The Dawn

The clouds darkened

And the sky roared.

Lightening struck

And rain pattered, hard.

Wind gushed and leaves fell.

But in minutes it subsided

The rain, the darkness and my sleep.

The business-lady

I was attending Forest Business Management class one hot afternoon and the professor was talking about entrepreneurship. Since the class was right after lunch and it was hot and dry, most students were dozing off. Their eyes were burdened by sleepiness and I was no exception for I had almost dozed off while taking notes. So the professor clapped his hands loud and to arouse interest and diffuse out the sleepy air he ventured to tell us an amusing incident he encountered which could more or less could be said to of an entrepreneurial type.

So it goes out that in the midst of city of Mumbai, just outside a Hindu temple which is flooded by clamoring crowd of devotees, a cow stands in the shed of a papal tree. Now the devotees being Hindus who worship cows, they feed this cow in the pursuit of gaining spiritual merit. So the cow stands there the whole day while being fed by thousands of devotees and goes to sleep in the evening, happy and bellyful. Intelligent cow, right? But the interesting thing here is, it is very inconvenient for the devotees to carry grass and fodder to the temple just to feed this cow, so seeing a potential business opportunity a lady has opened a fodder shop. So devotees just buy fodder from this lady and feed the cow. Interesting right? Not yet!!!! The most interesting part is that this lady actually owns the cow and milks it every evening, earning money from everything that she does. This lady is putting all businessmen and entrepreneur to shame.

All that ensued was claps after the professor narrated this incident, but to this day I wonder who was being clapped in appreciation, the professor who narrated us this story or the lady who raised the business benchmark by folds.

The Face

The soforific summer has decided to take leave for the year. It has started withdrawing its presence in all forms from nature. The intense scorching summer heat has subsided and instead colder winds blow from the north. The leaves have started fading its natural gold. The mornings are moist with cold crisp air that seems to cajole you back to the bed. The mirrors are fogged while I stand at its front in my bathroom. As I look into the mirror, a solemn, forlorn and forsaken face glares at me as though to say I haven’t been on good tracks for long. I try to smile but what I see on the mirror is just stretched lips with it saying me “Go, you darn thing. Live your servitude life.” I take a palm full of water and haul at it. The mirror is flushed and the water descends down to the base of the mirror but the face with deliberately stretched lips stays. It moves while I move. Its eyes are sullen, buried deep in the skull. Eyes shadowed and bounded by darkened skin. The cheekbones protruded. The nose dominantly the chief feature. The cheeks fleshless with pecks of beard confused whether to grow or not. But among all, the eyes are worth staring at. It’s perturbed and shines in nervousness. It’s fragile and weak. Feeble. But it has a lot of tale to tell. It has seen things beyond comprehension. In its vastness was pervaded the deepest of secrets, regrets and myriad of other feelings. Truly it was said, he thought, eyes are the windows to soul.

I am my companion

All these time I wondered

For as the loneliness struck,

Why one has to be

But all by himself

Bounded by walls of insecurity and fear?

Why one broods, while one is alone and

Why one seeks companion.

But in solitude I found myself,

And heard my voice singing.

Listened to my heart beating

And I being alive

And this day, I found me.

 I am my companion and

For that I am born alone.

Life

Life doesn’t come with a set of rules. As each days passes, one is to experience and perceive our own rules about life and this perhaps is why most people are lost. They might look deep into your eyes and with that confidence they might tell you, they know the in and out about life. But just remember that most times it’s just a plain lie. Everyone is lost at some point of their life with no certainty of their righteousness of their doing. They must be doing something because they have seen people doing it or they have been told to do so. They don’t have a slightest clue of what’s going on and everything seems dreamy. It might not be everyday that one is going through this but I would bet my last coin of my life that if not always, at least once, one walks though this phase.

Also I am often told to what is right or wrong, good and bad. I am told about what needs to be done and what shouldn’t and I always thought what was told to me to be right, but now as I look back in life all that was said to be best for me wasn’t all best, all that was said was not true.  I was always told that I could be a reputed doctor or an engineer, a teacher, a forester and so on, but nobody told me I could be an entrepreneur. The thing is that the society tells you to be the one whom they want to see you being. They will show you the easier ways, but not all easier ways are beautiful and satiating. It might bring you food, but not sleep. There are many things in life that needs to be done and it doesn’t need to be valid. There are no economical returns in driving 200 km through lush green forest on a sunny day but how would you quantify  the joy that fills your heart in doing so? 

Don’t take my words seriously, who knows I might be writing this with a disguised confidence and all this be just another lie about life? 

The New Tenant

And then god finally decided to do something with my mundane life and blessed me with multiple tight knots on the string of my life. My other friend with whom I had jointly rented a house decided to leave the house because the house owner has a certain set of rules and notions about the tenant which my friend found highly unreasonable and illogical that he chose to leave the house. I on the other hand have been very accustomed to such rules and I decided to stay in the house occupying the smaller room and paying half the rent with the other room empty. And yesterday evening the house owner dropped me news that made my very night sleepless. The other room would be rented by a lady and I will have to share the bathroom and the kitchen with her. But it isn’t what you are thinking that my night became sleepless. It’s a needless thing to say to the people who know me well but let me admit that it’s just and just in front of a girl that my knees become weak and I shake shiver and tremble. I become nervous. I am highly allergic to girls and that reasons out why I have never had a girlfriend and close female friends. It’s just another thing that I speak to girls who are my classmates and this new tenant lady is a junior of mine who studies in the same college that I study in and this thought of having to share the bathroom and the kitchen is what kept me sleepless like an owl.

But on the other hand I have a feeling that god bestowed upon me this situation because He wants me to drain out this weakness of confronting a girl and he knows it well that it’s just by facing the fear that one will stop fearing it. Well that’s the only solace. 

Doon in Spring

As a Forestry student I am obliged to tell you an amusing fact that Sal trees deviating from the normal protocols of nature, sheds its leaves in spring. Before I came to Dehradun, I had only heard that the Sal tree which is called Shorea robusta sheds its leaves in spring but I have seen it happen.
There is a rocky trail that snakes through the Sal forest and reaches college. It’s a delight to walk that trail to college in the spring kicking the dried Sal leaves knowing the spring has come and everything around will be back to their life. Walking through the Sal forest with its floor carpeted by dried leaves takes me back in time when I was just a small kid in Gorsum village, Lhuntse. The winter there used to be harsh with its cold hard winds blowing against our rosy little cheeks. The morning and evening were comparatively colder with the need to warm the room with bukhari. Hence, to meet need of firewood we used to swarm the nearby oak forest to collect the dried branches and wood from the felled trees. It was then that I used to walk the forest ground filled with dried oak leaves that was shed in the autumn. It was a joy beyond bound to walk ahead of the group and burry oneself in a heap of dried leaves and rise with a shrill cry from the ground as the group approaches near, scaring them to their bones.
Seeing the same kind of forest floor here, sometimes, the little child in me which I have with outmost care and patience kept hidden from the world tries with all its might to come out but I have grown up big enough in strength to always hide it within.