Mostly, enlightenment has come from capsule-like tidbits of words strewn by simple folk that you read over a weekend in Bangalore.
Knowingly and unknowingly, regret has accumulated like lint in pant pockets. I’ve wanted to travel to faraway lands, wanted to finally find love, wanted to find out the end of this unstructured exploration of life itself, wanted to find peace with parents … so on and so forth. At the end of the day, with such wants, your mind always ends up being in a deep, continuous turmoil, murking up “what ifs” in an infinite loop.
And then comes along someone like Ruskin Bond with his book on simple living which, magically, is not a self-help book but a rather beautiful, often poetic and mostly pagan work of words. Words that slow down time and expand space so immensely that there’s this inexplicable feeling that everything is alright.
I’ve always found happiness at S’s place. It is everything I’ve imagined a small family to be: close, happy, humble and simple. Some of the best things in life have happened to me in his company.
Perhaps, then, it’s no wonder that he gave me the book to read and so the peace to relish.
This here now is a beautiful time.
And that is all that one needs.