c u on top - satyabrata dam

  Once I knew a spirited shepherd from the Himalaya, who lived an extremely excited life, though all his compatriots thought he was insane. To him everything was a reason for excitement, merriment and a deep sense of wonder. Though completely illiterate (by our bookish scale) and ignorant of anything outside his village and his grazing ground and the mountains where he lived, he was perhaps one of the wisest people I have ever known. He had cracked the code of a happy life.   He would wake up in the morning and worship the sun, with this big gleeful face and sparkling eyes as if he had never seen a sunrise before. And he would declare to no one in particular that what an amazing day it was and how amazing it would be. Then he would light fire, again full of gratitude and prayer to the fire gods, uttering that this was the best fire in the world and then make tea and utter loudly that this tea was better than any beverage in the world, befitting for the gods. He would then guide his

  Throughout my life, as I ambled across the globe, from one mountain to another, I have met countless people, both economically poor, materialistically-deprived as well as those economically wealthy and materialistically-endowed. And to each of them I have often asked if they were happy. I have particularly asked those who were at the two extreme opposite ends of the economic spectrum – the very poor and the very rich. And through their responses I have realized that there is no direct collinear relation between wealth and material possessions to the quantum of happiness. The more of former does not necessarily translate into more of the latter. In fact, contrary.   When we reflect upon our life and its welfare, what all parameters do we look at! Do we look for what we have achieved, what we possess, who all are our family and friends, the degree of freedom of choice that we can exercise, our level of happiness and contentment, who we truly are and who we have become, how many of

  A year that literally began for me at the roof of Africa, atop Kilimanjaro amidst eclectic group of friends and held uncharted possibilities has now come to its pre-destined end. That the year was unique is a hyperbolic understatement. It was downright unprecedented and never even imagined in my wildest fantasy and mind you I do have some magnificent flights of fancy.   2020 was a cataclysmic, apocalyptic, and to a very large extent pessimistic year for the entire planet. A pandemic of this proportion had never happened before in the human history and I pray to almighty may never be repeated. That it was necessary, some ruminated, if only to teach us humans a lesson in humility and to pause our all out war on annihilating our planet of her resources, including species of all kinds. Sadly as the year sunk into oblivion we haven’t learned any lessons at all. Anger, envy, hatred, cruelty and mistrust and all such human failings are very much still in the offing and perhaps in gr