The Secret Of Life - (dedicated to lily)

It was one of those days when the world seemed a little(so to say) hotter than usual.The mind was in a lull owing to lack of relief, be it climatic or social or intellectual.

A summer in the south,the tropics, is more like getting burnt by touching a hot pan. There is a build up of heat in the beginning of april , that peaks during the middle of the month and slowly fades away by the end of may. It comes like a sting, a painful one that lasts a few seconds; bear with it and its done.

Northern summers can be gruelling. Besides, delhi is a totally different story. It gets warm in the beginning of April, then hotter; then hotter still and it goes on till eternity. Your sitution is more like that grill of tikka that someone forgot to remove from the tandoor.Nothing around to save you, no one to hear u scream; you will have to outlive the heat.There are days in mid-june that'll make a hardline communist mumble prayers begging for relief.


The pool near India Gate and its surroundings of lush grass and tall trees seemed an ideal relief for a season like this. So, one fine afternoon I boarded a 'metro' and gladly faced an army of marauding commuters who mashed the life out of me in the metro coach, all in the hope of spending of spending a cool evening by the pool side.


Later in the evening, I found myself talkin to a municipal employee at the above mentioned destination.

"where is all the water that was in this pool?!"
"we drained it. "
"...why?"
"because they breed mosquitos."
"..so?"
"mosquitos spread dengue"
"oh!"
"and dengue kills people"
" .. ok .. enough.. I uderstand "
Well, they can drain all the lakes in delhi, but atleast the garden was still standing.
I quickly muttered a short prayer thanking god that trees didnt breed mosquitos.The Delhi Municipal Corporation can go to any end.


The heat kept the frontal lobe of my brain in a constant state of stress , as a result of whichmy thoughts that day could not embark on any intellectual pursuit,except for that one conclusion I made that day as I observed a couple ( comprising a male and female of course) cuddling in a shady spot. To be cuddling in a suffocating humid evening like this,love is not just blind but numb as well, I concluded.


The triggerin spark that made me write this episode is, however not the couple(comprising a male and female). It was the secret of creation itself that dawned on me that day as i walked in the summer heat. The joy of a discovery is unsurpassed by any other type of pleasure. At that moment of sheer exhiliration(as a direct consequence of my discovery) I was able to understand why Aristotle ran naked in the streets shouting " I've found it ! I found it ! " . While runnin naked like that in the middle of a town where civilised men and women lived , it'd have been more apt had he screamed "I've lost it ! I've lost it " .


What I had discovered that day, was the secret of creation itself. For everything that God has made there exists an anti-thesis in a manner of speaking. For example, there is darkness just as there is light; there is anti-matter just as there is matter; there is good just as there is bad. All this just flashed in my head when I saw it. God made summers. God also made kulfi ! At that instant when i saw a "Kulfi" ,life seemed so beautiful with all its flaws. And a humble kesar kulfi taught me the meaning of life. So i bought the object that embodied witin itself the very dynamics of the universe, and instantly felt ready and rejuvenated to face another week of summer. So, moral of the story-- eat kulfi in summers.