Mini-Miracles

I had not been a firm believer in miracles, until recently! Perhaps the last two words might have made you think what could have changed my mind! Of late, I had been encountering small miracles, for which I have no explanation. I cannot claim that these miracles had a spectacular effect on me, or the people around me, but they have in one sense changed the way I look at myself, the reality around me, the human society with whom I constantly rub shoulders, and the power beyond me! What happens quite frequently these days may be termed by a skeptic as ‘pleasant surprises’, but for me they are mini-miracles, which point me to a power beyond human reach, and yet so close to us!

Maybe it would be clearer if I narrate what happened this evening. I had a wrist watch (a Japan made, Casio brand), which is available on the footpaths of the city for rupees 60. But the one I have, has a story: When I was asked to carry a camera bag to India from Rome in Italy, as I checked the contents in the bag, I found the watch sans strap. It looked good to me, and so after reaching home, I got it repaired, got a strap, paying the amount for which I could have bought a new one; but I knew it was used by one of the Jesuit companions many years ago, and I was privileged to wear it now.

Coming back to the original story, the connecting pin of the watch had fallen, and I had to get a new hook. Some days ago, the hook had fallen in the house, and so I could not use it for about two weeks. I had taken the watch to get a hook fixed on it to one of the shops. The shop keeper, after fixing a hook, asked me where the supporting ring was, and I told him that might have fallen. He looked for a similar black color ring, but he could not find one. After about ten minutes of searching for it, he gave up hope and told me to look for it somewhere else. As I left the shop towards home, something in me said that probably that supportive ring should be in the house, maybe in my room. This was not a fleeting feeling, but it was almost a surety. I was almost sure that it was there at home, maybe in my bag!

After reaching home, I went to my room, poured out the contents of my ‘reporting bag’ (as one of my friends had named it), and initially I could not find what I was looking for. When there were only the coins left, I found in their midst the black supportive ring, and what a surprise it was for me to find it back! I had not placed it in the bag, and it is possible that when the connective hook of the strap was lost, the ring might have come out of the strap and remained there. But to get it back after about a month, was not a simple thing. It was a miracle to find such a tiny thing, in the midst of so many big things.

Today one thing became clear for me: there are so many miracles taking place in and around me all the time, but most of the time I am not aware of them, and am not conscious of them. If only I take note of them, then they are sure to affect me, and even change me. Caught between worldly worries and preoccupations, I have failed look around me with eyes wide open; I hear the innumerable noises around me, but fail to listen to the song of the birds, the rumbling of trees, the whistling of the wind… What better grace can I ask of the Almighty today than asking him to open my eyes and ears wide open to take note of the miracles happening each moment of my life, and that they may draw me closer to the Supreme power beyond.

Waiting for Godot!

Those who have studied American literature would remember the title, a modern English play, belonging to the genre of ‘abstract drama’ by Samuel Beckett. This is considered as a prototype of the abstract drama, which captures the absurdity of life in modern times. The entire drama revolves around a person waiting for another person named Godot! There is no forward or backward movement in the drama, at the end of the play, the audience are exactly in the same place where they were at the beginning, and so also the characters.

While on the one hand, the modern world swears by speed, on the other it is typified by endless waiting. Every moment of waiting has been added to the quest for better speed. We want quick solutions, and waiting as it were becoming a thing of the past. There is no one who really wants to wait. Waiting for three hours to get the parts of computers we have paid for, is not just a thing we can take so easily. People taking their own sweet time to pull out the required parts from the store, and placing them together so that they could pack off the customer in half an hour is an art which is alien to the boys working in this biggest computer shop in the whole of Eastern India. But who will teach them the art of getting things faster than they are used to?

But is it not time that we just throw our watches and clocks and just flow with time, following the course of the sun and the moon? Some years ago, when I decided to stay with the Santal tribals, I did the same, and I was happy without knowing the time, while staying in a village, where there is no way of knowing the hour of the day. What I could say was night and day, morning and evening and noon. I would look at the sun, and would guess the time for my meals. It gives a different feeling when we forget for a moment the human-made indicators of time. Time and space cannot be measured in human terms and categories; one has to let oneself to flow in the current in order to feel the cosmic flow.

Waiting is associated with a lot of pain and suffering, and every waiting reminds the persons concerned that there is a great expectation, though the expectation may not end up with a positive result. Like in the case of Waiting for Godot, at the end no one might turn up. The entire waiting might come to naught, but then the waiting per se has a meaning, which cannot be separated from the act itself. Fortunately when I went to the shop today, I had not worn my wrist watch, and so was less conscious of every passing hour, but then there were wall-clocks which reminded me that I had already spent four hours waiting in that cozy room, with a lot of men and women crisscrossed, each one minding their own business.

Waiting is a sweet and sour candy that we are given, even when we are not in a mood to chew it. The taste however is not in the candy, but in the tongue and the mind which provides the taste. If your waiting is on someone or something that you would be delighted to, then the candy would taste sweet; if you are waiting to meet a bad news, or bad person, whom you would have liked to miss, but are forced to meet, then the candy would taste sour. You cannot throw the candy altogether, because each moment of our life comes with a waiting, with a sugar coated candy, and it is for me to make it taste sweet or sour! Waiting after all is not a physical phenomenon, but very much a psychological one.

When Work is Worship…

Someone had said, work is worship, and I would add another word at the end of this much used-abused adage : sometimes. That is, work is worship sometimes; but it would be quite erroneous to think that all the time, work can be considered something holy and sacred. After going through three marathon sessions of meetings, each time lasting for about three and half hours, I feel such “work” if I may say so, is far from worship. To put it in other words, what is reasonable and normal, may become something sacred, provided it is carried out with a proper framework of mind. In fact, no work can automatically become holy and sacred unless the “worker” makes a conscious and conscientious effort to make it so. Maybe someone may think that if he/she is a non-believer, how the work can become something holy, since he/she does not believe in the very concept of the sacred. Here we have to expand the meaning of holiness or sacredness that we are used to, in order to include certain amount of authenticity and genuineness to the work being accomplished.

But there are works which are killing and sucking the life energy of people. Generally it is understood that the manual labor is very tiring, slowly draining all the energy of the workers, but we should also realize that sometimes mental works can also be equally killing. We also often hear about the dignity of labor and May first is celebrated all over the world with aplomb, especially by the Marxists, in order to uphold the philosophy that the world belongs to the laborers. Work in order to earn a living is not sufficient in order to make it holy and sacred; we need to go beyond the mere subsistence providing labor. Work can become noble and sacred only when we begin to enjoy the labor, irrespective of the fruits it may produce. It is in other words an art, which comes so very naturally to us.

I would be a laughing stock if I were to suggest this to a villager, who has to work all the daylong in order to earn his daily bread. If he does not work on a particular day, he may starve, or may go to bed with half-stomach. Is it ever possible that this person one day begins to enjoy the work he does, just like an artist is immersed in the painting he/she does, or the singer lost in the world of music? Unfortunately we are involved in so many kinds of works, where drawing enjoyment is a remote possibility. A man exposed to the hot sun throughout the day, cannot enjoy his work; all that he might enjoy is the shade of a tree and a mug of rice soaked in water.

While a good majority of the population may never begin to enjoy their work, a small per centage of the people would take great pleasure in the work they are involved with, even if it is manual labor, and involving a lot of painstaking physical work. For such people, the fruits of the work or the consequence is only secondary; what they are interested in is the sheer joy of getting immersed in the work. Even if the manager were to say that there was not enough money to give his wages, he would still offer his services, because there is a pleasure he might draw from the work, which he cannot get from anything else, not even a peg of beer, or a mug of country liquor.

I would not hesitate to equate the real joy that we may be able to draw from the work we may be involved in, with ananda, the sheer bliss; the formless, nameless joy. It is very much possible for us to enter into such a state of bliss, even if it is for a moment. In fact, it would be hard to sustain such joy and bliss for a long stretch of time; however the joy that we may gain out of the job or work may be able to sustain us for a long time, even after we have shifted gears to some other work, or chores. Therefore today I pause for a moment, in the middle of the work I am busy with… and ask myself how do I feel as I mechanically do this job! Am I cursing my fate for doing such a job, or am I happy to do this? I am happy to do this job, is it because I have to do it, or because I enjoy doing it? Those who enjoy doing their job may not look at their watches five times in fifteen minutes, and they often would realize that the time has passed away too soon. That is the true mark of making our work holy and sacred. If I have a tendency to check the clock too often, to see how soon I would get out of this place, then I need to realize that my work is far from being holy and sacred. And the more I feel the work as a burden, it will keep increasing, until I become too tired of it, and look for alternatives. If I enjoy the work, then there is nothing I should want!