Serendipity

The word serendipity derives its roots from a Persian fairy tale where the protagonists discover a lot of things accidentally while they were looking for something else desperately.
The beauty of this word lies in its emotional aspects.It is also defined by a happy accidental discovery.
More than the word itself the inherent messages conveyed by it is mesmerizing to most people.The way i see it, it talks about a person walking on his chosen path to achieve his dreams.I used the word dreams rather than aims or objectives or goals because we feel more satisfied when we make our dreams come true.The person meets a lot of people new and old.He talks about himself,his path and his perceived progress on it.He lends his ears to the travelers who want to share their happiness or disgrace which they are feeling from time to time.He observes his surroundings and how they change dynamically over the ages.He falls into love with his dreams more often than not depending on his desperation to convert them into reality.He compares his progress on his path with others from time to time and immediately regrets his actions too.He clearly seeks something from himself which could be a lot of things like confidence, belief,faith, and wisdom to accept failures.

Like every other person he often encounters rocks which he has to maneuver through.He crosses mountains and rivers with the agility and bravery he hasn't displayed earlier.He adjusts to all climates and keeps away all his emotions stopping him from moving forward.He faces the reality but lives in his dreams.He fights all the problems and distractions with great courage and valor which he never felt before.He often thinks about his decision about choosing this path.He sometimes succumbs to the people who follow a different path and achieve their holy grails.But he lives up to his decisions and integrates himself to carry on his pilgrimage.He learns how to stay loyal to himself.

Finally the time comes he when he reaches the footsteps of his dream woven-castles.He sees his beloved dream come true when he realizes the power of love for his passion.He thinks of all those people whom he saw and listened to.He thinks of the people who couldn't make it.He feels compassionate about them and prays for them as well.
Tears roll down his eyes when he touches and feels his dream coming true.He realizes the true feeling of happiness and satisfaction which he wasn't able to feel before.

After some time he starts forgetting his achievement and like every retired adventurer thinks of his journey.He realizes that he had accidentally discovered a lot of things which makes him feel proud of himself.

This is what I call the serendipity of our life's quest.
He discovered all that he had just heard,thought but never felt.He discovered all the divine feelings like love,confidence,belief,faith, wisdom, agility,courage,valor,braveness,loyalty ,integrity,compassion,happiness,satisfaction and finally success.These were something we have heard,appreciate and faked but never felt them in the true guilt free sense.These are accidental gifts for sure.
Success is the feeling he discovers at the end of the journey.
We observe but never realize the discoveries we mystify every moment of our lives.The amazing thing about this life's serendipity is we end up discovering more about ourselves more than anything else.

ENIGMA

Someone asked me lately;” what is the most fascinating thing to understand in the world we live in?” I couldn’t answer that question instantly due to my limited senses at that moment .I thought about it for a minute at leisure. A myriad of things crossed my mind ranging from plasma physics, God and his/her derivatives, relativity, psychological differences between capitalism and socialism, the reasons for violence in Beirut in the past, a persons ambitions in life and HITLER’S mysterious deaths. All these things have something common in them even thought they don’t look distantly related. They still can be understood scientifically, spiritually or anachronistically. But there is one thing which can never be understood fully and drawn conclusions upon.

This mysterious thing or issue or god only knows what u call it. This phenomenon is enigmatic enough to keep a man busy for a hundred life times or more. Everyone has experienced this in the world or say definitely the community which I enjoy my inclusion into. This thing thinks, lives a life of its own, affects a life of many others and specializes in the art of patience, grace, subtlety and beauty. No one has ever dared to question its existence and many of us enjoy the lack of it as it adds to their advantage. But the truth is somewhere in the darkest of moments God created us all but what he cherished the most in his creation is this thing. It is still not clear whether this thing is capable of running the rest of our lives as the presidential elections are not yet over in U.S.A .The moment I open the newspaper,I feel more afraid of this thing as it will certainly keep us all out of business by the time it grows from the moth-stage to the butterfly stage. We experience this thing right from our birth to the end of our lives in different forms. If the naïve people have not yet guessed ,It is the woman’s mind I am talking about here.

Missing notebook

8:15:After hovering around the HSB for a couple of minutes in utter desperation, I decided to engage myself in taking help of the human race members present there.I struggled with the busy sweepers.''Madame...blue color notebook..yesterday...hsb336...1-2.....".They ignored me.period.I always perceived ignorance to be the combination of ego+arrogance.So with that theory in mind,If all the people were arrogant of being ignorant,then surely they would have been ignorant of arrogance.Anyways I now rushed to the HSB office.there was one lady placed in the corner of the office.By now ,i was sweating profusely,hoping some Miracle to happen.I remembered the TV Channel Miracle net. Sometimes switching channels,i had come across a lot of flash images of this channels.It was like all those images were being re construed by mind.My saintly thoughts were interrupted by the Lady.I spoke about my unfortunate incident.She calmly said.'We have not found any notebook we find,we will communicate it to you'.
By now i had realized that I was not going to find out where the book is.And i had totally lost it.When u have such situations popping up,you feel remorse and pity over yourself.U try to blame people in the beginning but in the hearts of hearts u know that u were the inevitable culprit of whatever was happening.I raced to the BSB and I met DV at the entrance.He consoled me and told in his usual tone.'Take light MAMA,Its just a notebook".I thanked him mentally for a badly neede consolation.But I had still time to protect my reputation.Women say that men are obsessed with THE GODFATHER.That is completely true. And we should be too.Godfather died protecting his and his family's reputation.The character was all about reputation.He had sound principles.Go to the mattresses;Its not personal,its business;etc.
8:40:After searching intensely in all the classrooms and contacting the innumerable offices in the vast building,I pacified myself with the thought that I did what I could have done.I had left no stone unturned.I walked feebly back to the FM class gathering mental courage with every step on the way to the class.just As i entered the class,my mobile made a weak sound.I interpreted it as a message but being a very lousy mobile user,I did not check the message.My concentration was on how to face Binny.the guy had trusted me with what he had and i couldn't live up to it.

9:00I finally tried to locate him in the class.The class had already started.He was sitting at the other end of the class.He was glancing at one of his notebooks.he saw me and looked back at the notebook.Now that was strange.in the Utopian world,he should have asked me about the missing notebook.I speculated something wrong again.I could not do much because the class had already started and i couldn't make large movements or I would get trapped in the changing frames(vision) of the teacher.In the back of my mind,I expected that he had got back his notes.But the anxiety of confirmation compelled me to open my mobile and check out the message.And Bingo!it was Binny's message and he had got back his notes.I felt as happy as a koala bear who found his lost baby in the jungle.But the million dollar question was where did he find his notes?I gestured to him about that.but he continuously ignored me.I suspected him to be mad at me.Various thoughts raced in my mind.What if he found this book lying in a obscure place?What if some arbitrary person gave it to him in person?I realized that i couldnt escape my sin.I got an insightful piece of wisdom about Sin when i was reading a book.people talk about seven sins,nine sins etc..But the eternal truth is there is only ONE sin.and that is theft.Everything else is a derivative of it.When a man commits murder,he his robbing someone of his father,or brother.Even though Binny got his notebook somehow,I still was robbed of my most beloved possession:reputation.I made up my mind to contact him at the end of the class and demystify the enigmatic suspense of the missing notebook to me.It was killing me from inside.I waited endlessly for the class to end.Who said time is uniform?some moments are so long in life!The 50 minutes seemed to take an eternity to end.
9:50:I walked towards Binny with more that my usual speed.but he seemed to be in a hurry too..I realized that he was running away from me.After a little JASON Bourne Chase sequence,I finally caught him.He refused to tell me where he found his notebook.I thought that he was angry at me but his faced seemed to show varied emotions.I was perplexed and afflicted at the same time.He finally accepted to enlighten me with the knowledge of the missing notebook.
He said"It was in my bag"
and he ran way.
Now every emotion of his was falling into place.I was spell bound and i am still spell bound after that.
but the saga of the missing notebook will never end because after prolonged discussions too we couldn't figure out how the book was found in his bag!!!!

The Missing Notebook

7:56 AM: ’Thud Thud Thud’ ‘Thud Thud Thud’..Usually when I hear something of this kind I feebly say in my broken Hindi..’Kaun hain’.I have a dangerous predisposition of possessing a fluent hindi accent which people don’t approve of very often. I have really never known whether the person banging on my door trying to wake me up and interrupt my unconscious mind’s never ending hallucinations even heard my usual answer indicated above.I know this because the answer to that is usually something like this.’ ’Thud Thud Thud’ ‘Thud Thud Thud’.I got up from my not-so-cozy bed to answer the call.Binny stood there with a calm but annoying face. Something was running on his mind and it definitely had to do with me. His morning schedule invariably includes waking me up which I would have to be indebted to him for life for.But after looking at his face today,I suspected something wrong. He asked in his usual tone ‘Sine, where is my FM notebook?’.Little did I know that this seemingly innocuous question would lead to my imminent mental breakdown..and from there it all began!

Let me take you to the past. Yesterday after lunch I borrowed Binny’s FM notebook to check out the class I missed. I went to my linguistics class.It being a boring one I started to read from his notebook in the class. I was a bit uncomfortable doing that because Fasil was sitting right next to me. At one point of time, Fasil had one of his hands in the air indicating to the teacher that he had a doubt and the other on my crotch.He being a guy who enjoys the bisexual tag on him never had any apprehensions of his acts on me. After D slot was over we raced from the HSB to the B-slot class in the BSB. I tried to concentrate on the presentation but couldn’t due to obvious reasons of course. Then from 3-4 I attended the OR class in HSB after which me,fasil and shuboday decided to meet in the civil department to complete the due assignment.

7:57:By the time I realised that I did not have the notebook in my bag, Binny realised that I must have shown my regular dose of carelessness and irresponsibility of the day. I couldn’t gather the courage to tell him that I did not have his notebook and my mind had abruptly stopped functioning. Practically, I was experiencing Alzheimers for that moment.He was getting late for his 8:00 class and he formally said in a stern voice,”I don’t care where in the world my notebook is but I want it by the 9:00 AM FM class.I gave him a signal of affirmation even though I had a hard time coming up with a pacifying explanation about the missing notebook. Human tendency in most of such situations plays the blame game.I remembered Fasil and his molestations at that moment.Binny was drifting to his class by then.I answered as loud as possible ‘May be its with Fasil’.My mind experienced a momentary relief as expected and by now last night’s hang-over from our infamous beer binge started appearing .So to summarize the state of my mind shifted from amnesia to a hang-over.But more than that..I experienced the utmost tension of losing his notebook which he tendered and care for all throught this semester. The worst thing which could happen to me today was losing a sincere friend’s notebook who worked so hard to maintain it that way.

7:58:Fasil was online on my Gtalk. I thought it would be ridiculous to call him and ask him about the missing notebook early in the morning. But I shed my inhibitions and with a sense of urgency in mind and politeness in my voice asked him whether I misplaced the notebook in his bag last evening. He declined my supposition after checking his bag. My heartbeat grew intense because I lost my first chance of saving myself from the wrath of guilt. In such situations we expect the most optimistic things to happen in due course.I remembered that there was a unclaimed book lying in BSB 212 yesterday. Fasil had asked me then whether it was mine. I recollected that I had said no and ignored that book.So I asked Fasil again now.’Do u remember the book lying in the BSB last evening?’Fasil with his agile voice answered,”Yes, but it was a case-study book and note a notebook.”There goes my second chance again.Now I had to quickly do something because time was running out. I decided to retrace my steps and hoped to find the missing notebook which had caused me iimense pain and tension early in the morning. I bid Fasil bye, pulled up my pants, grabbed a T-shirt,picked my worn-out bag,locked my door and checked the time.It read 8:01.

8:03:Most people reading this would be expecting me to be on my way to HSB.But I being very unpredictable decided to spend a few minutes on planning to resolve this crisis and optimize on my time and energy.Firstly I wanted my mind to get back to its normal fully and secondly I wanted to buy some peaceful time to recollect any clues as to where I could have misplaced the book. Now the more than the book,my relationship with Binny was at stake.Lately I have realized the irresponsible and outragingly audacious person in me whom I wanted to subdue. I had to save my prestige and somehow find that missing notebook. Now to do all these things simultaneously (optimizing), I decided to have a fag at tarams .So I was on my way to Tarams to smoke and think. After my relentless efforts trying to recollect, I was lucky enough to get a free ride to the HSB from Tarams. Now I had bought 2 more minutes of my time on the bike with cold air hitting my dry lips. This was the time to remember HIM.Yes,whenever I feel completely lost I embrace myself with the art of living fundaes.I quickly converted myself from the usual agnostic to a highly devoted God-fearing individual.I prayed and pleaded to him that whatever happens in the next hour..I just wanted to get hold of that wretched notebook.

To be CONTINUED….