, peace and forgiveness.

After the service, the elderly priest went about distributing one of the most touching prayers that I have come across, to everyone in the congregation – Prayer of St Francis of Assisi.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love.  

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Many, many years later, another apostle of love who walked the Earth during our lifetime, Mother Theresa, delivered the same prayer with a little variation while addressing the UN in 1985: 

Make us worthy Lord to serve our fellow men throughout the world,

Who live and die in poverty and hunger.

Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread

And by our understanding love give peace and joy.

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.

That where there is hatred I may bring love,

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

That where there is error I may bring truth,

That where there is doubt I may bring faith,

That where there is despair I may bring hope,

That where there are shadows I may bring light,

That where there is sadness I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand than to be understood,

To love than to be loved.

For it is by forgetting self that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

Great souls, I suppose, think alike!

What we find in our self is what we will find in others!

I was not feeling very well. So went to meet our doctor. While waiting in the clinic, I chanced upon a poster that most hospitals display. It was about a hospital in Dieunne (Dijon) run by Sisters of St Martha. The Sisters have been serving the sick from 1443 AD. Wow! What dedication, I said to myself and decided to check upon the same in the net. What I found on the net really set me thinking about life and faith.

Martha, along with her sister Mary and brother Lazarus lived in Bethany, a village about two miles from Jerusalem. Jesus was fond of the family and came to visit them thrice. The first time when Jesus arrived, Martha readily welcomed him in and immediately set about preparing food for Christ. To her dismay She found her sister Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to him, instead of helping her. So she complained to Jesus. Jesus smiled and said:

You worry about so many things while she is doing what one must!

Martha, realizing the true implication of what Jesus said, remained devoted to him. During his later visit, she even left the grieving household to listen to him. Later, she went to Avignon (Tarascon), where legend has it that she flayed a dragon and became the patron saint of hospitality.

In many ways Martha reflects the normal humans that we are, always worried about something or other. If the past does not worry us, then it is our future that bugs us. If it is not our wife, then it is the children. If it is not the boss, then it is some colleague. If it is not an enemy, then it is our friends. In the constant process of these worries, there is only one thing that we seem to forget – to have faith and to live today.

Faith is not about God. It is about one’s self. When we do not have faith in our self, how can we ever have faith in God?

What we find in our self is what we will find in others!

If we do not believe this all we have to do is look around.

There are millions of ‘faithful’ we see who go to their temples, masjids and churches without fail.

Just across the fence, we also see thousands of non-believers and atheists.

Both seem to have the same amount of joy and sorrow mixed in their cups.

Is there a case then to believe that there is a God for only those who believe? For the rest who do not, there is a NO-GOD?

Much after the great war, the story goes in Mahabharatha, Kunthi the mother of Pandavas, called the famous charioteer, Vidhur, and said:

Go to Dwaraka and ask Sri Krishna to come here. It has been a while since I have seen him.

So, Vidhur meets Sri Krishna, who readily accepts the invitation.

As the chariot rolled, Krishna noticed that Vidhur was rather silent and withdrawn. When queried, Vidhur simply replied:

Lord, you are omniscient and I need not elaborate.

My dear Vidhur, if there is something that you want to know, then you must ask!

So be it, Lord, then. You knew that brothers would kill brothers and millions would perish on the battlefield. You being the Lord God could have prevented this. All you had to do was to wish it that way and the Kaurava and Pandava clan would have lived happily ever after. Instead you let them kill each other. Why?

Krishna smiled. Tell me Vidhur, what did the brothers ask me when they came to see me before the war?

Well, Duryodhana who came first asked for your army to fight on his side and Arjuna who came later asked for you to be his charioteer.

Did they get what they wanted?

Yes, my Lord. Duryodhana believed that he will win the war, with the army on his side. Arjuna believed that he will win the war with you on his side. Eventually, Arjuna won, for you the Lord God was with him.

Sri Krishna laughed. Vidhur you seem to have missed something.

Insightful and intelligent that Vidhur was, he understood. Yes, my Lord, none of the brothers believed that they could live together in peace. Though both of them came to you, all they believed was mutual destruction. That is what they got!

So, my dear Vidhur, it is not what I want that you will get. It is what you desire from the core of your heart that you will get. Have faith!

Have faith. What we find in our self is what we will find in others! 

The Sun will Shine!

 This is one of my favourites from Jim Reeves. Since the song says it all, there is nothing that I can add!

I had lived a life of sin in this world were living in
I had done forbidden things I shouldn't do
I ask a beggar along the way, & u can tell me where to stay
Where I'd find real happiness and love that's true

Across the bridge, there's no more sorrow
Across the bridge, theres' no more pain
The Sun will shine across the river
And you'll never be unhappy again

follow footsteps of the King and you'll hear the voices ring
They'll be singing out the glory of the Lamb
The river of Jordan will be near, the sound of trumpets you will hear
You'll behold the special place ever known to man

Across the bridge, there's no more sorrow
Across the bridge, theres' no more pain
The Sun will shine across the river
And you'll never be unhappy again

Across the bridge, there's no more sorrow
Across the bridge, theres' no more pain
The Sun will shine across the river
And you'll never be unhappy again

You will never be alone if you love!

There is a time for everything – to love, to give, to care, etc and a time to feel lonely, sick, desolate, etc also. If we carefully evaluate our day, we will know this is true. Then what make a happy man and a sad one?

Can you feel happy that you felt alone and sad as much as you felt wanted and loved? Someone told me that you have to be a philosopher to feel so. I do not know anything about philosophy. Therefore, I can not evaluate. However, there is something I can share in the form of a story:

A great king once felt extraordinarily lonely and desolate. He had a dozen doting queens, two dozen loving children, adoring citizens and a bunch of loyal ministers. Yet one day, he felt lonely and desolate.

As is customary, he called for the wisest among his ministers and confided in him how he felt. The minister thought long and hard about this and said:

O king, you are lonely because there is something that you are yet to achieve but can not figure out what. Otherwise, look at you. No man can ever boast of what you have.

The king was silent for sometime. Then he asked the minister to arrange the trial of one of the most notorious criminals in custody. The case was quite a complicated one and the cruelty supposedly exhibited by the criminal had shocked everyone’s conscience.

The minister thought the King wanted to meet out some extra-ordinary punishment and thereby jolt his lonely heart out of desolation.

So the trial commenced. As it concluded and time came for the King’s judgment, a strange silence fell on the crowd. The criminal in any case knew that he would be a dead man and so stood quietly awaiting the sentence. The king was in deep contemplation. At the end, the king said:

Bring forth the victim’s family. So they came forward.

Swear to me that by this man’s blood your child will come back to life.

The family stood puzzled and told him that it can never be. Their child was dead.

Then, swear to me that your child’s soul will rejoice when this man’s blood is spilt.

The family was not sure. No one had seen a dead soul rejoicing.

If this man’s blood is of no use to you then, why do you want him dead?

The family did not know what to say.

The king then asked the criminal:

If by your death you can not bring the child back, how then do you want to pay them back?

The criminal looked at the mother of the child and said:

I do not know. I have sinned and would like to pay them back by my labor, my king. I can not bring their child back. But I can work their field and season after season; can give them a good harvest.

So be it, then. Free this man so that he is a slave to the family to work on their land. As for the grieving mother, learn to forgive the sin this man committed. May be you will find the smile of your child in every harvest this man brings to your home!

After the trial, the minister was puzzled and asked his king how the trial helped him overcome his loneliness. The king said:

Compassion, my dear minister, is the antidote for loneliness!

The 'Friendly Colleague'!

It was quite interesting. I mean the way two colleagues were vying with each other to have the boss’s complete attention. Competition in the office and professional jealousy is something that most of us live with everyday. Some of us cope with and some loose out. At the end of the day, however, one finds that the winner is actually equal to the loser (or vice versa).

There are reasons for saying so.

First, look at what every boss actually needs. He needs out put and achievement of goals. If one thinks that he became boss just to fulfill his personal needs, well, there are better myths to believe. He was an achiever and therefore he reached! He knows that you also want to reach and it is but natural that you have to achieve first.

Second, look at what you need. If you are looking for a life long friend by cozying up to your boss, well, it is better you give it a second thought. There are better avenues to make friends. Honestly, you are actually looking for becoming a boss your self. There is nothing wrong in that, by the way. Every reasonable man must want to grow. It is just that you got to work to become what you want to be!

So how do we balance these aspects. Simple –

First, be a professional in your field.

Second, be nice and courteous to your boss.

Third, remember, he wants results more than friendship.

Fourth and last, if it so happens that you do become friends, consolidate the relationship by all means (after all good friends are hard to come by!), but do not mix work with friendship!!  

Unknown, Unheard, Unsung!

Long time ago, a journalist who visited one of the forward and difficult frontiers concluded his article on the troops deployed there with these words:

“These are the real heroes – unknown, unheard, unsung!”

The debate is not about why the nation must remember its heroes. It is about character. Patriotism is also an attribute of character that reflects in the actions of a country. A few hundred thousand troops singing the glory of the nation does not make the nation patriotic. It is the billions of citizens’ faith in their own nation and their actions guided by such faith that makes the nation patriotic.

Many a times we discuss the actions of certain powers in the world stage and tend to brand them as ‘pushy’ ‘self centered’ or even ‘open display of their might’. If we sit down and analyse we will find that they are actually motivated not by the desire to bulldoze another country, but to uphold their national interest (sometimes, at all cost!). Patent actions such as these are actual display of ‘patriotism’ by a country. There will be costs to bear. But then, the nation does what it is convinced that it must do. Courage of conviction is not merely a praiseworthy attribute of an individual, it is the touch stone by which strong nations and weaklings are marked out. The size of the country actually has nothing to do with its courage of conviction. Even historically, it is David who fell Goliath!

Anyway, today’s scribble was to be about one of the most solemn tributes that has ever been paid to the Indian soldier in a battlefield that hardly few would know – battle of the Mishmi plains (Namti plain), 1962. The poem inscribed in the simple marble plaque was written by Bernard S Dougal, who was the Deputy Commissioner at that time. What a patriotic civil servant he must have been!

The sentinel hills

That around us stand
Bear witness that

We loved our land.

Amidst shattered rock

And flaming pines,
We fought and died

On Namti plains.

O Lohit, gently by us glide,
Pale stars above softly shine,

As we sleep here

In Sun and rain

        - Bernard S Dougal

Our salute to the gallant men of the Sikh, Dogra and Garwal platoons who defended the Lohit with their lives!

In case interested, for more details on the battle and monument, check out the following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walong

http://bhavanajagat.com/tag/mishmi-tribes/