Sunday, August 26, 2012

What I did

There were so many things I meant to blog about but there wasn’t enough time when the mood came upon me, some posts needed an elaborate gathering of thoughts and links, some needed notes to be collated.

Still, I have a few updates. I spent the first fortnight of this month in the most unusual fashion: I was at the Isha Yoga Center to volunteer. They somehow had three programs lined up with a day’s gap between each and it seemed a good idea – at the time. Had I known how demanding the stint would be, I may have had second thoughts. I had attended all these programs last year and had been struck by the wholehearted devotion of the volunteers who had served the programs. It seemed very appropriate for me to do this as well. A part of it was a desire to ‘pay it forward’, and partly, having heard so much about the experience of volunteering, to taste for myself what such giving can do to the giver.

So I landed there on pournami, offered my services, my body, mind and presence in any manner they thought fit, and came away on amavasya – a poetically arranged period. It was quite a unique experience, something that broke quite a few notions of myself that I had lived comfortably with. I no longer know for sure. An advancement, of sorts.

Woh bhi kya din the, ke har veham yakin hota tha
Ab haqeeqat nazar aaye to use kya samjhoon?

-Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi

वो भी क्या दिन थे के हर वेहम यकीं होता था
अब हक़ीक़त नज़र आये तो उसे क्या समझूं ?
-अहमद नदीम क़ासमी

Now the prospect of other interesting travel faces me – excited, happy-excited. There are things beyond our imaginings, our wildest hopes… what a good thing we don’t always get only what we thought to ask for.