Growing up competition - Her journey

Sometimes it was pleasant spring, on occasion a sultry summer, often beautiful hues of fall and infrequently harsh winters. However unlike the cyclical annual changes of nature which weathermen can predict, these changes she witnessed were not in any orderly sequence. She enjoyed this unpredictability of seasons as she walked on her road. Whenever she encountered tough weather conditions on this journey, she had an unfailing conviction that her God would soon shower the road with blossoming buds of spring. That kept her going.

So she kept walking slowly, steadily and surely. She carried a little cloth bag slung on her left shoulder. This little cloth bag embroidered with fancy mirror pieces and colorful beads identified with the land of her forefathers- India. In this she had collected all her memoirs of this journey- happy moments of the past, a couple of mildly unpleasant ones, her everyday experiences and most importantly her dreams and hopes of what lay ahead as she walked on this road. If you happened to be walking by her side, you would have heard this little girl humming to herself about how lucky and content she was.

Well she wasn’t walking on this road alone. There would be side roads which occasionally joined her road and people would walk beside her till their roads branched off. She looked forward to the company of different people as they walked beside her, each one on their own road which happened to overlap certain segments of hers. She wouldn’t get too upset when she bade them farewell. She understood that each one had his own road to follow and she felt happy about the time spent when their paths crossed. It never struck her that she could follow them on their road or that she could ask them to stay on hers for longer until they found a common road.

Then one day it happened. She noticed a young lad walking on a side road which joined hers. She smiled – she liked the way he looked. He joined her road and indicated that his road branched off in the next couple of miles. In some strange way, she was happy to hear that. This was because in the first couple of minutes talking to him, she realized that they were very unique individuals with very little common ground but she fancied the idea of walking beside him for a while. She felt like a teenager with her heart fluttering at the sight of him walking beside her with his little bag slung on his right shoulder. Their little bags would accidentally brush against each another and the static gave her goose bumps. That part of the journey was autumn- the air was crisp, the foliage was changing color and things couldn’t have been more perfect. The little girl opened up her heart to this stranger and told him of the contents of her little bag. For the most part he was a patient listener and on occasion would share about the contents of his bag. He spoke little and when the little girl prodded him to talk more, mostly because she felt so guilty talking all the time about herself, he would gently say, “My life is a closed book and you have made me unglue more pages than anyone ever has.” She felt special on hearing that and she believed him. She would believe just about anyone, actually. She believed in the goodness of mankind.

When his diversion finally appeared, she was wistful about losing his company but nonetheless was mentally prepared. She wished him well and gave him a parting gift. He gifted her a black bead bracelet and asked her to safeguard some of the belongings from his little bag. At the crack of dawn next morning, she heard his voice call out to her wondering how she was. She responded immediately. She couldn’t see him anymore for he was on a different road now but it felt good to hear from him. He would call out to her everyday and she would reply as promptly as possible. He had mentioned that his road would finally lead to a bridge and he would cross a lake to follow another more distant path. She thought that’s when she would stop hearing from him. But he took the effort to call out to her as regularly as ever. This is when she started losing her complacency of facing whatever lay ahead for her and started wishing that her path would cross with this stranger again. For a girl’s heart is a temple of sentiments. Pay it a visit everyday and soon the believer becomes the idol. For this temple enshrines him in her holiest centre.

He treaded on the topic of a future together and she excitedly agreed that it was a great idea. She started piecing together these hopes in her little bag along with his everyday experiences, his hopes and his dreams. This made her little bag heavier than ever to carry the happiness and disappointments of his journey and hers but she crammed them in anyway. Again with the hope that one day they will walk a common path and he would share her little bag. She realized that once she started carrying his experiences with her, her outlook to life had changed. No longer was she open to everything her God would send her way but was consciously working on making things she hoped for happen. Some of these acts were counterintuitive but she was blinded by what some people would say “love”. She invested her time and energy to help him battle his seasons as she heard of his journey. She felt emotionally invested in another person’s life for the very first time in her life. Her path wasn’t particularly easy- the temperatures were now falling. She should have been spending more time preparing for what she could sense was winter approaching. But somehow she was so much more worried about his welfare, she forgot about hers. And lo presto! She survived the winter as well as she had in the past. God took care of her as she was taking care of someone else (or so she thought). She was so immersed in his life that she overlooked the seasons change on her own path. She would no longer interact with people who shared a common path with her. She was with him mentally, emotionally and spiritually. She didn’t even notice or appreciate anything around her anymore.

One day he stopped calling out to her. Just like that. She was too stunned to react initially. She was aware that he had taken yet another turn and initially assumed he was stressed about the transition. And she hoped she would hear from him. Days flew past and months passed by – no word from him. But she believed that he felt the same way she did for him. He was just in the middle of something and was trying to work his way out. For her part, she was still cocooned in his thoughts and would often imagine how one day when they finally came together, they would peek into her bag which had her memories, his memories and their memories. She was sure it would happen. She never realized that through this tough time, God tried to lift her spirits up by ensuring that it was spring as she walked through this stretch of her journey. She was so self absorbed that she was oblivious to the good weather and the good people who gave her company. Now she would communicate in a superficial way with no real interest to know more about them. She would spend hours wondering about whether he was thinking about her, the way she did.

Now her road took her to the very same bridge to cross the very same lake. She was on a parallel road and she hoped it would be easier for him to call out to her. But he still didn’t. She waited as patiently as she possibly could. After all, she could only think of him as a nice and kind person and kept churning excuses up in her mind for him. She would often think was she at fault? Did she behave unreasonably? Deep inside, she knew she had cared for him in the most pure way possible. But she couldn’t bear to think he no longer needed to hear from her when his life took another turn. She couldn’t think of him as a sensible practical man who would live for what was in his best interest –for her, he was a young lad with dreams and hopes of a future with them together.

One day, she thought she was driving herself mad with these conflicting thoughts in her head. One trying to accuse her of every single thing she had done and another weaker voice which told her that maybe he wasn’t the nice kind stranger she once knew. So she called out to him. She didn’t hear from him. She didn’t know what to think of that. A month later, he called out saying he didn’t want to hear from her. She didn’t know how to react. But for her own sanity, she wished to tell him how she spent hours imagining his life, carrying his baggage and accusing herself in the nastiest ways possible. She requested him to listen to her. He did and very tersely told her that he decided to move on when he met new people and no longer needed her. He mocked at her carrying his baggage for he said he had taken it away with him a long long time back. And he bid her goodbye in the most impersonal way possible.

Was it true that she wasn’t carrying their dreams and hopes in her bag? She fell to her knees and untied her bag. With growing trepidation, she burrowed through her stuff to where she thought she had stuffed their package. She could only see there was nothing but packing material in there. There was no real stuff in there. Wow! She had been carrying garbage for the past several years. For he had taken his stuff a long long time back and had assumed that she would check her bag sooner and notice it was missing. But she hadn’t. Maybe because she believed in his goodness or maybe she was scared to open her bag to see what it actually had or maybe she was secretly hoping that by enduring the suffering of carrying a heavy bag she would be rewarded by having him back in her journey.

She sat there helpless and lost and cried. Cried for her time lost. Cried for her misassessment of an individual.Cried for not believing in her God. Cried for having lost her sensibility. Cried for having lost the opportunities of having been nicer to her fellow co travelers. Cried for having cheated her ownself. Cried for having enshrined a voice against good counsel. Cried for accusing herself every single waking moment. Cried for the havoc she had caused to her own belief system. Cried for having forgotten that her God would have always taken care of her and instead of appreciating ways in which he was trying to alleviate her pain, she had ignored him...

Crying cleansed her mind and soul. She now felt that she was closer to peace. She picked up the four corners of her little cloth bag spread out on the road and re parceled her life. She stood up and prayed for forgiveness to her God. She asked him for strength to learn from her past, bear no ill feelings for this man and to take the next step forward in her journey. Although she was on the same road, she now felt she was starting afresh …