Thursday, February 28, 2013

TEMPLE RUN


An addictive app this! A game in which you the player, are represented by the character in the game, who runs, (rather flees), after stealing an idol from a temple. You control the run of the character. Along the way are many obstacles, maneuvers, and prizes but no end. Yes you run endlessly! Am sure most of you have tried your hand at it and will agree on the addiction aspect. Earlier as I attempted to play, the aim was to just run long enough. Even to run for 500 meters was a task. The dexterity of jumping, ducking and turning forget collecting the gold coins along the way, seemed impossible. Just surviving long enough was the deal. The nuggets that you collected on the way were therefore only those that allowed you to survive longer, like the “fast track.” There was no second chance, if you die you die was the law,  in the first version. At times you were so spellbound with the surroundings (the visual effects) that you forgot to run and died!
           Slowly came the dexterity, you could jump, duck, turn, as was required to survive and you did. You had also acquired the art of appropriateness, "jump or duck as required" but keep running. Eventually the aim was to out run your own limits. To bask in that glory of satisfaction. Some also shared their miles and scores on the social media.. Then came the desire to out run not just your own limits, but someone else’s limits too! The war had begun. It was not a war only of the miles, but of gold coins too. You also collected coins on the way because by now you had learnt to survive. With the gold coins you could buy many luxuries (coin magnets) which would further give you gold coins by multiplication. You could also buy many luxuries from the store with the coins, like the look of the character, multiplier etc. You could also buy ‘virtual’ gold with ‘real’ money from the store (thanks to the credit cards and pay pals!)
           Somewhere in between came the second version which was much the same only the visuals were more enchanting. You had probably run yonder and beyond and explored newer lands. The obstacles too were varied and many which increased your chances of succumbing. Hey but you also could now revive your life with gems that you picked on your way. So life now gave you a second chance,……only,…..if you had the gems! At times three or four chances if you had gems in multiples. You also forgot to look at the visuals which had enchanted you earlier!
     So now you run, not just for gold but also for the gems! The nuggets that you now seek/seize too are different than what you started with. They are strategically placed too, besides a cliff, or just before the obstacle.Get tempted jump and succumb. But no harm, don’t you have gems that can revive you?? So run, take as many chances and run.  
        Ha ha ha they have got you by now. Gems, are the cause, and the effect both. By now the miles don’t matter. Outshining your limits doesn’t matter. What matters is the score that you can broadcast, gems and coins that you have collected. Run, die, revive, run, reborn and run . You run, run and run for what,…… rather from what, is obscure by now but you keep running. Ces’t la vie …..if only you had not stolen that apple (oops idol) from the temple! Oh forget, just take the pleasure in running so long as you are alive, because still for some there are ‘miles to go before you sleep”!       

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

RAJAS


If I had to describe her life in just one word, it would be “Rajas”. Did she then lead her life in the luxury of worldly possessions?…… to a large extent no. Did she (seek) pleasure in seeking the possessions that seem to make us happy?.....no. Did she denounce as they say to be happy?....not even that! This is like describing her “neti-neti’!! Why do people want to name her, confer upon her some kind of a title hood then? That is the way she touched their lives by her special existence! Just by being, no preaching, no advice even if asked for, not even self  experiences (read gloating), never! Only one sentence oft repeated “leave it to HIM (Shri Maharaj),and he will take care of it”. Only others could not surrender as she could. Did not realize the courage in it, confusing it with timidity, flight, laying down the weapons and all that stubborn jargon!
             Did she then just breeze through life?….again net-neti. Coming from an orthodox and religious family she was educated in an English medium school some eighty or odd years back. She was a doctor’s wife who left her with two toddlers, to serve in the army during the world war! Death brushed past her husband thousand times a day in the form of bullets and grenades. Then was probably her first lesson from the chapter ‘surrender’. Complete faith (‘nishtha’ if you may) in her father Shri Tatyasaheb’s words and of course Shri Maharaj’s when she was asked to remove this word “worry” from her life and she did just that! To help her do that she was asked to visit Maruti temple each day and write ‘Shree Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram’ at least 21 times each day. This gave her strength then, she said, and kept her on her feet walking and hands helping (even after amputed right thumb) till her age of 92. Here came the test, what if she was traveling which took days in trains those days…..surrender! Some co-passanger would tell her casually that there is a temple just outside the station where the train would be stopping! Write she could wherever she was, but with amputed thumb at 90 how will she? Deftly came the pen in left hand the very day, and here she was getting ambidextrous at 90!! Post war with a lucrative option of starting practice in Mumbai, her husband chose to settle in the then remote Kolhapur instead. When modern medicine doctors in Mumbai were handful and had roaring practice, kolhapur presented tough challenges for a fat fee of farm grown vegetables! Managing now a family of six, ( not to mention the ever steaming guests who came for treatment of chronic complaints and were never ‘discharged’ from their home until all well) must have been a tight rope walk, but she never mentioned. “People half as educated are earning much more, are staying in their own houses does it not bother you”??  Questions like these seemed to trouble others and never them both. After all was  everything not as per “His” wish?! She was an active member of the ladies club and was in the fore front in organizing various programs. She also taught swimming to the school going children in the vacations. All this with the daily chores of house keeping, observing all festivals and fasts scrupulously.
        That she always saw the brighter side, one could perceive from her approach to life.  She lost her sixty year old daughter to the big C which she herself had survived for last twenty five years,(with homoeopathy), forget complain, she didn’t even whine for a second. Something that would have happened when her daughter’s children were small, had happened when everything was settled, so why regret? Probably this is the reason that she took the light and brightness with her wherever she went. She was in demand and ever ready too to help, be it doing night duties in the hospitals, offering firm support, company anywhere and everywhere. Did she not believe in “kamave te samave” (help and be included) after all? She accompanied her daughter- in-law to Bangalore while she pursued her post graduation to look after the house and the grand children for six months, leaving her home and husband behind. Grand children still remember the days at Bangalore apart like night and day, before and after her arrival!! On the platform itself as they went to receive her they felt tall and strong shouldered!
    She was always there doing ‘japa’ when grand children needed someone by their side as they sat studying at night. As an octogenarian she offered company to her grand child as she stayed alone in a flat in a different town for her post graduation. It seems adjusting or is it adapting that came easily to her. As she visited her grand daughter abroad in her nineties, first thing she mentioned to her as she reached there, now that she was on holiday and so were her weekly fastings and dietary inhibitions of the chaturmaas and ‘maharaj’s punyatithi utsav. Even imagining someone to say, that, who had observed it all her life, makes one feel breaking with rigidity. But as ‘maharaj’ would pamper her as she always said, the marwari cook there refused to cook anything in onions and garlic so long as she stayed there! She would be up and ready to visit different places, and if you felt lazy, one look at her and you would be jumping with enthusiasm.
  Yes enthusiastic is also what she was. Otherwise traveling across the length and breadth of the nation and abroad, even after a number of serious illnesses and surgeries is unthinkable. She would prefer accompanying you out, any which mode you took, than sit at home. Apart from speaking metaphorically, life truly was journey for her. Hence truly ‘rajas’- a way of life that takes one from ‘tamo’ to ‘satva’! She believed in “chalavisi haati dharoniya” (you lead me through). Maharaj in turn had to stand up to her belief and never let go off her hand. He fulfilled all her wishes however small, right from respecting her wish as to where to breathe her last, to meeting all her people whom she loved, just a day before, to have all her children by her side. In days when you hardly find people dying from old age, she left with an ease with which a lamp should burn out, when she had survived many illnesses that could have easily taken her away.
     She was so much a part of our life that we almost took it for granted that she would always be there. She indeed is here with us in our memories and so this time omnipresent!