Without waiting for anyone else, I tried to listen to that voice again.
I learned the custom from my engineering classmates that it is important to have a suitable ambience for proper study. They called it “mahaul Banana” in Hindi. I went and bought an expensive yoga mat and some serene looking branded clothes on a Saturday. I then prepared my drawing room for an ambience suitable for meditation on a Sunday morning around 10. I sat on the mat cross legged in padmasana and closed my eyes.
My toddler son came and climbed on my shoulders and pulled my hair. I shouted and asked my wife to take him away to the kitchen. My shout already increased my blood pressure. After making myself calm again through alternate breathing, I closed my eyes. Pressure in the cooker increased to its fullest and the cooker's whistle did not increase my blood pressure but the hunger. I observed uninvited thoughts of daal and rice along with a few spoons of ghee on it. An apsara dressed in white traditional dress descended from the sky with the help of a parachute. She landed directly on our balcony. She came out of the parachute and adjusted her hair garland made of the white jasmine. She then walked passed through the drawing room with soft steps so as not to disturb me. She saw my wife busy with mobile and enchanted her with a magic stick. My wife could not see anything other than soap opera in mobile. She then glued my son to his toy cars. He could not notice anything else other than his toy cars.
She then walked to the kitchen and plated the food. She kept rice on a porcelain plate and daal in a bowl. She then garnished it with finely cut ‘dhaniya’ leaves. She cut a salad of carrot, radish and cucumber. She decorated the plate with salad. She was finding it hard to open the slippery lid of the ghee's jar. She wiped the lid with kitchen cloth, opened it and then put two spoonfuls of ghee in the daal. She brought the plate to the dining table and waited for me to open my eyes. Smell of ghee and coriander leaves were mesmerising me and I felt the silence again. I was smiling with water in my mouth.
Suddenly a shrill high-pitched voice hit my ears ”They got me married to a man out of his mind, he is smiling in meditation as well”. I opened my eyes to see my wife turning to my son and screaming. He was trying to break open his toy car to see all the inside components.
We all ate on steel plates without any bowl. Dal was directly poured into the rice. Dhaniya leaves were mixed in dal and salad was separately cut in another plate. As advised by our dietician and several doctors, ghee was voluntarily avoided to manage weight.
Glimpse of silence through food gave me hope and I thought of trying again next Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment