[Text and Photos by D.B.]
Contd. from Eat Pray Love! (
PRAY
Well, my date with the tasteful delights got over with Mumbai trip. By the end of August, I was back in Delhi preparing to leave for
college. It’s been long five years and hundreds of trips from home to college
and back to home. But it’s tough to ‘leave’ something, someone behind every
time. Just before boarding, I made a ‘decision’ that made it tougher! Decision
to leave things which were part of my life… Were my life!
“The only thing more impossible than
staying… Was leaving! I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I wanted to slip quietly out
the back door and not stop running until I reached Greenland. Instead I made a
decision.
To pray.”
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| Way to 'heaven' |
The feel of getting ‘in - solitude’ groped me in, again. It
was nurtured by the thoughts of reaching a place which in itself is a ‘kingdom
of solitude’, my college campus. Moreover, as I stepped in to the Fifth year of
studies (the senior most batch of the university), the absence of the beloved
seniors put me into a fix. During whole my journey, I was consumed by the
thoughts and memories of times spent. It all sounds weird but the degree of
longing was very strong, this time. The only support that I could think of
was the ‘nature’ or to match with the movie plot, the ‘God’. One can witness
the best monsoon in my college campus, I have done it before and I was banking
on it as my last resort. And I was NOT turned down. Welcomed by heavy rain,
city roads draining out continuous streams of water, flooded tributaries that
come in way from Jammu to Katra, and thunders, I knew I had it!
 |
| Clouds in Campus |
“Every city has a word for it” and the word for my campus is ‘Nature’!
No one needs to be a religious person or a saint to praise the wonders nature
creates. Likewise, I stepped in and was calmed
by the overwhelming feel of the place. It was as if I turned down the world and
‘left’ everything back in that chaotic city culture, just to find peace, to
find God, to Pray! Mentioning ‘to pray’ continually doesn’t actually mean ‘to
pray’, it doesn’t mean that I’ve became a saint or sadhu sitting in Himalayas, disconnected with the world, looking
for eternal peace. Well, I am in Himalayas, disconnected with the world, but
not a sadhu yet!
 |
| Pearls |
I pray, whenever I sense a drop of rain on hands while moving
towards college. Those ten minutes of walk turns out as ‘moments’ of life, acknowledging
nature’s geniuses at every step. I pray, when I am greeted by the bird with
bright, blue feathers every day. I pray, when I see the rain drops struggling
to hold themselves on the leaves. I pray, when I am distracted on my way by
restless butterflies. I pray, when the lightning strikes hard. I pray, when the
cloud’s thunder is heard non-stop for hours. I pray, when I could ‘see’ rain
reaching me. I pray, when I ‘walk’ with the clouds. I pray, when I see a
rainbow so fine that you could count all seven colors. The rain, here, is
powering unlike Mumbai’s. I call the Mumbai rain ‘the silent one’ whereas what
we have here in college is the ‘storm’, always. It reminds me of the Bajaj
Avenger advertisement where the guy riding the bike says, “Why listen to the
music of humans, when you can listen to the music of heavens! Feel like God!”
The rain here gets on to your nerves. It falls endlessly, with the same flow,
along with the thunders and lightning. In short, it is a photographer’s
paradise and leaves a smile on face. You feel contented.
 |
| Sounds of Nature |
Sitting on river side is another privilege we have here. A
tributary, actually, that flows like a river in monsoon. The thrust can be felt
by just listening to the sound of it. With each passing turn and level, the
sound changes and thus it starts a conversation of its own kind. Sitting on the
rocks, during sunset and being a ’part’ of it, is incomparable to the materialistic
pleasures.
“It’s like telling yourself, you deserve a break today! In Italian they call it ‘Dolce far niente’
– the sweetness of doing nothing!”
 |
| Flowing with 'it' |
Yes. All this might
sound like a fairy tale but it still happens, here. In the movie, the
protagonist tries to find peace with the help of meditation. Here, living every
moment seems to be a meditation in itself. Moreover, being ‘unsocial’ adds to
the credits. It has been hard, sometimes, to come out of things that matters a
lot, to forget and to move on in life. But, here I am! Not many are happy with
the way am dealing with my life at the moment, but then, I am not living it for
them. I needed to get over with things and this place provided me with the
right push, as it always does. A juvenile decision of having lesser
communication with people ended up, me, having conversations with the ‘nature’.
I call it Pray!
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| View from My room |
to be contd...
While writing this
part, 2nd of the 3 parts, I tried my best to bring out visions of the
natural marvels that I witness daily. Though supported by continuous downpour,
I still had a feeling that I missed something while putting all this in words,
thus am sharing the ‘captures’ which
defines the mighty nature! The quotes written above are from the movie, not
mine.
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