That Place

That unforgettable place …

I cannot seem to get it out of my mind.

It had no name. There is no village to note the location. I had no compass to mark the coordinates.

But I am sure I could recognise it even in my sleep.

It is the resting place. It is the destination. It feels like it is THE spot that I journeyed for all my life. It is where I lost my soul.

The air, the sunlight from behind the Himalayan rock wall, the relative sizes and shrinking of my body, the mountains, the sky and the imagined beyond – all made it surreal.

I have a photograph. I have many photographs.

But I am not sure I want to see them again…

“Chedo toh woh shola hai – choo lo toh bas shabnam hai….” Words from a pretty song that describe my not wanting to disturb that memory “While you chase it, it appears to be a flame or a spark – but when you finally do touch it is nothing but a dew drop”

Sometimes when you look at photographs, instead of reviving the memories, we lose the ethereal emotions attached to them…

Sometimes when you revisit a precious place, it loses the halo that memory has bestowed upon it.

Not always. But sometimes – so it is a risk to revisit.

Maybe that is why in the 7 subsequent trips to that region I have avoided going to that particular precious spot. The region itself is tedious to reach and that spot would have needed just a few hours more to visit. But I didn’t do it.

Subconsciously afraid to losing what I had found there?

But sometimes the yearning is so consuming that it becomes necessary to reach out once again. And so I pulled out the photos.

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And maybe I will revisit. That spot in which my soul found its destination.

And became one with the universe. I lost the “I”.

Atma Parmatma. Formless. Thoughtless. And assumed the “whole” form again.

Seamlessly one with the universe. For those few moments. Lived in that memory.

And then real life sucked me back into its fold.

Those moments that I left back there – I will go back and look for them. Under the rocks. On that dried river bed. In the crevasses of those mountains. Somewhere out there maybe my soul is floating around in the light Himalayan breeze in the mild sunlight and the chilling mountain shadows. content. fulfilled. silent. just being. living that oneness with the universe.

*These words maybe make no sense unless the experience has been experienced. And those who have lived that moment will recognise the sublimity contained in these words. Those who haven’t will find them empty and even whacko! 🙂 – as we say in Mumbai “What to do!??!!”

jm
July 2017