The Book

Where was I? I was entangled in things that mattered to me. But yet it was not suffocating. I didn’t feel like I was bound. I felt free. I realised I have time to sit back keeping all my works aside and simply watch the evening turn golden. I could relax and chat with friends unbothered about the ticking in my watch. May be I found peace in my chaos.

Earlier I used be bothered alot about consequences of my actions. It was like walking on eggshells. I became too good at not breaking them I forgot how to walk normally. When one becomes too detached from self, mind will start deteriorating. Anything you put inside will get consumed by worms.

I was struggling to find my way back and I had begun to succeed somehow. Then I found this book. This beautiful book that looked at peace in the book shelf in Mumbai Airport. I picked it up instantly – “A Book of New Beginnings; Some Words for Living, Edited and with an Introduction by Jerry Pinto”. I am still not sure whether its the book cover or the book title which is most beautiful. This happened a few months after I started my own lawyer office.

I have always found it difficult to read books which tries to teach the reader as to how to live. No-one can teach anyone as to how to live. That is something someone will have to find out on their own. But people can always share and take you with them to experience their journey. That is what the book did to me. Each time I became confused or thoughts get convoluted I could find someone else resonating my mind through their words. Sometime in an excerpt, sometimes in a poem written in an unknown language and translated beautifully, sometimes in a letter written by a retired Head Mistress to her children, some times in a photograph and sometimes in a story. But to realise that others have stood where I am now and wondered where they were going gives a strange yet warm feeling of companion ship. It taught me that it doesn’t matter whether I am misunderstood as long as I understood myself. It helped me realise that the past, how disturbing, traumatic or exploitative it may be was not terrible. All the bad and good things that had happened to me together made me who I am right now. It helped me to laugh at hypocrisy, cope up with trauma, ignore the narcissists and realise my shortcomings.

The book is like a Bible to me. Not because it taught me how to love God but because it shared my journey towards loving myself. There is not even a single sentence in the book which I don’t connect with. It is impossible for me to pick a favourite line.Today my mind was humming “Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in the warmth of human relations.”*

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*Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand & Stars (translated by Lewis Galantière)

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