Thursday, November 30, 2006

The search is on!!!


I don't really know what made me compose the following poem ("FIR BHI MERA DUKH SABSE BADA HAI", the post just below this one) but I am very sure of one thing and that is the very poem has given me a new direction in life. It was a usual train journey which I used to hate the most but from now on I am going to welcome these journeys as it was this train journey from Bangalore to Kharagpur which inspired me to see life from a different perspective.
It would be somewhere around Vishakhapattanam, where I saw this boy. He would have been some eleven years of age. The very attire he was clad with was reflecting his status of abject poverty. I was noticing the movements of the kid. He was carrying a kettle in his right hand and some plastic cups in his left one. Bare-footed he, was running across each window of the compartment to maximize his sales before he could hear the whistle of the engine. His very eagerness to find customers for his tea is worth mentioning. Seeing the magnitude of effort put in by an eleven year old to earn his livelihood I was encouraged from my inner self to buy a cup of tea from that kid. I was about to call him when I heard the train whistling and the very next moment I could see the compartment leaving the platform. I was cursing myself for not calling him before. As the train gained pace I could see the face of the kid fading away but it was only later when I realized that I won't be able to wipe out that face from my memories ever. After that I turned my face to pay attention to the activities going inside the compartment. The very click which made me take out my travel diary(I always keep a note pad while traveling to capture these kinda events then and there) and start writing was the flashing of these two lines "dekhta hoon us nanhe baalak ko, haathon mein pustak ki jageh chaaye ki ketli". Somebody may ask why "pustak" (book) and nothing else like "khilauna" (a toy). But I have got a reason for this as well. When I turned my face to look inside the compartment I found another kid but this time the scene was altogether different. I saw a thirteen year old kid holding a book of SUDOKU puzzles. The continuous pampering of the child by his mother was making me perplexed. I was finding it very difficult to understand the contrast existing in life. On one hand I was seeing a deprived child on the other a child privileged with extra affection of his parents. I was wondering ,why this disparity when everybody is HIS child? Why this imbalance? Is this some kind of a game played by HIM? Why is this going on? Is there any end to all this drama? I know I cant leave my family and society in search of answers to this queries as Buddha did but ofcourse I need the answers to these queries. Is it very difficult or rather impossible to get the answers to these queries while being a very much part of this world???
I searched a lot and am still searching to get those queries answered but I know I am not that fortunate to get relieved so easily. So, to satisfy my emotions
(or in a way to deceive them) I decided to complete the poem .