CHERISH with HARISH

Bajju, Rajasthan. 9 pm In Bajju, every morning I wake up for chai and smile at strangers, who break their 'Being strangers' tag with that beautiful smile. In a similar way, there is a 'Good-morning' which breaks the unwanted ice, in the rural area across India . People living in Indian cities don't know this concept of wishing strangers, early morning. Coming from an urban Indian background, I also thought that this is a very western concept. I realised its importance when I spent days travelling with my foreigner friends. It would just be a smile, an acknowledgement to a complete stranger. But my recent shift to rural India made me realise that it is much more common here to smile here than anywhere else. When we look at the bigger picture, we always think that the villages have things to learn from the cities, but now when I look at the micro-level, I realise that the villages are any day more 'advanced' than the so-called 'modern' cities.

9:30 pm, Bajju, Rajasthan. I was feeling trapped in the Delhi clouds. The clouds were of pollution, of confusion and of pressure I was not liking. I had started doing theatre, but somehow I wanted to do something deeper. I had always admired nature, but never experienced it as close as I wanted to. I had always been somewhat a free soul, a free bird, but I guess I was not getting space to fly. It was very sudden, very random, and I packed my bags to Rishikesh. I somehow liked it. I had started enjoying the concept of self-exploration. I was enjoying the process. I came back home to Gurgaon and on the internet I met an old friend online, who was working in the Thar desert. I asked her about the job. She asked me for a weekend's visit. Keeping my fingers crossed, I left to see the work-place. The desert was not a new place for me, but had never been there for a job. I had been called there for a film-maker's post. Adding to this, I would also do a teacher's, a theatre

In search of 'me', I travel the universe, I realise that 'me' is, when I actually see the 'others'

Where? When you travel a lot, you don't understand where did the sun set, and where did it rise! Where?

He knew he could never win the game, but still he played it. And then in the final match, he did not play, someone else, someone divine played for him, whom he could feel. 'They' finally, won the match! They did. :)

https://youtu.be/jz_ByDlnhRw

Life, I guess, is a big circle. If we look at it carefully, it has many circles- One spiritual, one emotional, one economical, one social. So, basically, life is a culmination of concentric circles, with our mind at the centre. Sometimes we need a tangent. A tangent, by definition is a line which just touches the circle from out side at a point. When I look at it, we are usually so busy with life that we need a tangent to get out and see where we are. I was chatting on facebook and suddenly I found this old friend. I asked him his whereabouts and he said in a sudden reply, that he was at Rishikesh. I was in a circle or loop called 'LIFE'. I wanted to take a tangent. I wanted to see the things which I always had desired to be with. As an instinctive reaction, I asked him, "Can I join him?" I am sure Negi (my friend) would have been surprised a bit, because that was quite an unwelcome response I gave him. We had not met in a couple of years and this was a good space-