Today is HOLI, the 20^th of March 2011. Tomorrow is my birthday. Tomorrow I will touch the 33^rd year of my life. Today when the world was splashing in colors and celebrating life’s joys, I spent half of the day in a serene atmosphere of a remote village in a small hut. I was at Samarthaguda, a place that may not have its existence on the maps.

I rested there for some time with my eyes closed and analyzed the course of my life. My thoughts were unhindered and sprouted naturally. There was no noise of the vehicles. No distractions of a modern life. No electricity and no electronic devices that rule the minds of the elites. It was a place where I was with me. I spoke to myself and heard my own voice responding to each emerging wave of thoughts in the mental pool. I was thinking and re-thinking about my life’s course. I attempted to draw a comparison between my potencies and my achievements.  The more I thought, the more frustrated I became. I became poignant. I very much saw sands of time slipping out of my hands & my high ideals crumbling down like a house made up of cards. For a while I felt suffocated. I came out of the little hut.

In a mood of melancholy I came out to connect myself with Nature around. Outside, the world had something very special for me. The radiant sun and the lines of shady trees produced a beautiful feast to the eyes. No human form was visible and I stood alone with those silent enormous trees. From a distance I saw a tender-aged boy. He was half naked because his shirt was wrinkled and tattered. But he was rolling a worn out tyre replete with perfect happiness. His happy movements elated me from inside. I subtly experienced some of his happiness in some corner of my heart.  Without his knowledge, I went on looking at him. By the time I took my eyes off him, the meaning of my life had changed.  

I understood that Life is not what happens to us. It is rather how we perceive it. The tyre was worn out. The boy was half naked. The surface was rough but life still had the ingredients of enjoyment.

The nearby rocks corroborated this truth with green moss shinning on them.

In the preceding years my life has stagnated. I have remained in the same place and in the same situations. Many contemporaries of mine went ahead of me or changed their courses of lives but I remained as I was like an old banyan tree. Still in the depths of despair I have sufficient reasons to smile and sing. The 32^nd year of my life gave me a son and made me a father. Last year my sister was given in marriage to an engineer. So I can say, it may be a moonless night but innumerable stars are twinkling. The night may be too dark but hope is twinkling.