In search of divinity

    The Heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.... Blaise Pascal      ‘Tell us the one unforgettable experience of your life’ was the question thrown out of the blue by my seniors. It was fresher’s night at the Dept of Electronics & Comn Engineering, IIT Kharagpur. I was a little old for a fresher but I had been there and done that having been to war torn nations, swept away by a Himalayan Stream and so on. However, to my surprise I  found myself responding , ‘The day the pretty girl in my Class who I was in love with all the fervour that only a 15 year old can have, walked up to me  and said ‘Do you have last year’s question papers?’’.  That night the moon was rounder, brighter and the cool night breeze carried a fragrance that I still can’t forget.           Now I am a lot older and wiser – and yet still long for the unbearable sweetness of existence when I was in love or infatu...

‘I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;  I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind ……. ’.           This poem by Francis Thompson describes my existence from the ages of 12 to 37. I consciously tried to avoid God all my adult life, starting from when I was 12 years old  and ironically just after  my Sacred Thread ceremony. I denied him totally and absolutely as I got fascinated by Science and reason and logic. All the rituals just made no sense. At the age of 20 I was on top of the world having secured a good respectable job but still felt a strange sense of uneasiness, of having missed out on my true potential.  Now it was the turn of my brother to undergo the Thread ceremony. Perhaps, the Head  Priest could sense my cockiness and doubt. During a lull in the proceedings he casually asked me if I performed the Gayatri Jap every day. I told him I didn’t believe i...

     In the journey towards divinity, Kedarnath has always been a Ridge too far.  It is one among the Char Dhams or four primary religious destinations, the others being Badrinath, Yamnotri and Gangotri. While Badrinath is accessible by road, the other destinations involve trekking.  Kedarnath is perhaps  the most difficult to access. Personally there has been another connect - in 2013 a trip planned to Kailash Manasarovar had to be abandoned after the cloudburst that inundated the various tributaries of the Ganga. The worst hit was perhaps the Mandakini river flowing through the Kedarnath valley.  This time around we were successful in going to Kailash albeit with a few hiccups ( An account of the trip is on  http://chiragdeep.blogspot.in/2017/09/a-visit-to-kailash-manasarovar-part-i.html ).  Having visited Badrinath,  Yamnotri and Gangotri, and of course Kailash the time was now opportune to visit Kedarnath.     ...

Brief Recap       Part 1 ( http://chiragdeep.blogspot.in/2017/09/a-visit-to-kailash-manasarovar-part-i.html )  covered the experiences of 40 pilgrims who had gathered from all over the country in Delhi on 12 Aug. Part II ( http://chiragdeep.blogspot.in/2017/09/a-visit-to-kailash-manasarovar-part-ii.html )  described the sojourn through Kumaon Hills over a period of nearly ten days till they crossed over into China on 26 Aug. Expanding the frontiers of understanding       As we walked down to our buses waiting 500 metres below the Lipulekh pass, I mused on the history of the region. Our Rishis had a unique understanding of the geographical frontiers of the Indian civilization. Recognizing that the regions around Kailash and Manasarovar region were the source of three rivers that fed the Indian sub continent - Indus, Sutlej,  and the Brahmaputra, they extended the ideological frontiers by weaving myth and legend around t...

Sunset over Manasarovar Brief Recap              Part I  ( http://chiragdeep.blogspot.in/2017/09/a-visit-to-kailash-manasarovar-part-i.html )  covered the experiences of the 40 pilgrims from all over the country who had got together in Delhi to undergo medical tests and complete visa formalities before departing for Almora. After many ifs and buts, the Yatra finally commenced on 16 Aug.  Sojourn through Kumaon Hills     Once we left Delhi we were in the competent hands of the Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam (KMVN) who had a mighty job on their hands since the entire schedule had been disrupted. Batch 16 had to be retrieved from Sirkha where the bridge at Malpa had been washed away. Batches 14 onwards would now have to be helilifted from  Budhi to Dharchula on their return journey and Batch 16 onwards would have to be helilifted both for onward and return journeys. Apart from this, the civil popula...

              ‘Moko kahan dhoonde re bande, main tho tere paas re’ or “Where do you search for me, I am always close to you” sings Kabir. Unfortunately, the stresses of daily living and the frustrations of hopes belied and expectations not met give the lie to this claim. I tend to agree with Osho when he says, “ The old man has been a worshipper of dead Gods in temples and mosques and synagogues ... the new  man is one who denies God but will instead find his living God in the trees, in the birds, in the rivers, in the oceans, in the mountains, and in the stars...”.         The insistent pull of the mystical and the divine demands to be heard...and this time we decided to heed the call by applying for the Kailash Manasarovar  Yatra organised by the Ministry of External Affairs. The lucky draw proved how unlucky we were ...... we were put on the waiting list for Batch 17 scheduled to start from 12 Aug in Delhi....