Journeys across chequerboards









Travels are like journeys across chequerboards. Movements across vast expanses of black and white, with some shades of grey in between.

Mangalore. Hyderabad. Kolkata. Delhi.Pune. Chennai. The names resonate across the  alleys of time, and bring with them, memories. Of rain-swept Mangalore beaches. Of Hussain Sagar Lake at Hyderabad, lights glimmering in the evenings. Colonial mansions and churches in old Kolkata. Crumbling ruins and magnificient modern buildings of Delhi. Rain-swept Pune and its hilly surroundings. The ECR ( East Coast Road) and Kovalam Beach on the outskirts of Chennai. The co-travellers changed, but the travel remained constant.

And finally, it ends back at Kolkata, from where my journey in and out of the city began in 1995, when I moved out to Medical College at Mangalore. It is great to see that the city has changed for the better, and some of the stresses and strains of life that I had been accustomed to, as a kid, have been mitigated.

Has there been a gain from this movement back and forth? Sure, it’s been stressful adjusting all the time, initially for me and then for my family. I have tried my hand at Kannada, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil. My host at a hospital in Mumbai where I recently went for a hospital assessment, requested me not to kill the Marathi language, when I ventured forth with my feeble knowledge. Agreed, I am not a great learner of languages, and I have finally laid my gun down, settling for Hindi, English and Bengali, in my very own City of Joy. But, it has been good to see many different cultures and meet many different people from all over the country, many of whom I can call my friends. Above all, it has given me a good idea of what cosmopolitan India is all about.

So , while I settle into the City of Joy and delve back into  Egg Rolls, enjoy the Saraswati Puja after ages , take in the joys of the city I had skipped for so long, I can still relax in the satisfaction that though stressful and at time chaotic, my journey across the nation has not been in vain. And while my position as a hospital assessor takes me across the different geographies of this nation, I do hope that the learning was worth the pain, of adjusting and readjusting, settling and resettling.

Long live the idea of India united.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lord Shiva- the first bipolar

Image
  Bipolar. A person who is maniac and depressive alternately. Happy at one time, sad at another. The APA ( American Psychiatric Association) of USA, the imposing grand daddy of the global " mental healthcare system “ ,who decide arbitrarily via their network of psychiatrists worldwide as to what constitutes a mental disorder and what does not ( with gentle and not so gentle prodding from Pharma companies) ,says that people with bipolar disorder , " have extreme and emotional mental states that occur at distinct times, called mood episodes." And going by standard psychiatric literature, the occurrence of bipolar disorder is around 3% in the community (again, based on arbitrary and questionable criteria decided by psychiatrists ). Is that the case, really ? To critically examine this issue, let's look at the "case" of Lord Shiva, whom many of us worship daily, in all his glory.Lord Shiva is silent,medit
Read more

The Spirit-what is it actually

Image
x The spirit does not die. Simple statement of Hindu philosophy, the core of the Advaita tradition. As   said in the Bhagavad Gita, Samkhya Yoga “ Na hanyam, na hanyate ( the spirit does not kill or let kill).”Even while you kill your enemies, your kill their body (and their mind), but never the spirit or soul ( Atman). Bhagwan Maharishi Ramana defines this spirit   as the “ I”,   that which is unique to us all, thus has to be perceived by us uniquely. He defines “ I” as the sole phenomenon that drives the world, the Shiva tattva that is present inside us all , and I wholeheartedly agree with him. The Bhagwan would know- it was this “I “phenomenon which helped him to battle cancer undaunted till his death in 1950 . It was the same spirit which allowed my late father to battle lung cancer undaunted till his end . It is the same spirit that allows all of us to face life’s multiple problems everyday. Without “I”, there can be no “ We
Read more

Sufism- the call of divine humanity

Image
Sufism. The way of  divine humanity. The philosophy of love and syncretism. What is it all about, actually ? In a world of hatred and strife, where the  ISIS gains headlines everyday for the wrong reasons, it might be useful to recall the philosophy of the Sufi. The origins of Sufism are somewhat obscure, but broadly one of its earliest proponents was the   11th Century AD Persian (current day Iran)  philosopher and saint Ghazali , also known among his followers as " Sultan ul  Uluma", or king of scholars. The mantle passed on to his disciple Bahauddin , who was ostracized for the opposition of his  faith to traditional Islam. The inheritor of this tradition was, finally,  Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi . A prominent scholar ,  Rumi was  a sufferer of internecine strife , having been displaced from his hometown of Balkh to Konya,along with his father , who was ostracized for his opposition to hardline, scholarly Islam . He faced hardship created
Read more