Follow Your Heart. Lead Your Mind. You'll find a window everywhere.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Death of a friendship. Birth of a shadow.


A death is always painful. The pain becomes unbearable if the death occurs to a childhood friend. Someone with whom so many days, so much things had been shared. Naturally, unabashedly and gleefully!

Pratik (name changed, intentionally) was such a pal of mine.

I met him through a common friend while three of us used to stay together in the same locality.

Pratik was an ever chirpy character. And, not to mention, a genuine prey to my nonstop practical jokes and leg pulling. But he would never complain rather used to accept my menace and me smilingly.

School days got over… college days flew by… I left Kolkata and my attachment with Pratik gradually turned into a deep detachment.

When I came back to Kolkata, I tried to re-establish the connection; however, god knows why, the same old tinkering was felt missing all the time during our new series of rendezvous.

That trademark chirpiness, happiness, smiles, and every little thing happened to be absent on and inside Pratik.

I used to wonder, why?! What happened to my dear friend?

I kept enquiring into him and his activities from others and time to time from him himself. But, in spite of my dog-digging, I could never manage any bone of and about Pratik.

With time, tension and daily grinding of life, the detachment became a huge distance once again between him and me.

All of a sudden yesterday itself i.e. on April 21, 2010, my cell rang. I picked up the call. Another school friend voiced out, “Sushovan, Pratik is no more.”

“Pratik is no more.” Such a simple expression, isn’t it? My prank-punching-bag is no more.

So, I didn’t react at all to the call. I took a cab from office, first to reach Pratik’s house then to arrive at the crematorium.

Pratk was lying there. His face was covered with a white sheet of cloth. Honestly, I didn’t feel like seeing his face even for once for the last time.

I cared, and still care a hoot for his death. I have always been concerned about his life; his live existence… and frankly, I generally give a damn to death – whoever embraces it.

I am neither sad nor down with Pratik’s demise. Instead, I’m cross. I’m angry and I’m irritated like a swine amidst the saint.

Because, my childhood friend didn’t bother to let me know that he didn’t have any job for the last one and half years. He didn’t feel like telling me about his prolonged and killer diabetes; about his eye infection; about his septicemia.

My childhood friend was shy to ask for any help or support from me.

So, he decided to die like a bloody loser; like a creeper; like an insect without bothering me at all.

And why didn’t he ask for it? Because he didn’t want me to oblige him.

Never knew, nor wish to know as a matter of fact, from when “friendship has become an obligation”.

Truly, while a friend dies like this, he actually kills the very existence and essence of the feeling called “friendship” and that hardly makes me sad rather leaves me to live like a mad in the world of silent pandemonium and never-to-be-filled-up void in the shadow of mine.

And it hurts. Really hurts.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Do the FKP

Almost two out of every three are spiritual nowadays. Happiness and contentment are on sale like hotcakes from the counters of spiritual gurus and book publishers all around. However, notwithstanding such an overdose of spirituality for ushering in total peace and global harmony; still there is no end to bomb blasts, riots and fights, divorces, etc within societies, localities and families.

Does it mean that spirituality is not so good then?

No, it’s not like that. Instead, I think there is a wide gap or gulf very much evident and prevalent in our understanding of the FKP i.e. the three basic premises: Faith, Knowledge and Practice of spirituality.

Let me begin with Faith.

What is Faith?

Believing in something rather blindly and following it thereafter? Not really. If it is so, then there would have been no difference between fundamentalism and Faith.

Faith is the base and the art and science of setting up targets for self, as well as for others and in the process developing individual and collective trust to meet those targets, gradually.

If life is a ship, Faith is the rudder. And, as it’s said that a rudderless ship never reaches its goal, exactly in the same way it can be told that a faithless life is never able to live or even survive.

Knowledge is not only about knowing things. Well, there lies in at least a rudimentary difference between Knowledge and mugging. Knowledge is actually the composite effect of theories, practicalities, Faith and of course commonsense. And it gets profound, proven and kind of full-proof while shared with others.

A true Knowledge should always be receptive to others’ doubts and challenges; should welcome debates and arguments; and should be conclusive enough but reclusive with an openness to acknowledge, appreciate and accept the omnipresence of lives and their spirit on the different and relative scales such as socio-economic background, education, culture, language, etc.

Knowledge is the compus of the ship called life.

Withdraw it from life, and it can be seen and felt how directionless, meaningless and futile life will become, then and there, ensuring nothing but a pathetic finish.

If Faith is the rudder and Knowledge is the compus, then what is Practice in the ship?

Practice is the driving wheel, which helps one sail the ship i.e. life, successfully. Lest Practice is absent, no Faith or Knowledge can do any magic or miracle for anyone for sure. In fact, Practice holds the key for one to understand everyday, every minute whether his / her Faith and Knowledge are adequate, right and productive or not in light of reality.

No Practice means zero Faith and zero Knowledge and simply a defunct life in the bed of only shies, lies and cries, bringing injuries and insults to the real spirit and happiness of life and living.

Which is why, it’s better to keep things simple and form the life’s triangle with Faith, Knowledge and Practice (FKP) in order to be elevated on earth by treading in the path of spirituality, which is no boon from heaven but you and your contemplations and complementing actions.

After all, life is action, not just contemplation. So, DO your Karma, do the FKP!

PS: If you thought that I had made sense, feel free to write back at rana12feb@gmail.com to share your FKP with me.