Stilled

I have been reading Eat, Pray, Love. This is one of those remarkable coincidences, where a book lands in your lap, exactly when you need it. In fact, the past couple of weeks have been a bundle of coincidences- myriad paths- taking me exactly where I wanted to go, but had no idea that the place existed - I landed on this amazing blog, which I keep going back to read, time and again, and I have started to reconnect, with a lot of old friends, and God. (Kind of Déjà vu, still)

Today, I was in, kind of, the lowest of the low. And I decided to go to the temple. We frequent a lot of temples, but there is almost always, just one or two, where you really feel at home, at ease. The sort of places where you think you can have a nice (seemingly one-way) conversation, and feel like you are being listened to. I went to one of those, feeling very numb all over.

As I stood there, I felt the presence of this man behind me. Now this guy is all over my neighbourhood. Sometimes he is in rags, other times he is clean clothed. Disheveled at times, at other times, somebody takes pity on him and gives him a haircut. He just landed on the street parallel to where I stay, nobody really took pains to know where he came from, but he bothers nobody, so we just let him be. The local, mad man, who mothers point at and scare the hell out of children.

I was pouring my heart out, standing right there. If God’s gender was masculine, I am sure he would have gone, ‘okay, okay child, I’ll take care, shush, just, just quiet, go home!’ when I was only 1 minute into my ranting. But, yeah this post is not about God’s gender. And God was listening, as I went on and on and on about ‘oh why, why, why, why ME?!!’ A placeAnd as I went ranting, I heard the mad man plunge into a cacophony of- sounds. He was not speaking, he was- just going on and on in some alien tongue, and for some reason it was getting on my nerves.

So I wrapped up my monologue (within 7 minutes), and started on my pradakshina. Just as I finished the stipulated 3 rounds, there was instantaneous silence. What made the mad man stop his gibberish, I know not. I shouldn’t call it gibberish too. But when that silence descended on me, it was like an answer, a promise.

And I felt the calm still the palpitation that my heart was experiencing for the past few weeks. And then I knew, this, I would cross :)