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JANUARY 2015
PRABUDDH JEEVAN
39
THE SEEKER'S DIARY
DEATH & ME
A few days back, one of my dearest friends noticed brush their teeth, or sitting next to Jena Bai telling me my two long strands of white hair and asked me - Are stories of yore while churning chaas the old way with you pro dye? I replied - No, I am pro life till I am alive both her hands and legs holding the matki, old songs, and pro death when I die. This particular friend and me old photographs... ah that still remains a killer, in a have a habit of word play and so while he meant hair moment they fill me with tears because pictures capture dye, I got my chance to speak about my most favourite and freeze new love, freshness, promises, innocence, subject - Death.
pride, youth, khumari, as it also captures age, cynicism, It is 2015, a new year and right now a cold evening hardening... in Mumbai. The few fleeting days of what for us O bsession with death & decay, change and loss Mumbaikars is our 'winter. I am in a content happy ensured that I do not dive into life headlong, it made state of heart and mind, entered the New Year with the me stay away from institutions of marriage, of any longer 'Guru' in Dharampur and at the moment have no projects, and made me live on the fringes, to give shikayat with me or mine.
hundred percent only to the present moment, the Even though death seems to not be a good subject 'NOW' but shy away from anything that required time. to write about in the beginning of the year. Death also I wanted everything as if it were new...fresh. Be it signifies - end of one form and birth of another
relationships or friends, or love or experiences, it should My best friend Alpana used to tease me in college feel like it is in the beginning - the softness, the asking me 'why do you rehearse all your calamities? tenderness, the single focusedness, honesty, before anything has ever happend? why die a thousand innocence...so 'sambandho ni paripakvata' thi door. deaths before the actual death......And this was never (far away). about my death...my fears or what affected me were I t lead to an inability to progress to other levels the thoughts of death of my dad, mom, brothers, people because other levels also meant being able to handle who I held dear, alongwith death of a language, death boredom, stagnation, routine, contradictions, of a place, death of a culture, of a relationship, of inattentiveness, distractions, changes, little betrayals, innocence, of a moment...basically an end of all that I nakedness which comes when you know someone value dearly.
totally - to see life and things as they are and not as I It must be a part of my DNA because all my memories expected or anticipate them to be. My fears blocked of myself of growing up were always in third person. me depite of me doing so much - it compartmentalized Me watching the whole play of my life and also watching life, into various islands rather than make it into a Reshma's emotions and reactions - So unalligned as beautiful connected mosaic. my outer self went on and about doing my actions but
And then Life changed when the Guru happened. my inner would freeze, crumble, collapse.
And what did He do? "What is this Death.. to me? Why does it hold so
Nothing in particular and yet everything. much significance?" was my constant quest.
Through him, I realised that within each of us there For years it froze me, it gave me a permanent gulp
are a billion universes, that relationships have to in my throat and heart, made me incoherent,
develop, that people and objects have to and must overwhelmed.
change, transform or even become extinct but the 'we' Everything gave me a gulp - from the silliest to the
(our soul) is dhruv (permanent.) profoundest - the appearance of my mother's ageing veins. Dad's trembling fingers. Coming across my
Through Him, I realised the love that encompasses favourite cousin's just married picture where she looked all changes so matter of factly and still sustains. so full of hope, joy and innocence, discovering Through him I learnt to take two steps back, to something I wrote in one of my old diary, seeing some remain quiet inside, to calm my inner voices, to cease people in my village early morning still using 'daatan'to questioning and thus to accept people, situations, life
