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PRABUDDH JEEVAN
DECEMBER 2014
THE SEEKER'S DIARY
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ZIKR
CHANTING THE NAME OF THE DIVINE
One of my favourite lyric from a recent film is from a mere mention of her name fills me with a wordless ache movie called Guzaarish. 'Tera Zikr hai, ya itr hai... jab and also an incomprehensible ecstasy too. jab main karta hoon, mehakta hoon.'
So much has happened since then. I love this line because I relate to this line. I have a I fell in love again. With Gurudev, started going to form in my heart to whom I sing this line to and feel her Dharampur, saw and felt "ah" and "aho" on his total fragrance .. I have felt this feeling- if someone just love for Param Kripalu Dev and most of the last year mentions her name and I would feel a wordless joy. has been for me an inner practice, exercise in not simWhat is this Zikr.....? This name...
ply questioning but developing Bhakti in me A name is just a name as has often been said. As the universe has a strange way of aligning with one's Let us start from the time when a name was exactly search, especially in the matters of the soul. There is a that- a name to me.
divine conspiracy happening perhaps to strengthen my There were lyrical sounding names, quainter names resolve in Bhakti; last year my path crossed with various but nothing more superlative than that.
people who with their expression of devotion moved me I used to not quite comprehend this relentless writing beyond words. Below is a brief account of them. of 'Ram Ram Ram' by hand in book after book, paper Praful Bhagwati, the 17th Chief Justice of India, the after paper by my neighbouring aunt, I used to feel it a man who is credited to have made the Supreme Court sinful waste of both paper and time. I used to find chant- available to the common man has uncommon access ing as the most inane exercise, a reflection of a vacu- to a yet another court- that of Lord Krishna's. Approachous brain.
ing 94, he is vulnerable, incoherent, forgetful but just Until,.....I fell in LOVE- not with a boy or best friend but whisper Krishna's name around him, and his face lights love in the form of a Master, a super being a higher up, alert and ready before it turns into a deep anguished being.. in the form of my Neela Ba- Neela Shashikant wail- 'Krishna, Krishna, mane maara Krishna paase Mehta.
javu chey.' This does not happen once, twice but evShe was in the periphery of our lives since I was five ery single time anyone merely mentions the word but my acknowledgement of her presence and consecu- Krishna'. tively feeling her all the time thereafter happened when Fariyudin Ayaz, a Qawwali singer from Pakistan with I was 21.
his troupe blessed my home last year and the three I was nursing a broken heart (from a human love) and hours that he sang were dedicated to Allah and a few had gone to Deolali to escape, to heal. It was Paryushan adjectives for Allah. I got goosebumps every time he and oh my god- what happened? Day One I came in would say-'La ila il lilla. Allah Hu Akbar. Arham Dirulla. contact with her and by Day 9- I was hooked, besotted, Subhan Allah' (words that one must have so often knew that I could be many many things great and small heard passing a mosque around Azan time, or from but never the same again.
various Muslim friends) but in the state when he with She was Perfect in the way she sat, walked, ate, spoke, passion and fervour kept on reciting 'Allah hu Allah' loved. The way she was in 'Vyavhar' with her four chil- (Glory be to Allah, Allah is great, Praise be to Allah). dren and husband and all of us and the way she was the sound of Allah resonating in my heart and through with 'Parmaarth'- her total being was for Param Kripalu the walls creating this splendour of that I see as Allahdev.' But this essay is not my ode to her (although ev- the light, the fused light of all keval Gyanis, and kept erything good in me is.).But this is an ode to this thing me in that awe for all the while. that sufis call 'Zikr' and we call Bhakti.
Balbir Singh, a Gurbani singer from Ludhiana was Since I met her, her name, her picture, the tangible standing next to the Mahatma Gandhi statue at the things that she had touched, places that she had laid Mumbai Domestic Airport as I was waiting to board my her foot on, people she had met all became very spe- flight to Kutch. A delayed flight made us by default sit cial and brought a gulp in my throat.
next to each other which led us into an hour of converShe left the physical form five years backand yet the sation where he explained to me that he was a 'Shabad
