Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero - Santosh Jha (best authors to read .txt) 📗

the light at the end of the day and gets married to a Guddi twin soon, if not for his own sake then for the sake of making Monk’s wishes on feminism come true”, Utkarsh declared sounding solemn but could not hold back a smile.

“Here I am bound to agree with Monk. If I get a wife like Guddi, I will surely do whatever she will ask me to do. That is what I have been telling to Guddi. We men are like dog; if you show us your teeth, we will bark and snap your flesh but even the fiercest dog will obey if you caress him with love and occasionally throw a useless piece of bone. And among dogs, you have breeds; Monk is a sweet Pug and I am a nasty Bulldog. Then you have pedigree...”

“Sorry… I do not buy this idea Ashu, I do not like dogs”, an irritated Guddi interrupted him. “Even the most obedient dog will look for a pole and would refuse to go to a toilet even if Miss Universe would kiss him on his stinking lips. Chhee…! How can you compare men with dogs…My husband and my dear brother are better as men and I love them the way they are…they are angels to me. Please let the dogs be what they are”.

“Yes…yes…I know Guddi you do not want me to become a nice guy. But you don’t know I have already outsourced Monk the task of finding a girl like you for me. And he has promised he would do it for me. I know you do not trust me but you will never doubt your brother’s good intention, I know that.”

“No…never…! I know my brother very well. He is a good man; he will never risk a girl’s life. Until you turn a gentleman, none of us will allow you to get married.”

“Guddi, Ashu is sincerely trying to set his life on track but what he can do as his boss is not leaving any moment free for him. Anyway he is not going to get married as he has no time for the next ten years. We have already posted his profile on the portal meant for second marriages”, Utkarsh added to the banter.

“God be with that woman and the portal…”, Guddi shouted from kitchen as she readied to serve the dinner.

Mayank was delighted. So were Utkarsh, Ashish and Guddi. They all cherished the fact that the four had made the best out of the evening. It was not quite often that they could meet and enjoy things together as the busy life offered very little time and space for such a free and careless evening. Mayank was happy for Ashu as he knew he had understood what intimacy of a woman really meant for a man. He knew despite all her repartee with Ashu, she will shower all care and attention to him as she knew Ashu was a bad eater. Ashu too loved being mothered by her and would turn a small baby when she will forcibly make him eat the stuff she had cooked. Utkarsh was happy that Mayank had done the right thing. He knew struggle makes a man and men like Mayank really thrived and excelled when faced with something which made them think and do what they thought was right. Ashu was the happiest. He was the most insecure of the four and an evening like this assured him that he had people in his life who would never leave him to drift as they knew better than him what was best for him. He ate like a baby. Slept on the sofa, resting his head on the lap of Monk, holding his hands to ensure he would not leave him come what may. Guddi would wake him up and tell him to sit steady as he would resist Guddi applying oil to his head. As she would comb his hair after massaging his head, Ashu would close his eyes as his manly pride would not allow him to show his moist eyes to Guddi and others. Guddi silently prayed that her men would remain the kids they were at heart; at least they were when with her.

**

CHAPTER 9

It had been a perpetual struggle for him.

His overriding sense of redundancy would present the advocacy for the futility of any exercise first up. Mayank was advised by many not to smother initiatives by his penchant for ‘over thinking’. ‘Do it and then regret is always better than regret not doing anything...most wonders of the world are accidental and almost all geniuses are first exercise towards stupidity’, a well-wisher had told him once.

Mayank never believed in such pep talk. He knew it well that humanity had to face the dire consequences of hundreds of accidents before one of them could click as a wonder. The world bore the brunt of loads of stupidity before a miniscule portion of it could stand the test of a genius. One needs to be sure which was the larger evil; thoughtful inaction or un-thoughtful action. He would admit that his preference for former was born out of the fact that he was living in a world where over activity was destroying more than it was creating.

Creativity should ideally be fueled by reason and not necessarily by necessity. The contemporary age of necessity-driven creativity and activity had designed many geniuses which actually deserved the rightful nomenclature of stupidity. He believed in thoughtful inaction because of two simple reasons. First was his adherence to the conservation of energy theory which he had learnt to put to smart use from his favorite cricketer. It said, ‘when the ball is new in the morning session of the game, the bowler is fresh and full of energy and the morning humidity helps the ball to swing both ways; the opening batsman should keep a low profile and conserve his energies in saving his wicket, leaving the ball watching his off stump and avoiding flashy strokes. The batsman would surely have his time when the ball would turn old, the bright Sun would soak away the moisture and the bowler would tire’. Genius was not always in confronting the risks one up but in understanding and managing them well. Patience is a smart wife of a genius. Secondly, he knew it quite well that if one is not sure of the ends, however bright and noble the means be; it cannot be a justification for initiative. Good intentions ending up as bad inevitable and consequent regrets made poor history. Individual regrets get washed away by an innocuous sorry but the overall toll on the body of society is long lasting.

The meeting of the owner with the chief minister had gone well and as it was planned to be. A happy Boss had asked Mayank to mail him all issues which he believed were important for the betterment of the newspaper and the company’s performance; or what he had in his heart. He had his flight the same day but he promised he would come next week and will discuss in detail all those issues which Mayank would mention in his mail.

The sense of futility of the exercise had consumed the whole evening and he could not write a single line as part of his mail to the owner. He slept the whole night allowing his sense of being to drift away. This was his usual practice to arrive at an objective and unattached mindset before launching on a new initiative. He woke up at 4 in the morning; swallowed a waft of morning breeze filling his lungs and assuring him of a sense of well-being. For him, being positive and being bereft of negativity had different meaning. The whole previous evening he felt the unease and could not write a word but the morning brought him the positivity which eluded him earlier.

He could find touch with his objectivity. He had begun to see things in its largest possible perspective. One after one, thoughts came drifting in as he sat near the window, looking at the eastern horizon, where the Sun had heralded its ascent, beaming a radiant orange color in the sky just above where earth kissed the sky --

‘We have drifted too far... so far that the vision of rational objectivity is blurred… truth’s reasonable veracity looks like well beyond average human’s sensory perceptions. Trust of human mind and soul too has its limits... mind and soul just cannot build trust around an idea or object which has lost its chastity and elemental originality way back in human evolution till date. Acquired knowledge, intuitive awareness and transcendental realism, all are bound to be expressed through a very restrictive pool of human-created words, in order to be relocated from one being to another. Words however are the failed media of intention-transference of humanity. Words are at best the most mediocre mode of human communication and at worst the first qualifier benchmark for humans to rise above animalism. Human languages anyway are not the first preference of individual self but a secondary compulsion of collective being and social living. The intellectual contradiction of the universe is that the capacity of human mind is currently amenable only for “known” realm whereas the most important intellectual acquisitions fall in the realms of “Unknown and Unknowable” – the former is still to be understood but can be known on a future date and later is to be realized but cannot be known.

‘If human intellectual acquisitions and perceptional properties are attempted to be shared or bequeathed to others and especially the generation-next, one has to work his or her way around and circumvent this quintessential paradox of contemporary human wisdom. This can happen to a good extent… words can be a reasonably sound media and can carry a lot of true sense if one simple assumption is fulfilled. In contemporary state of affairs of humanity, one thing is for sure – you cannot teach anyone but anyone can learn! You can speak a lot but cannot be sure how little or what the other has actually listened. Human communication has a precarious absurdity. Transmission is no guarantee of equal reception and what finally lands at the end of reception may not always be what was transmitted. If someone is willing and has the necessary mental level, he or she can understand even with the help of the restrictive words from the human inventory. Even silence speaks better than thousand words. A good soul had said, “If a husband and wife are in best of communication, they will mostly be silent. More they talk, less they communicate”. All languages, other than what human mouth speaks, communicate better and breed less strife and negativity.’

Mayank smiled at his own tragedy. He was presented with an opportunity to communicate with a person who needed to understand him and his words in their true sense but Mayank knew he did not have anything favorable. What one has to say to other is like an aircraft and it has to land in the mind of the person for whom it is meant to be understood. The safe landing depends not only on pilot but also on the runway on the ground. If the plane is not provided with good runway facilities, the plane may never land or it would crashland.

He could not resist the sense of history creeping in his mind. He chuckled at the thought that when he would grow old and would have no strength and engagement left but to savor the reminiscence of his past life, he would only laugh at what would then certainly look like a huge stupidity. But he did not let his sense of history get control of him. He allowed the thoughts to come in --

‘We must first understand what our capacity is as human beings to perceive and receive things. How can we say how this world is, what is