Dear Pouring Rain,
I was waiting for your mail, but you didn't turn up till date. Atleast let me know that you are living a good life somewhere. Be happy,wherever you stay. Whenever you have time, drop a line. Well, yesterday I couldn't complete the mail.
I wanted to tell you about Allahabad, the holy city. Though Allahabadis well known through out the country for its purity, but it's very hard to see any cleanliness. In real sense, people come here to wash their sins and I'm not surprised to see the dirt around. It's a holy and religious place and the meeting point of pious rivers Ganga and Yamuna. According to Hindu mythology the River Saraswati also keeps coming to the point, but we are yet to trace the pious river. I was sharing the truth with my mother, she got furious, questioning me "are you sure, Saraswati is vanished?" This type of argument is a regular affair. She always keeps saying, "You people are talking about Sputnik and Missiles…. You know they were created centuries before and used by our Gods." To make her statement strong, she reads a few lines of Devi Kavach -
Prathmam Sailputri cha, dyutiyam Brahmcharini!
Tritiyam Chandraghanteti, Kushmandeti chaturthkam!
Panchmam Skand mateti, Khashtham Satyayni cha!
Saptam Kaal ratri, Ashtam Mahagauri!
Navam Sidhhi datri, Dasham Nav Durga Prakirtitah!
She tries to relate all the ten names of Durga with Sputnik and Missiles. I fail to make her understand my views. I remain silent.
Dear friend, I'm coming back to Allahabad once again. In our society, it's very easy to kill our own dreams, wish and become a monk or sanyasi. That's the reason; we have an old tradition of naga sadhus. They are escapist, but I'm not. In fact, our social structure teaches us to escape from the very beginning. I lived in a big joint family and when I was three years old, they used to teach me these lines-
Balo ham jagdanand, name wala saraswati
Apurne panchme varshe, varnyam jagatryam!
If someone is able to understand the world at 5 years of age, why should he stay in the normal family? This is the first lesson to escape. I remember when you left me in 2006, I went to Allahabad in search of mental peace, roaming here and there on the sangam beach. I was searching for spiritual discipline best suited to my temperament. This indicates the state of proximity or 'Samipya' in my spirituallife, which is an essential ingredient of the 'Bhakti Marga' of the dualistic school of Philosophy. I tried to concentrate on 'Om' and wrote this seed syllable, symbolizing the crux of the Vedas by my own hand. Those days I was trying to get authentic accounts of knowledge of various 'Stotras' and devotional texts. But soon after realized, the monk tradition was not for me. I wished to live my life, in a greatway. I came to know, nobody is always happy, and it is our pain that we remember most clearly. Nirvana or moksha isn't Heaven, Nirvana is everywhere, in everything, absent of individual thought and greed. At last I would like to write this poem for you-
Khojne jab chala main tumhe viswha me
Mandiro ne bahot kucch bhulawa diya
Khair yeh par huyee umar ki daud me
Khayal maine na kucch pathharo ka kiya
Parwato ne jhuka sheesh chume charan
Baanh daali kali ne gale me machal
Ek tasweer teri liye kintu main
Saaf daaman bacha kar gaya hi nikal.
Waiting for your reply.
Your's
The Desert!
The Desert!
3 comments:
its a great job, keep it up, a rich sense of literature.....
hmm very good way of capturing the essence of the holy city of allahbad.
I am from Patna and had the opportunity to visit Allahabad many times during my life. There is something very special about cities based on the banks of the Holy Ganges.
Two of the best cities in my life had been Varanasi and Allahabad. They are distinct, yet they are so similar to each other when it comes to getting the feel of being in a universe of all round spirituality.
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