Train rides can get extremely boring especially when they are 6 hours long and you have no idea what to do to kill time. There are not too many options so either you end up calling people or listening to music on your ipod/cellphone or typing out entries for your blog. Since you are reading this, you probably know which one of those options I chose. Actually I have been thinking for quite a while to write this one but never quite had time. Things have gotten a bit hectic this month with the World TB Day nearing and a few travel schedules keeping me extremely busy.
I am not an avid reader so not many of my thoughts spring out from recently read literature. My thoughts are limited to those that come in my usual discussions with friends pertaining to news articles, movies, music and interesting topics of discussions that I have had with them or other friends.
I am travelling home to celebrate the death anniversary of my Father – its more of a group huddle time for my mother, sister and I. This is something that we have been doing ritualistically in the last three years. No matter where I and my sister are, we make sure that we are home with our mother on this day to remember my Father. None of the three of us have been able to completely make peace with the fact that he is no more with us. Going by our Hindu beliefs, death is not the end of life and souls move on to various paths one of them being rebirth. If that is so, I sometimes wonder if my Father really is somewhere around looking at us.
Although I haven’t seen or felt anything in my own life which would lead me to believe that there is life after death, there were occurrences and stories in my father’s life which sometimes would spill over to our lives which is why I could never completely deny the presence of departed souls around us. My father could communicate with his parents and his elder brother in ways that were beyond our comprehension.
There are stories of his losing money and then being told of the whereabouts by his elder brother in his dreams. Now that would not be too weird had it not been for the fact that his elder brother had passed away years back. There’s also one story that my mother once narrated and that was of an incident a day or two after her marriage when she dreamt of a couple calling her from a window in the room that she was sleeping in and blessing her. She did not recognize them but since the dream was so vivid, she shared it with my father. My father felt that he was familiar with the description and showed her some pictures and to everyone’s surprise they were the same people from the dream – they were the pictures of my grandparents who had died long before the marriage and there was hardly any way that she could have met them or seen their pictures before.
My tryst with these unnatural occurrences surrounding my father’s life for the first time was during my childhood. We were living in a rented house and our relationship with the land owner was quite amicable. But we were absolutely oblivious of his intention to evict us. One morning my father woke up from a dream which he shared with my mother. He said that he saw his mother asking him to leave the house and look for another place. She said that the owner was evil and that my father must leave the place. That very afternoon, the landowner sent men to paint our house - something that we were not informed of and therefore were not ready for as it would require a lot of shifting, packing and covering of our belongings. An obvious argument between my father and the landowner ensued and he asked us to leave within a week’s time. We later learnt that the argument was premeditated because he had already planned to let out the apartment to someone else at a higher price.
There were many more such incidents but the one that I remember well enough to mention here is probably the last of them that I am aware of. I wasn’t home that often after I joined the medical college so even if there were more incidents, I probably wouldn’t know. Getting through the medical college is a tough task and students in each state take those exams in numbers of hundreds of thousands in India
The first day of the exams had Biology and the second day had Physics and Chemistry. While the Biology paper was quite easy for most people, Physics and Chemistry papers were the killer ones. I fared alright in the Biology paper just like everyone else. The Physics and Chemistry papers were combined and so you had to split your time between the two papers. I started with Chemistry and got so engrossed in answering all the questions that I forgot to look at my watch. By the time I was done with Chemistry, I realised that I just have 20 mins to complete 100 marks of Physics. I scrambled through and answered a few here and there and by the time my paper was snatched from me by the invigilator, I probably had left out on around 40 marks worth questions and I wasn’t even sure if the ones that I answered had been done correctly. When I went back home, I told my father about what had happened. He was devastated and almost in tears – it was as if all his dreams were shattered, all his efforts wasted down the drain. I wasn’t sad about the exams, because I had made up my mind about what I would do if that did not work but seeing my father so depressed made me feel guilty. He was sitting in the balcony. I went up to him and told him I was sorry but that did not wipe out the gloominess. He quietly went back to his bed and I staid back in the balcony cursing myself for being so irresponsible.
Moments later, he returned and this time he had a contented smile on his face. I was perturbed by this sight and was unaware how to react. He told me “I know you didn’t do as bad as you tell you did”. I looked at him confusingly and he continued, “I know you are going to make it”. I thought to myself, “God! He is unable to make peace with the fact that I probably won’t be a doctor. Oh I have messed him up so bad, he is going nuts!” He calmly held my hand and said that he spoke with his mother and that she said that I would make it through and my rank would have a 7 in it. Seats for medical colleges in India
A month and a half later, the results were out and so my father was all set to check them out but I wasn’t. But, I didn’t want him to see it first so I got ready, picked up my cycle and speeded my way to the centre. My father followed in a bike. By the time I reached there, there were already hundreds flocking in front of the bulletin boards to check their ranks. I pushed my way through the weeping, laughing and shouting lot towards the bulletin board and scanned through the list. 1..2...3…4……..100…..not there. Next page … 101..102………173…174 …175 …176. 176 !!!!!!! Holy Cow! I looked at it in disbelief. It said Nochiketa Mohanty …rank 176. “That’s not possible”, I said to myself. I checked the number a couple of times and checked all other details to match it with my card. I ran out of the crowd and towards the gate of the centre, and my father was already there. Someone had already told him that I have made it through – he grabbed me and gave me a tight hug. On my way back I thought to myself – 176 ! That does have a 7 in it ….
Although I am not fortunate enough to carry those abilities to communicate with my father like he could with his mother, these experiences have allowed me to open my mind to the surreal and acknowledge the presence of the supernatural. Our Hindu beliefs say that those souls which are unable to do away with “Sansarik Moh Maaya”, i.e., earthly attachments even after they are dead, stay around on earth and do not achieve “Moksha”, i.e., freedom from the attachments and path to eternal peace of heaven until they find themselves contented. I know he loved us as much as his mother loved him and so logically he should be somewhere around looking at us. As much as I want his soul to rest in peace, I know he probably is watching us as giving up on the attachments would be so unlike him. I just wish I could connect with him too … just once at least.
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