Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero by Santosh Jha (ebook offline .TXT) 📖

and accept that in the heaven of marriage, violence, both of thought and action, shall have no place. All conflicts and contradictions shall therefore be brought up with utmost transparency and listed. The wife and husband hereby agree that such listed issues shall be brought to bilateral discussion only and that too when both are in best of the state of body and mind. Any of the two, who shows first sign of violence of thought, will automatically lose his plea. The concept of collective well-being will be the guiding prudence for resolution of conflicts and contradictions. Non resolution will be preferred if a mutual resolution is not arrived at. The final say however shall be of the wife as sanity falls in her side.

Love and compassion shall be the core virtue of wife-husband relationship. Even in the worst of situations between wife and husband, in the long journey of married life; the husband shall remain with his wife, in thought and action, as a Father-figure to her. The wife shall, come what may, remain with her husband, in thought and action, as a Mother-figure to him. Marriage can cease to be, love and compassion can never. The wife-husband shall remain mother-father to each other, even in separation, till death lets them apart.

I now tell you what I have been doing since I became sure of what I wanted to. My wife had already decided to quit her job so that we had most of the moments together. I was sure that I did not want to return to media but was not certain what next I can do. We both wanted to do something as work is a sign of cultured person; but the trouble was that we wanted to do it together. It was she who suggested we should go to a village and look for some simple but honest work doing it together. We decided that we give it a try and for the next three years, we would attempt in all seriousness to make the best out of our village experience. We would review the situation after three years. So, here we are; in a village, making a start to our new life.

Initially, I must admit, I was worried whether we will be able to find something worth doing in the village. I was more apprehensive about whether she would cope with the tough life in a village. How wrong I was. Only in a month, I started wondering how many things I have the options to do? And most amazingly, she has adapted so well to the life in village as if she belonged to the place since ages. She revealed it to me that she had done a long stint with an NGO in rural areas as part of her management studies.

We have pooled in some land and together we raise vegetables in it. We are being well supported by people around us. My experience as a journalist has proved handy. I had personally seen a President Medal winner farmer successfully managing four crops simultaneously from a land. We are replicating the experience here and initial results are very encouraging. I am a lazy bone but my wife is so full of energy. She has already organized some village women and formed a self-help group. She is brilliant with organizational skills and her banking background has helped her organize micro-financing support for the group. You all will be amazed how much she has done in such a short time. She has earned admiration of half the village. You ask anyone in the village about Laptop Bahu and they will reach you to her. She carries her laptop all the time and helps anyone get any information about anything under the Sun. She is already into a big project and you all will be amazed how she goes about it to make her project a success. She is planning to open a rural bank which will offer small loans to women enterprises. Nominal interest would be charged and taken only from the profits of the enterprise. She has devised a novel way of garnering money for her bank. She has written all her relatives and friends to send in whatever money they would have spent on her marriage and the gift for the bank. Her parents offered to give her huge money which they said they had kept for her marriage but she has accepted only one lakh rupees from them. My parents had little option but to send in a matching amount. Already, six lakh rupees have been pledged to her but she wants to start the bank with ten lakh rupees. When the villagers got to know about it, they came up with innovative ideas to pool in the rest of the money. The youth club of the village announced that they would celebrate the Durga Puja in Dusehra this year with simplicity and thus save rupees one lakh which they pledged to the bank. A local politician also offered to give one lakh rupees. But she politely refused the help. She has better ideas for creating the corpus. We are not in any haste. We do it with a speed that suits us.

If you ask me how I find my new life, I would say I am amazed how much the rural areas have to offer you, in all aspects of life. You will feel them only when you shed your inhibitions and accept the bounties that are there to be accepted and enjoyed. I am amazed how much I have found that interests me and prompts me to work on. I have already picked up something very interesting. I got to know that over the period, we have lost many species and varieties of flora and fauna. Only a century back, we had hundreds of delectable varieties of rice which we have lost. There were at least 50 varieties of mangoes that were grown till only 50 years back but we have lost all such species. In my village alone, there were more than 30 species of cows and cattle which we have lost. Similar is the situation about fishes, local vegetables and fruits. I found that still some of the lost species can be retrieved and some endangered ones can be saved. I have already involved myself on this project of reviving the lost species of flora and fauna and saving the endangered ones. In this connection, I started meeting old people; many of them are 100 years old. You will be amazed, in my village and in five villages around us I have found 15 people who are 100 years of age or above. Six of them are in good shape. I have also listed 26 people who are 90 or above. Talking to them about the lost species, it struck to me that they too are the endangered species of humanity. It clicked to me that I should write a book on them. And, be sure I am writing it. This book will not contain their views on the secret of longevity. This book will have ideas and mental picture of how life was when they were young and how it is when we are in the same age. I and my wife cannot help but cry when I hear from the 100 year olds how they lived their lives in utmost miseries. There were regular floods, famines, fire and epidemics and they would lose everything, including their dear ones. But still, they survived and prospered as there was love and compassion, camaraderie and brotherhood and above all, the firm faith in the ultimate justice of the almighty, the unflinching trust that good things would return in their lives. You put these with what our media shows in our popular soaps about our contemporary families and society, you would feel what we have lost in the short but decisive march of civilization.

My wife has been prompting me to work simultaneously on the lost traditional healing techniques that were once so popular and very effective. These healing wisdoms include the local system of herbal medicines, faith healing and tantric healing system. I wonder, how much and to what extent I can do these things. What I enjoy most is farming. And we have revived the village theatre which my father says was very active and regular in his days. This will help me learn music and dance. We have already found a Guru.

We are happy. We have been able to pick up what we wanted. We are together always and learning new meanings of life. We have been successful in our journey to zero. Every new day in our lives, a positive is added and enhances our satisfaction. But, the picture is still not perfect. Now that we have done our primary sketches, we want to make the picture look perfect. You all know what I am talking about.

Utta has been to my paternal village once. He knows it very well that it is just five-six hours drive from your place. We could have chosen any village but she rightly pointed out that things would be easy in our own village. I feel; we have taken the first good step towards a life that should lead us to larger satisfaction and joy. But, she and I know it very well that we are missing something very important.

Last week, I asked a 102 year old man in my village, who is still active, what he believed was the true joy of life? You know what he said? He said, ‘enjoying a meal together with those whom you love and call as your own is the real joy’. I asked him was he sure that life’s goodness was as simple as he made it to be? He smiled and replied, ‘All good things in life are simple. The trouble of humanity is that the goodness is so simple that most people believe it cannot be good if it is this simple and available so easily; almost gratuitously’.

I and my wife desire to attain this simple joy of life. If we desire to have five plates instead of two on our dining table, are we asking too much? In fact, we do not even have plates and dining table. Our open kitchen does have space for five banana leaves on the ground and we have enough banana trees in our garden. Not only we but the entire village wishes for that to happen as my wife has told them that she would give them a big bhoj (party) the day our kitchen would have five banana leaves instead of two. The old man has taught us the prayer which he says must be said to the God thanking him for allowing the opportunity of having a meal together with our loved ones. We have saved the prayer for the day of five banana leaves. So, now even the God is waiting for this to happen.

Yours stupid,

Mayank.

Ten hours later, five large banana leaves waited for the start. Twenty households had already sent in more than 28 different vegetable and fish dishes in small bowls for the guests as part of the prevailing tradition of the village. Three households had sent in messages that their contributions would take a few minutes more. A man was sent in to fetch some more banana leaves to accommodate the new arrivals and eight different pickles and chutneys. God waited… the prayers waited. All good things in life are simple...so bad that it takes time for them to happen. The wait is worth it. But, let us not wait…

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Accept My Gratitude

Writing something is a daunting task as there is always a lurking apprehension of it not being in utility for some readers. I however feel at ease, because of my faith in magnanimity of readers. I am happily sure; you shall forgive if my efforts could not be up to your expectations. Thank you