In the wild

 I have posted below an extempore essay which I had written around 6 years back in my college.I have titled it "In the Wild".

Yes! I was in the wild both physically and mentally.It had been the worst day in my life .Being in the limelight for all the years with my very own charisma , I was down and out due to some unfortunate turn of events. I did't want to be among people anymore. I did't want to be a subject of debates for all the wrong reasons and I didn't want to be the symbol of shame for my family. Hence, after thinking hard, I had decided to take up 'Vanaprastha' , given up all my material desires and started travelling in search of inner peace through the woods.

I was not sure as to how how long I had been walking through the wild bushes, but I knew one thing for sure, that I had traveled far from my home and its own relational entanglements. I had walked through the entire length of the forest accompanied by the continuous buzz of insects revamped by the incessant rains.  I was starting to feel light, probably thanks to the heavy downpour which I believed to have washed off some of my sins apart from hiding my tears. The rain had receded then into a slight drizzle.The moon was playing hide and seek with the dark clouds.

Feeling cold, I removed my red shirt, which was completely wet . With a numb mind and an equally numb body, I struggled to drag myself to a small cliff which was near a railway track. While moving, I heard the sound of water flowing furiously . On adjusting my eye to the distance, there was a huge railway bridge with old-fashioned girders standing atop a ferocious river nearly full due to the rains. Then I saw right in front of  my eyes, one of the pillars of the bridge collapsing and few girders tumbling into the river like a pack of cards. Is the nature too trying to show her fury ? With this shocking scene flashing before my eyes, I sat on the cliff.

"Oh, Almighty! Your ardent devotee has nowhere to go but you. Show me the path to you. Make me listen to the devotional music, one last time. Show me the light so I could run towards it and reach you", I cried loud at the Heavens with my eyes closed. Just then, I listened to his sound, my Lord's sound, but, it was intermittent. I strained my ears towards the direction of the sound. It was increasing with time and then I saw 'The Light' zooming towards me . I jumped on to the railway track with my shirt and waited to catch of a glimpse of the God in his chariot. In the place of horses' neighing, it was the noise of metal on metal. It was the 'Garib rath '  the chariot on wheels from Indian Railways, a train, flashing its head light towards me and beyond .

Then I realized the inevitable. I ran in the middle of the track towards the speeding train . The sleepers and gravel soaked in the monsoon caused me to trip and slip. Still, holding my breath, I continued running and waved my red shirt hoping that the charioteer aka driver would be able to stop the train. Gathering all the might from my lungs, I shouted to catch his attention. The driver saw my signal and brought the train to a screeching halt, just in time before it could have plunged into the river from the bridge and also before crushing me over. Buoyed by happiness to have averted danger for many and lack of food for almost a day, I slipped into a state of unconsciousness.

I woke up the next morning in a hospital bed with a bottle of glucose injected into my vein in the left hand. I tried to sit straight, just then one of my relative gave the newspaper with a wry smile. Puzzled by his expression, I took the newspaper stretching my left hand.

 The newspaper headline read "Former minister ousted by corruption charges saves thousands of people from a near accident. Is this a political drama?" with an inset of photo of me. I thought, "Oh God! What I did for dharma is interpreted as drama. Are you practicing dharma or drama?" and tried to close my mind as I was back to where I used to be, web of entanglements.

SlamFest

"Prasoon!Switch off that laptop and check whether you need these books or not. If not, I will give it to someone. I have never seen you reading any of these.Someone else will at-least use them." Telling this, my mom placed a cardboard of old records, books and rough sheets near me. Having no other go, I started checking the contents .I found my first article on 'Winners are not born but made' in between some old grammar books.I read through it and realized that my English was better than how it is now. I was sure that I would not find anything that I would like to keep with me or something I would like to cherish. But still, I was checking each book just to pass time. Just then, I saw a notebook carrying cute designs and the letters 'SLAMBOOK' on its cover.

Slambook , a book meant to get your dear ones write down their memories about you, which both love to cherish for the rest of their lives.It was my slambook which I had passed over to my classmates during the last days of my college. I had always believed that my college life had almost all the ingredients to make a tamil commercial masala entertainer. The only things missing were the emotional quotient and a fitting finale(Note: Don't ask about heroine, since heroines are only meant for songs in such masala entertainers, I completely ignored that part.:) Really :P). But the last few days in my college gave me these too. I still couldn't forget those days for many a reasons, one of them being 'slambook'.

During the last 30-40 days of our college, every stationery shop around college were having bundles of notes/books for sale and they were christened slambooks. They were found in every design and size,some of them looked like telephone directories, others like bounded maths notes.Whatever may be the size, however the paper quality may be, I feel no one would have agreed with even half the price at which those books were sold. But during those days, people were running from one shop to another to get the slambook of their dream(some had dreamed about the designs too). Some of my friends had brought sketches,glitter pens, stickers blah,blah to make it look special. Since I had no other important work, I had also run with them for these :)

Slamooks though meant to relive memories were creating fresh incidents/impacts which people wanted to cherish. People whom I had never seen awake after 10 pm even for exams, were awake till 3 am to get the perfect colour combination to pen down the introductory words in their slambook before giving it. I saw people spending their leisure times in writing one slam after another and reading what one had written about someone else.It was like a festival and we could have called it 'The SLAMFEST'. And like in every festival, this one too had generated its own chaos,jealousy,excitement with me being a witness to people not writing in certain slambooks, some were there who had torn off what they themselves wrote from their heart and there was one who was pretty different from all others, he had stapled the 4 and odd pages which I had written about him before he gave to others.

With my increased curiosity,I decided to be a part of the fest by getting a slambook, wrote some two lines and handed it over it to my classmates of the opposite gender.When I got it back, it indeed was a 'slam' book. Though each one had written their individual views and memories, the one thing which I found in common in all the entries in my slam book was "Do invite me for your marriage" :P. Apart from these, there were many advice, many thank yous,many definitions for Prasoon .I still could not stop laughing, when I read through the memories that my classmates wanted me to cherish.

"Amma! You can give away all the books and notes except this one 'My Slambook'. I will take it with me.". I will need it to get rid of my worries time and again as there could be no other article/magazine that could make me happy like this. Like everyone, I think myself high, but this small book reminds me how Prasoon was, at-least in others' eyes.