I realised what a powerful tool the mind is. For the last 8 to 9 months I had been moaning and groaning and blaming everything, everyone and myself for the state I was in. Believe me physically I was in great pain! Mind never worked! It had buried itself in a vast quagmire of self pity. I even started planning out the division of my jewelery between my two children!It was that bad. The usual round of hospitals and doctors did yield a few problems and I was given a million solution. Then I came across this book called “The Secret” which I read with a lot of reluctance (I normally don’t believe in things that I term as “Gyan”) But I in such dire straits that I was like a drowning man clutching at a straw! so I read it, was made to listen to it and even watched the video based on it.

I think everyone who is going through any crisis (The young life, the mid-life or the old-life crisis) should read it. It has something for everyone. The ultimate choice is yours. That is you choose to pick up what you want. It was this freedom of choice that lured me into it. Its simple language was another attraction. It does promise you a lot of things which may not come true, but your basic problems do get solved. Maybe if I had followed the nitty gritties, everything would come out positive.

For the present I am happy that most of my physical problems are all solved. My mind has come out from the hell it was in and is growing freely in a world of sunlight and fresh air. I think it was Marlowe who made Faust say”There is no heaven or hell, it is all in our mind” ( I am not sure as to its accuracy) but that is what I experienced in these last few months!
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This was written more than twenty years back but I think unconsciously I had realised the strength of the mind. it took me so long to realize this consciously!

Years ago when I was in college I studied a play by Samuel Beckett “Waiting for Godot”. I remember I was fascinated by it, which was strange cause I was still in my teens and teens normally do not have the patience to go through this very slow play! But I identified with this in every aspect of my life- from waiting at the bus stop to waiting for my exam results!

In the intervening years I was too busy, first studying then bringing up a family to ever think of this play.I think I did mention it to my students while teaching them but I never went into any detail. Though that period too had its waiting periods I was most of the time multi-tasking so I did not really go through the agony of waiting.

Now I can hardly say that I am busy (Ironic cause I live in a city which is always on the go!) I am back to basics so to say! I get up and I am waiting to send everyone off (Meaning husband and child) then waiting for the maid then waiting for some new games to play on the computer, then waiting for the child to come back and so on and so forth. The waiting game never ends!

Suddenly I realised, like the tramps in the play, I am waiting for some intangible desire to be fulfilled. I know I am waiting for something to happen but what that “something” is , is a mystery. The lethargy that had enveloped me for the last three years is slowly unraveling and maybe when this mist is cleared I will know what is it that my heart desires. Till then I am “waiting”. I know many of us go through this and prefer to either ignore or negate it but that’s not a solution.

Well my first positive towards this is to make a time table (as I used to during my student days) and have a series of occupation to fill my day. It could as inane as doing puja, but its an activity which gives me satisfaction and pleasure or something which is physical like doing 30 minutes on the tread mill which is equally satisfying. I realised that now instead of waiting for things to happen, I am looking forward to my next activity and this reduces the emotional and psychological ennui that I was going through.

Hope this helps those who read it and give me further tips to get out of the pit (that I had myself dug!) as soon as possible.

The other day as I was driving down to my favourite shopping place, as is the wont in Mumbai I was stuck in the traffic at the signals. As usual there were people knocking on the window, tap tapping selling me anything from car mobile chargers to agarbatis to Alphonso mangoes! And as usual I avoided their eyes and looked down at my idle hands.

There was a water tanker ahead of my car – a derelict excuse of a truck with a huge tank filled with water behind. It had two huge taps at the bottom of the tanker.( I am sure you all know what I am talking about). I could see people sleeping in the gap in the divider with a sheet to keep out the sunlight at one place and at another I saw a mother cooking on the pavement with a baby on her lap and lots of similar pictures of poverty that dot this city of dreams. I felt sorry, sympathized and turned my thoughts elsewhere ( I consoled myself by saying what can I do????).

Suddenly I saw a young girl- must have been eighteen or nineteen- dressed in a faded yellow salwar kameez and carrying two Jerry cans come right in front of my car. she nonchalantly opened one of the taps and filled the cans and walked back on the hot pavement to wherever she had come from! The driver did not know and neither would the people who bought the tanker of water would know, so what did it matter that this young girl got her water easily. There were many who would have seen her but no one bothered to reprimand her (neither did I, though I was the closest!) But I wondered whether this street smartness would land her in a soup later. The traffic resumed its snail pace and she slowly vanished out of my sight along with the tanker.

I don’t know what she looked like. I doubt if I would recognize her if I saw her again! But what I know is She remains etched in my mind as the ultimate symbol of survival in the city!

As a child I would love to be alone, play with my dolls or build mud houses, I don’t remember having played with anyone till I was eight or nine!Even then it was with my sister’s friends, but than I made my first friend,(I felt thrilled!) her name was Molly and she was one year senior to me at school. We bonded mainly because we went swimming together. I don’t remember what we talked about but I do remember that we used to hold hands and walk all over the club where both our parents were members. She was the one who egged me to develop my interest in books. She was an only child, so her bedroom was a kids delight, full of foreign toys and Enid Blyton books!She made me borrow books from the library. At first I did it to please her and to feel as grown up as my father or sister(Who always pretended to be grown up from the moment she was born!) but than slowly I got addicted to them. I went through all the Enid Blyton’s at a rapid pace varied my menu to Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Three investigators and the usual fare, children those days used to devour. We parted ways when I was in sixth and I lost touch with her, now I wonder what happened to Molly? I don’t even remember her surname!

My love affair with books continued and I went on to do literature and enjoyed every moment of my five years at the University. But those five years were serious years. I strictly forbade myself unconsciously to read any ‘non-classic’ books ( I know now, I lost out on a lot of good reading!) But this was the time I became a thinking reader rather than a pleasure loving one and the training helped me to appreciate books at another level and gave me much more satisfaction and insight than before. It made me more critical too. I realised then that I had slowly become critical of everything, not only books, I felt I had the power and the strength to criticize without doing any internal assessment of myself. Oh! well that is the pride of the youth ! I forgive myself now for it and I forgive a lot of other young people around me
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These days I am re-reading books that I read in my youth and childhood (even the Enid Blytons) Believe me, though I finish them much faster than before, I appreciate them two folds!Thankfully I have a family of book lovers so that when we get transferred from place to place, though there is a lot of stuff thrown away, no one even suggests that the old yellowing best friends are ever given away! I hope they last till my days on earth come to an end and are cherished by others.

I haven’t been able to get certain books that I would love to get ( I dare not mention their names for the fear of being laughed at!) So I tried reading e-books….. But the pleasure of lying on your stomach with your legs bent at the knees and up, with a packet of chips or a plate of sandwich is not there. The smell of the freshly printed pages or the musty smell of old pages is not there to tantalize the nostrils! It is no fun to move the mouse when you can use your fingers to flip the next page. But life moves on and the new generation may never know the real pleasure of a paper back but they would have created their new pleasures and who knows their degree of pleasure may be more than ours!

But those who read this please take the time to give me your experiences of reading as feedback so that I believe that I am Normal and not experiencing the feelings of a loner that I was.