The Little red Wagon

He was born to wealthy parents who hoped for a distinguished career for their son. Perhaps that’s why his dad was so disturbed by the boy’s interest at the age of 13 in dangerous explosives. What would he be when he grew up? A cracker seller?

The teenager protested that his firecrackers and skyrockets were marvelous sources of energy that could be tapped constructively.

One day the boy obtained six skyrockets from a friend and tried to work out how to put them to use. Idly, he looked out over the front lawn at a little red wagon. Then it occurred to him. If just one of these rockets could lift itself high into the sky, may be several of them could turn that toy wagon into a projectile.

Quickly he tied two rockets to each side of his wagon. His heart pounding in anticipation, he lit the fuses and jumped clear. Then, with a blast, the rockets ignited and blasted the wagon down the street at an amazing speed.

Elated, the boy dashed down the street after it. The rockets finally burned out, a few hundred meters away. Neighbours ran from their homes and saw a breathless, exuberant boy, dancing about the charred chassis of a childhood toy. Then the police arrived.

After his father arrived to take him home, the child was severely reprimanded. But he never got over the excitement, and eventually he grew to distinguish himself as few others have in the field of rocket technology.

The boy whose toys ceased to be toys went on to achieve his doctorate at 22. So respected was he that his country—Germany—called on him to head its rocket research.

At 24 he was making rockets for Hitler----the V-2s that lashed London. Then when the Allies were closing in and surrender was imminent, he came to work for USA. Without him, America might never have gained the lead in space. Without him, there might have been no Saturn V that carried men to moon.

And all because a little boy in German suburb thought he could make his wagon fly. In a way, it reached the stars.

As you may know by now, his name was Wernher von Braun.

On a rainy day

It is called rain, but there are so many types of rain. Damned rain, which never ends, day after day, week after week, flooding rivers and towns. Blessed rain, after a hot spell, refreshing the air, helping us get back our breath; streams acquire fresh energy, toads rejoice in their ponds, roots spread out in the earth. Icy water rains; summer rains which turn to hail; lukewarm showers on the tropics, where the sky clouds over for half an hour everyday, and then comes clear again. Flashing rain in equatorial typhoons.

We all know what rain is, but exactly what is it? According to the dictionary, it is “condensed moisture of atmosphere falling visibly in separate drops.” This scientific approach makes us smile. These natural sciences would deprive us of our sense of wonder, but there is wonder in all things, and those who do not see it are deaf, dumb and blind. Wonder is not presumptuous, but humble. Actually, rain is different according to the place and creature. Ants see a drop of rain as an enormous elastic ball; rain inspires earthworms to come up; it does’nt wet fish, and produces a mirage in the desert.

Lovers love the rain. They huddle, just the two of them, under one umbrella, detached from everyone else, alone and happy in their tiny space of a world. The truly terrible rain is that of the soul, subtle, insistent, endless within us. Beware of it, it represents a temptation, cancelling the wonders of the universe and the divine presence.

What do I feel?

Yeh daulat bhee le lo, yeh shohrat bhee le lo,

Bhale chheen lo mujh se meri jawani,

Magar mujh ko lauta do mera woh bachpan,

Woh kagaz ki kashti, woh bearish ka paani.

The Stream of Life

An individual human existence should be like a river---small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, it merges in the sea, and painlessly loses its individual being. The man who, in the old age, can see life this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue.

Secret Joys of Solitude

It is spring time again. I am sitting at my desk in a house which is so silent for me that I could hear a bird alight on the roof. No one comes in clamouring for a tea-party. No one calls me to their house for just “Gup-Shup”. No one interrupts me with an anxious “Haven’t you worked enough for today?”

The silence began seven years ago, on a similar beautiful spring day full of the sound of running water. My wife gave me a quick hug and dashed out of the door, “Hold the fort! I’ll be back soon.” But long before that “soon”, she had fallen, stricken by a heart attack. She never came home again.

My experience feels unique to me, but of course it is not. There are legions of lonely widows and widowers. If we live longer, most of us will have one or more sequences of it during our lives.

We who are solitary are visited from time to time by great gusts of loneliness. We are scarred by those dismal hours in which what we have to do—without anyone helping us—seems just too much. We are overwhelmed by a longing for the paired life of others, for the joy of sharing experiences.

But solitude can also be a way of life full of satisfaction, warmth and even joy. Looking back now after the healing years, I see some of these rewards crystallising in my mind. Where does this warmth come from?

First of all, from memory, which holds together the days of my life. Solitude enhances memory. And so, the, curiously, the memory has strengthened in me the state of the continuity in my life even though the grief has interrupted it. From these enhanced memories comes a new kind of understanding.

If solitude is warmed by memory, it is warmed also by a growing sense of my own identity. After I had been alone for a few weeks, I found myself caught in innumerable dialogues—between the self who wanted to die and the self who wanted to live, the self who believed and the one who denied, the self who loved and the one who repudiated love because it hurts too much.

 Caught in these struggles, I had a chance to come to come to grips with my unexplained feelings and answer some important questions. Why I do this and not that? What am I to do with my life? When we live surrounded by people, some of the passion and insight natural to us leaks away through the sieve of small talks.

 Everyday, too, the solitary person—still fighting the human battle against growing up—must cope with something new. Quickly and painfully, I have discovered what kind of a human being I am, what kind of resources I have. And in solitude, “there is no place that does not see you.” Only honesty is good enough.

And many a time solitude has enlightened me by the discovery of what the Quakers call “that of God in every man.”

We have empty, therefore open, hearts which we did not have when preoccupied with one love. We are freer to meet the strangers, freer to talk to them in depth.

The sorrows of others seem to enter our solitude as though they were framed by the understanding of our own struggles. And so, though we spend less time in the presence of others, what we do spend there has a new and special quality. More often than in the past my friends and I communicate on a deeper level, perhaps because I now talk more freely and honestly to them.

But it is not tranquil. The inward life of those upon whom solitude has been thrust is a threshing floor of emotions. I suspect that solitude never leaves you the one as when it found you. You emerge from it angrier or gentler, sterner or more compassionate, more bitter or more loving, more shut within or more communicative, but never the same.

Like a more important learning experiences, solitude is full of pain.” Nothing good ever happens to me.” I do not think so, if I keep a good book. Looking back at the pages, I can watch myself growing and discover how unpredictable and wonderful life can be.

Turn everything to understanding. This is the special virtue of solitude. The power of life comes from within. I go there, pray meditate reach for those luminous places in myself where, for most part of my life, I had been a stranger.

Given a choice, few people would pickup solitude as a permanent state; nor would I.

I realize, all of us are solitaries even when we are living in a house of people. Everyone is born alone; finds the meaning of his life alone; goes to his death alone. The most important thing we can do is to arn to live to ourselves with courage, humility and beauty.

If not miracle...what else ?

The seed sprouts, the little plant emerges to welcome a new sunrise and slowly it grows into a beautiful  tree, gifting us with flowers, fruits, shade and much more. As much as the plant grows  outside, the roots grow within the soil, spreading far across in the search of water and nutrients.  And there is a system in place by which these are then distributed to various parts of the tree. Photosynthesis happens with the sunlight drawn, and finally one day we can bite our favourite fruit.

       A tiny bud which is all green appears. With every passing hour it opens a little, and out of nowhere we see a totally different colour on the plant. The flower blooms and spreads its fragrance around it makes man wonder from where did the colour and the fragrance come? They were not there in the plant before!

         The temperature drops to minus, everything freezes and so does the river. But what wonder it is that only the top layers of the river freeze and beneath it the plants and the animals remain unharmed by the cold. The top frozen layer of ice protects the water underneath from freezing. What a system!

         Standing on the top of the mountain, we look down at the trees and the farm lands and within an area of a few kilometres we notice hundreds of different shades of green. What a huge pallet nature must be having! No matter, how much we try, we will never be able to get all those colours into our paint boxes.

          In spite of all our scientific explanations and all our researches it still leaves man stunned and in wonder of these miracles by nature. This sense of wonder brings flavour to our life. This sense of wonder makes us understand the might and grace of the existence.

          I wonder too. Every sunrise leaves me in wonder. The play of colours in the sky, the constant chirping of the birds, the dance of leaves in the wind, the entire celebrative and yet meditative experience of the morning feels just wonderful.

          The working of the solar system and the galaxies just thrills me. Everything is just suspended out there and yet everything works in perfect order. What a miracle! What a wonder!

Truth is THE TRUTH.

Today I happened to lay my hand on a few sayings by Mahatma Gandhi. *To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonesty. *An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. *A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. *Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. Not that I came across these quotes for the first time, but what depressed me was when I made a reality check with the present day society that I live in. If I accept a principle but do not live by it, I land myself in guilt and regret. And no matter what I gain, if it comes at the cost of my peace, it will still be a loss. Great people did'nt complicate their life. They kept it simple. They aligned their life to some timeless principles, and more importantly stood by them, no matter what the tests of circumstances were. Truth was one such fundamental by which the Atma transformed into a Mahatma.