The Staircase Market

There is a staircase of concrete and stone with stairs of uneven heights and widths in Rishikesh (Uttarakhand, India). It descends from the residential and touristy village of Tapovan towards the city centre market which ultimately leads to the Lakshman Jhula suspension bridge (Rishikesh) across river Ganga. This staircase of some 25-30 lies in shade of a canopy of overbearing balconies at upper storeys. The (ground) level storey of most such constructions serve as shops selling traditional Indian handicraft including wooden bead/rudraksha rosaries, incense, sandalwood, artificial jewellery and notebooks. Few others open into cafes, such as Café Beatles, or tourist accommodations, such as Shalom Backpackers.

Trinket market

Source: Google Images

There is something mystical about that market offering spiritual trinkets while at the same time guiding the traveller towards holy river Ganga.

Thousands of tourists visit Rishikesh every month from all corners of the world. Some affectionately call it the spiritual and yoga capital of the world. Westerners and Indians alike visiting for their first, second or nth time stroll around through its streets trying out the various methods/diets of spiritual ascension/awakening/enlightenment the place offers. Such methods include yoga classes, meditation sessions and sattvik/yogic diets. Many others, mostly Indians, visiting for inexpensive retreats, hustle about to participate in a variety of adventure sports such as white water river rafting, bungee jumping, rappelling and river crossing.

All visitors arrive at Rishikesh seeking something. The sought objective varies from thrill of adventure and peace of spiritual ascension to simply laid back rest from everyday life. The staircase market has something to offer for all its visitors – incenses and rosaries for the spiritually/religiously aligned, advertisements and pamphlets for adventure sports for the adventure seeking, and good food and rest for the casual traveller.

The staircase market offers them that external trinket visitors believe they came looking for. It offers a student of spirituality/religion possession of that wooden bead rosary which she believes she needs for spiritual ascension. It offers the adventure junkie knowledge of the phone number to be dialled or website/mobile application to be visited to book its next sports activity, therefore, enabling her in performing this desired activity. It offers the casual traveller the comfort and luxury of warm and delicious food to soothe its sense of taste and infuse feelings of sensory pleasure. But is it for any of them the achievement of their end goal?

Does possession of the rosary alone lead the student to enlightenment? It doesn’t. The student needs to make the journey of meditating on the beads to cover the path and attain the awakening. Does booking of the activity alone bring that experience of thrill for the adventure junkie? Excluding for the self congratulatory minority delighted at having just opted for something out of the ordinary, it doesn’t. Does the good taste and warm texture of food relished by the casual diner bring her pleasure? Temporarily yes, but for the long run, it doesn’t. She needs to seek the knowledge and make efforts for carving out habits to experience the harmony of senses she so seeks. Doesn’t she seek to become like a river flowing its course in harmony of other elements – stone, air, heat and the skies?

Ganga-In-Rishikesh

Source: Google Images

Aren’t all of them, in their respective ways making their way to the river – some physically, some spiritually and others casually?

Maybe for the spiritual seeker, the passage is her meditation over the rosary to discover its divine and abundant life force that flows like a river. For the adventure seeker, maybe her passage is literally/physically the walk towards the river as nearly all adventure sports in Rishikesh are river-centric. Maybe some of them will make their journey to the realization that the thrill is experienced within their selves and the activity is merely a nudge/input, and maybe the thrill is a height achieved through the awareness of the life force – the divine and abundant life force.

It may or it may not, or maybe all of this is conjecture. But for those who take the effort of making their respective journeys, the path inevitably leads to the river.

From the staircase market of Rishikesh, the path leads to the banks of the holy river Ganga. In the staircase market of life, who knows where the path would lead to?

The First Sunrise

Some day, my friend

We’ll wave time away into the wind

‘Coz we’ll be rich with it

Image result for bird waiting at dawn vector image
Source: Google Images

Some day

We’ll cry our hearts out, with shivering smiles on our faces

‘Coz the pain will no longer be there, it’ll be long gone away

 

Some day, my friend

The stars will shine for us

‘Coz we know they shine already but we

have not the eyes to see

 

Some day

We will exit the tunnel

‘Coz we know that it ends somewhere and we

will find where that is

Till that day, my friend

Have faith

‘Coz it is in faith that I’m bonded with you

When you have enough for yourself, keep some more for me

‘Coz on some days for faith, I’ll depend on you

Some day, my friend

The rain will fall for us

‘Coz we know it bubbles already in the waters of the ocean

Waiting for us to reach the edge of the hill

Where one day it will fall fresh for us

Some day

The crowds will cheer for us

‘Coz they’ll think we’ve reached a place in life

I’ll look at you and we’ll laugh privately

‘Coz we’ll know we’ll still be frauds faking perfection

Just like we are, just like we’ll be

Some day, my friend

We will dance together

‘Coz it will matter not if you step on my feet

Some day, my friend

It’ll be alright

‘Coz you know in your heart it will be alright

And we will release ourselves from this prison of our minds

Till that day, my friend

Have faith

‘Coz it is in faith, that I will wait for you

When you reach your freedom, look out for me

‘Coz I’ll see that first sunrise with you

The Whistling Butterfly

We all reach a point in life when the way events unfold around us stops making sense. There comes a time when no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we hope for favourable outcomes, the cards seemed to be stacked so staunchly against us that nothing right seems to happen. The last few months of my life have been a fragmented series of exactly such moments. Fortunately or unfortunately, the pressure has been so immense that it feels like the earth too has reluctantly given away, plunging me to the rock-bottom.

From the depth of my rock bottom on a Thursday morning, I found myself raising my hands and praying to the universe for a sign that times will change. To help the universe out in communicating with me, I wished for it to show me three butterflies before end of the week (till Saturday that is).

Let me admit that there was no originality in this request. I came across this particular wish for seeing butterflies over a blog written by a young girl on another continent, far away from the bustling metropolis of concrete structures and seemingly dead people where I live. Let me also admit that I not only initially judged my own prayer as silly, I was rather proud that I had put the universe to a tough test.

I live in a city which is dotted by construction sites like strawberry seeds prevail over its flesh, and places of natural abundance are as rare as, well, rare. ‘Why would butterflies ever venture into a godforsaken place like my city’, I had wondered, partly in an arrogant self-sabotaging prophecy of my own wish.

Do you know how many butterflies I saw before Saturday evening? More than ten, in my counting.

And I know for sure that I saw at least four different ones as they were white, green, orange, and black and white in colour. I also know for sure that I wasn’t hallucinating, because when I pointed out to other people, they saw them too. The most beautiful one, out of the more than ten butterflies I saw, was the orange one. She flew over the windscreen of my car while I drove through a patch of an unforgiving traffic jam.

She was majestic – the orange one. Her warmly bright tangerine wings were laced by a bold black outline and lined by a network of arterial thin lines, of the same shade as the border.

She interrupted her smooth and gentle descent towards my car by a rather jerky dip in her trajectory towards me before course correcting back along her initial smooth path. That dip in her trajectory had been like the nod of an old yet playful gentleman who crosses you in a street and raises his hat while nodding a silent ‘hello’ to you. That’s how my orange one had greeted me that afternoon. The whole world went around in its busy-ness, as she and I had our moment of salutations in mutual recognition and respect.

Her gesture had gotten my attention planted firmly on her. I then saw what I had never heard before. Her wings in her graceful flapping were caressing her ambient air the same way as do the lips of a whistling person gently. The butterfly was whistling for anyone who chose to listen.

butterfly

The music of air waves she had set in motion touched my being in soothing ripples of a strange love of sorts. It was familiar and alien at the same time. I let it penetrate me anyway. It comforted me, reassured me and made me smile. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t conversant in human languages, but communicated with me in our shared silence. It was a shared silence of our mutual admiration and timeless love. It was like she halted time and expanded space in that moment.

Image Source: Google Images

‘Am I imagining this? Is this really happening? Is the universe really sending me butterflies to instil faith in me? Have butterflies always been around but I have never looked up to notice one?’, I had wondered to myself. She seemed to have heard the doubts racing through my mind because she addressed them in what she said next.

‘It doesn’t matter’, she had said. ‘It doesn’t matter dear friend who caused us to meet. It doesn’t matter if we could have met earlier but are only meeting now. What matters is that we are here now and are having this conversation. What matters is the message we are receiving – that you and I, beyond all our seeming and un-seeming differences come from the same unity. We belong to the same tribe, the family fathered by a cosmic providence and mothered by a cosmic energy’, she had claimed.

‘The connection we have is beautiful. Tune in to it, I urge you my friend. I yearn to enhance my being by connecting with yours, which are in fact only illusorily separated. We may be far apart in the physical world, but if you tune in keenly, you will always hear my whistles. You will hear them in the touch of the ocean breeze on your cheeks flowing gently over the waters separating us physically. Have faith my friend, because it is in faith that we are connected across aeons and miles’, she had insisted.

I marvelled at what she said and till date I marvel further over the fact that I believed her then as much as I believe her now. The fluency of her language (or should I say our shared language) got lost on me past that transient conversation, but my belief in her message prevails.

The Rain Told Me..

Rain told me

Image Source: Google Images

It was like the rain told me that a beautiful tomorrow was yet to come.

I was walking past pillars in a usually crowded marketplace one evening, after the city had been washed over by a breezy drizzle of petal like rain. That evening the stream of people walking past me had been lighter than usual. I felt as if someone called out to me and I turned my neck to the left almost involuntarily in reflex. There was no one, just the glowing signboards of stores in the near distance. There was no one, but I was left with an urge to smile. It was as if I was receiving a message in a new language; one that I was learning to comprehend just in that moment.
I then turned my neck to the right, this time less involuntarily. There were women’s apparel’s stores of some semi-famous brands. For some reason, the most ordinary of dresses looked blossomingly beautiful to me. It was as if the bright colours of blue and green fabric took off like colonies of birds from those clothes and flew past me, colouring the air around me in their mild freshness.
I did not understand what, but something was causing a sudden uplift to my mood. I had had a series of bad days at work, which showed no signs of any improvement soon. A batch of those days when no matter how hard you try, no matter which remaining reservoir of energy you tap into, the pile of tasks in front of you just adamantly refuses to budge. Some of those days in fact, when the pile instead seems to be on a resolve of bullying you to the edge of your breaking point. I was indeed, at the wits’ very end.
The rain drops, the cool air, the drenched stone floor, the scurrying birds and the gentle moonlight getting reflected off puddles on the road – they all got together to somehow tell me to just ‘be’. I understood not what language they were using, but communicating with me, they were. They held my attention for a fraction of a second and urged me to be present right there, in that moment at the rain-washed market. I let myself comply, hesitatingly at first but effortlessly the next second.
In some ways, when I look back now, it felt like a part of my future self had found a way to reverse time travel to smile at me and to urge me to keep going on.
Whatever it was, the way I remember it is that the rain came down in the veil of the drizzle and whispered to my being, that a beautiful tomorrow was yet to come.

Neela Gumbad – Always at Crossroads

Neela Gumbad lies at the crossroad of tradition and modernity literally, figuratively and historically.

Today, it is situated at the centre of a traffic circle on a road called Mathura Road in Delhi. This road connects the medieval city of Nizamuddin with the posh locations of the 5 star Oberoi Hotel and the bustling shopping area of Khan Market.

Historically, it has been known to be one of the oldest Mughal structure in India. it was built when the  Mughals had arrived  in Delhi but not yet imbibed the local cultural flavour of the city. Hence, a crossroad of sorts in the architectural evolution of the city.

Also, it is a tomb where an unidentified Mughal courtier is buried. Being a tomb, it is a crossroad between her material life in flesh and blood on earth and his soul’s passage to eternity.

Isn’t Neela Gumbad the eternal inheritance of every upcoming generation of youth? Aren’t we all always at a crossroads between tradition and modernity?