The Greatest Gift : Life.

Why I am the way I am, is something beyond my furthest understanding. Why do I get so tensed up so fast? Why is there a lump in my throat every time I try to express my views and feelings? Why? Why? Why?

While blogging last night I got stuck due to my inability to recollect the English word for ‘mukta’. When I asked Jaya, she came to my rescue with it almost instantaneously. “Pearl,” she said as if not me, but she has been an English teacher all her life. Now my eldest daughter, Akansha, was somewhere around. The moment she heard me repeat ‘pearl’ after my spouse, she knew what I was writing about. “Ma,” she called out to her mom, “Baba’s always criticising people. This time it’s you, Ma. In a way, it’s good as people’ll get to know (through the blog), what he really thinks about himself……”.

I have to agree with her conclusion. As last night, instead of feasting my eyes on Chilka, its serenity and sublimity, I, once more preferred to spend my time writing about the pearls and my smart pronouncements.

Now to get back to the Chilka Lake, this heavenly place occupies a special place in my heart, I can’t think of Puri without thinking about the magic the lake had worked on me at first sight, way back in the late 80s. It simply represented the innocent world in which everything was young and pure, lovey-dovey and beautiful. The sleepy lake with its dark green water was a sight and I was simply blown away by its depth and charm. I still remember that afterwards we visited the Kali temple not very far away. The whole experience (expedition?) did not cost us much and stays glued to my heart even today.

Naturally, I had springs in my feet on the morning of the 26^th. At around 9.30 all of us trotted to the travel agency. There were two very sleek cars waiting outside. One look at the bigger of the two and we decided to take the Maruti Maxima. The ride was as pleasant as the car. As our driver was a very taciturn man, he did not barge either in our conversations or in any thing else I was enjoying myself thoroughly when the car got parked in the middle of a nondescript place. I looked around to realize that this time the visit to Chilka would have a different tale to tell. I was looking askance at him when he pointed to a hut, asking me to buy the tickets for boating from there. I went inside the hut, having noticed some disgruntled tourists coming out. Inside round two or three tables staked together, there were some tough-looking men. The sturdiest of them did not even look up at me and holding up a paper, he started enlightening me about the different rates for visiting the different places on and around the lake. If we wanted to go to all those places, it would be worth Rs.1800/, but excluding the Dolphin site, the price would come down to Rs.1300/. I had my mind racing again. The Chilka visit wasn’t going to be a 500-rupee affair like I envisaged .It was going to cost us money. The drive to that god-forsaken place could not have taken more than one and half hours. If we decided to go back, that might take at the most 2 hours more. In that case we would have spent some Rs.500/ for nothing. We would be lucky to get away with anything less than two to three thousands if we decided to go boating on the Chilka. What was the best option left to us under the circumstance? Should we go back, or shouldn’t we? Unable to decide for myself, I went out to seek their opinions. The females were unanimous in putting the shutter down. After some more dilly-dallying, we decided to skip the site of the Dolphins and settled for the less attractive areas of The Red Crabs and the mohona (the confluence of the lake and the sea). I still tried to reason out with the men at the table as best as I could, but my nephew Kaltu played the spoilsport by taking out five brand new 100-rupee notes from his wallet. It was sheer foolhardy on my part as right then I was just giving the thugs the impression that we were dead broke.

The boating, of course, was mind-blowing to say the least. The boat ride through the serene and calm waters of the lake, brought some semblance of solace to my otherwise disturbed mind. After some 40-45 minutes, on our arrival at The Red Crabs, we could find a young man heading our way from behind another boat anchored at the shore. He was kind enough to let us have a glimpse of those extraordinary creatures in a rounded container. We were yet to recover from the shock and amazement, when he decided to play his triumph card, by plucking the shells in his outstretched hand out of nowhere. But by then, by courtesy of one stone-seller, Santosh Rao, my dear wife and my nephew’s had wizened up and did not find the pearls worth taking a second look any more.

Our next halt was at the mohona, the sandy shore separating the magnificent Chilka from the majestic Bay of Bengal. It was God’s own place and as I want to keep its mesmerizing memory locked-up in my mind for as long as I have a mind to, I don’t want to write about it. On the way back, the fresh prawns and crabs selling on the stalls made some mouths watery and it demanded a herculean effort from us to resist the temptation of having them served up to us as hot and spicy as it gets.

When we came back to our car, the driver mumbled out, “You took quite long!” His tone rang a bell somewhere and I didn’t waste time in telling him how I was thinking of borrowing some money from him for the boating. We drove on in silence and at around 4.30 p.m.with an absolute, nonchalant look on his face, the stout, curly-haired driver slammed the brakes near the agency remarking,” You should of told me. I own 200 such cars. This beauty is also mine …” Having said this our friend promptly took leave and vanished into thin air. The rest of the day was uneventful and plain drab.

As I come to the end of this blog, I realize that my daughter, Akanksha, was right after all. All my life, I have hankered after money and materialistic pleasures so much that I have failed to notice the beauty and bounty all round. It is time I started growing out of my shell and learnt to appreciate the marvellous gift called, Life.