From & To Sathish #6 - Page 34

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAsRiTmbIRs

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IhU_rm5pE14

https://youtu.be/Vy_RPd0rblI?si=C9v4V8DQ4mPHwnuq

https://youtube.com/shorts/1kEpdKKURFc?si=AWuI1FrmTrShoHTw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YLy_v0gDHw

Many years ago, my mind responding to the saying, " Necessity is the mother of Invention " forced me to take up meditation. I failed miserably and again and again and then I turned my back on it. Some of my friends who were majorly into spirituality ( Read Religion loudly ) had forced me into it and seeing me fail chided me and said that I was a lost cause.

I felt bad and my ego felt bruised and battered. This was about the time that Baasha was released and my friends requested me to do my thing.

Thing?. Yup. The thing I am supposed to do and seemingly do and successfully do when it comes to standing in lines. Queues. I started this standing-in-queue thing from a very early age after my arrival in Chennai.

I have stood in lines at Ration shops, Electric bill payment counters, telephone bill counters, water and train ticket counters. I have stood, walked, crawled behind my aunt lugging huge bags full of vegetables and I still do that to this day.

A few years ago, an actor asked me, ' Sir, there is this thing you do, a mannerism that you have just before a scene and it kind of gets intense as the scene progresses. You become still and you become quiet.'

Shrugging my shoulders, ' Oh! I was not aware of that. But then I am a bit weird in real life, so that should explain my odd mannerisms'.

He shook his head, ' No sir. It doesn't feel odd or weird although sometimes, you give the feeling that you are in some kind of trance or dreamy state of mind.'

I smiled, quickly turned away, and remembered Raji, who is no more and what he had told me during one of our girivalams around our favourite Mr. Annamaalaiyar temple.

' Satishu, don't worry too much about meditation and stuff like that. Some do it with their eyes closed and others with their eyes open. Some do it without even being aware of it.

He smiled and said, ' Earlier today, while I was meditating, you spent that same time feeding all the dogs and crows and playing with them. You were not bothered about people who walked by thinking that you must be a bit off in the head. That itself is focus and a form of mediation.'

“Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness.”

― Anonymous, The Upanishads

https://youtu.be/gi3xarX_F-o?si=PinClt0AH4MsgwMC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgT6q0YvWzg

Avan, Aval Adhu 517

I tried to be perfect for everyone and in the process I became imperfect. I tried my best to please, appease and bring peace to everyone and everything around me and lost myself. I tried to make time for everyone else and in time I found that my time was wasted and of no consequence to others and in the process I became inconsequential to others.

I stepped away and looked at myself and my imperfections and found them perfectly suitable for my own composition and my own emotional disposition and in the process I became perfect for myself. Everyday, I wake up and take joy in my imperfections and see that it is perfect for this imperfect world.

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.”

― Leonard Cohen

You open the windows of your room and let light and air in. You open the doors of your house and let people in. You open your heart and soul and let love and spirits in.

Ravi turned and seeing Madhu run towards him, let go of the handle of the suitcase and stood with his arms wide open. She ran into him and into them and he closed his arms around her and both stood as one.

Unable to contain her pain, joy and exaltation, she began to cry and wail into his chest and he unable to see her cry, cried with her and together they washed themselves clean of their pain and of the past.

' Forgive me, Madhu. Please forgive this stupid man of yours for causing so much pain'.

Madhu slowly stepped away from him and Ravi looked at her with surprise and watched confusedly as she walked away from him. Then a few moments later, just when he thought he would go in search of her, Madhu returned to him.

Ravi stared at her as she walked towards him holding aloft a tray in her hands that held a lamp. Then as she came closer, he realised it was not a lamp, but a burning piece of camphor that appeared like a white iceberg floating in the cold waters of the arctic and Antarctic seas and oceans. But the seas in the tray that held the blazing camphor was red in colour and with a smile, he stood still watching her do an Aarti around his face.

He bent his head hearing her eyes asking him to do so, and felt her fingers touch his forehead and heard her lips chant "Om Kreem Kalikaye Namah" and when she was done, he smiled and dipped his finger in the Aarti tray and left a streak of red on her forehead. With the sacred flame as their witness, they both stood looking at each other.

Then, Madhu saw Ravi's eyes change as he remembered something and she saw his eyes express something complicated and stood watching as he removed something from his pant pocket.

In the fast-fading light of the dying camphor, Madhu saw Ravi open the soft cloth and take something out of it, and her eyes went big as she recognized the sacred Kali pendant that he dangled before her.

' How? How did you know where to look for it? You were not there when I gifted it to Meenakshi by dropping it on her as they buried her ' and then looked at him and said, ' Spartan was there.'

Ravi smiled and shook his head and said, ' You are wrong for there was another there and it was that person who gave it to me and said, that it belonged to you as you are the rightful owner.'

Madhurima shook her head in confusion, ' I don't get it, Jaanu. If it was not Spartan then who was the person.................' and stopped and looked at him with an expression that was a mix of both fear and repulsion and she growled angrily, ' I watched Meenakshi being buried with this Sacred Pendant. I saw it with my own eyes. That means somebody dug this out of the grave. Who could do something like that and why, Jaanu?

' Madhu, nobody dug this out and nobody desecrated her Grave.

She stared at the Kali pendant and said, ' This is not a copy and I am sure it is the same as the one that I gave Meenakshi as a Parting gift. So, how did it come into your hands?'

' She gave it to me ', Ravi told her and hearing him, Madhu asked tentatively, ' Who is she? '

' Meena. Meenakshi gave it to me along with her best wishes and blessings.

Stepping forward, he slowly placed the sacred Kali Pendant around her beautiful neck and after tying three knots, bent his face and kissed her mouth and kissed her soul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDTph7mer3I