In Search of Reality

The last shipment had taken along my peace of mind also with it. I could see it getting offloaded from my mind into those small cartons on the truck. After ramping up the production by about fifteen percent and working all week long including Sunday, the client had given a last minute call for ten additional pieces. Had it not been for the war of words with the floor manager and an exchange of uneasy pleasantries with the transporter, the shipment would have got stuck and the client would have come unstuck! What the……!!!

“Calm down young man, calm down……its not worth it”, I could hear myself. It had just been two months since I was shifted to the new factory in Pondycherry from the saturated Thane factory and already I had had my second tiff. A booming economy is just that, I guess……booming like hell!! Boom! Boom! Boom! Peace has no room! I should turn to whom?? Boom!!

My mind was just going hammer and tongs…..no one to turn to…..not a single soul, just the sea…..the endless sea, which to me with those splashing waves signified nothing else but just a looooooooong, endless, perennial strife..........and that’s when I found my steps leading me somewhere…..I was wondering where I was going and then I stopped…..just right in the middle of the road. I had led myself unconsciously to the famed ashram which everyone had told me about but to which I never had had a chance to visit. And I felt my soul calling out…..to step into that scanty rush at the entrance door and find my way to the bliss that awaited me inside………

The idea of God had always left me spiritually drained, morally refrained and intellectually pained…….it was a puzzle, which people told me was its own solution….puzzling as the puzzling thought of the puzzling puzzle was, today somehow I felt was the day I was going to find the key to the eternal enigma….of the soul, the being, the living and the surviving, the universe, the world, and everything that is in it! Moksha – as they call it!

And as I entered, I found the very planned logistics of my factory at work there, only without the constant noise drill……there was absolute silence, not even a sound, except for the chirping of the birds returning back to their nests. And there was a light bulb, which as I found out was meant to signal the time when people who were meditating can get up and leave if they so desired – so that there is no chaos and decorum is maintained. So the light bulb glowed and some people promptly got up and left and I along with others fell in to replace them. Amazed as I was by the efficient planning, I sat down with my eyes closed and mind open in divine expectations.

Moksha would be somewhere around, I thought. And I sat there….expecting freedom from the rat race….bliss in the divine embrace….

This life I had heard is just an illusion, a maya……just like The Matrix…you crack the matrix and you know the real world…..So I thought I shouldn’t be worrying too much about the shipment because after all it was only maya…..an illusion….but a bloody horrible illusion it sure was!! Goddamn it!! And what if the entire world is an illusion but only that burly fat floor manager was for real…….Shut up!!! stupid mind……the thoughts are meant to wander….let them wander……but you remain focused to your higher self!!...Don’t get controlled by your thoughts…….relax…breathe in, breathe out, deep breathe in and then a deep breathe out……iiiiiiiin…..ouuuuuuut…..iiiiiiiiiiin……ouuuuuuut…..cough!! cough!! cough!!......

……….come on!! Don’t force moksha upon you…….it will come…..just hang on in silence…..think about your inner self….forget the outer world….. “No the bulb is not yet glowing”……there was lots of time!!.......Hey where did that lady in pink saree sitting beside me go!!....Hell!! The bulb had already glowed, and the lady had been replaced by……by……gosh!! Isn’t she beautiful!!

She was wearing a red top and a blue denim jeans……with the dangling nose ring adding to her mesmerizing self. The enchanting fragrance, the lovely lips offering a muted prayer, the image was enough to behold me…….She is the one who deserves to be real…..along with myself…and not that burly fat manager!!.....Bloody hell…tomorrow I’ll take his case….but well today I’d allow my immediate reality to captivate me…….she opened her eyes with a timed perfection matching the bulb’s glow…..she bowed down, got up……I sprang up......she walked to the gate….I hurried behind her……I know tomorrow duty would call, but today well…well today…beauty calls….and moksha….oh, it can of course wait for another day!!