From serene and sublime conversations with sunrise and sunsets in Punjab countryside to the mad and maddening crowds of Delhi - a journey at which spirit murmurs its silent protests before smiling back in a gesture of reassurance that allsettings are divine and can be made to look and feel like that if only we undertake a little stroll in the vast and seemingly endless landscapes deep within us .....For a start, says the spirit, here is the 'rich recompense'. It comes in the form of a thought that less than three kilometers from where I converse with my soul is a place whence rang the deep and resonant voices of Zauk and Ghalib, among many other sparkling kaleidoscopic patterns of human journey on this little planet. Why, even the chowk that stands as a testimony to a hero's courtship of martyrdom to protect the freedom of thought and worship for fellow countrymen is less than four kilometers from where I sit, awaiting another sunrise. What a pilgrimage it must have been from Anandpur Sahib to Chandani Chowk - each particle on the wide road sparkling with unspeakable incandescence.
But Delhi or Mahilpur or Badal or Bathinda or London or elsewhere, its the same incandescence that lights up the landscape, the same light that sets particles aglow. Does it matter where I am - locked in the prison four walls or set free in the vast unending stretches of forests unknown or in the plains or on the peaks that so invite us day and night? But the Greatest pilgrimage is the one we undertake when we turn our gaze inside, deep inside our own skeleton that houses the glow.
"Bahar bheetar eko jaano, eh Gur gian batayee
Kaho Nanak bin aapa cheene, mitte na bharam ki kaayee
Kaahe re ban khojam jaayee?"
And Eureka !!!
What a morning it already is! And what a reward it brings for spending the night sleepless over work alngside sojourns of the soul !!
You, dear friend, might recall that I had been requesting everyone with an interest in music and Gurbani and secure me a Guru Dutt's rendition of a Shabad from the Sikh Gurbani.
And now, even as I was talking about "the rich recompense", it fell into my outstretched open palm - a divine benediction, a blessing that I could only have dreamed of. Here is the Shabad I had been searching desperately for over decades but was unable to find. It landed softly , quietly, in the lap of my spirit just as I finished writing the status and turned to close it with another shabad to go with the text. Here, I chanced upon this cherished and matchless divine rendition by Geeta Dutta: You be blessed too; let it wake your day up, and stir your morning to a wakefulness that will reveal luminous zones!
But Delhi or Mahilpur or Badal or Bathinda or London or elsewhere, its the same incandescence that lights up the landscape, the same light that sets particles aglow. Does it matter where I am - locked in the prison four walls or set free in the vast unending stretches of forests unknown or in the plains or on the peaks that so invite us day and night? But the Greatest pilgrimage is the one we undertake when we turn our gaze inside, deep inside our own skeleton that houses the glow.
"Bahar bheetar eko jaano, eh Gur gian batayee
Kaho Nanak bin aapa cheene, mitte na bharam ki kaayee
Kaahe re ban khojam jaayee?"
And Eureka !!!
What a morning it already is! And what a reward it brings for spending the night sleepless over work alngside sojourns of the soul !!
You, dear friend, might recall that I had been requesting everyone with an interest in music and Gurbani and secure me a Guru Dutt's rendition of a Shabad from the Sikh Gurbani.
And now, even as I was talking about "the rich recompense", it fell into my outstretched open palm - a divine benediction, a blessing that I could only have dreamed of. Here is the Shabad I had been searching desperately for over decades but was unable to find. It landed softly , quietly, in the lap of my spirit just as I finished writing the status and turned to close it with another shabad to go with the text. Here, I chanced upon this cherished and matchless divine rendition by Geeta Dutta: You be blessed too; let it wake your day up, and stir your morning to a wakefulness that will reveal luminous zones!
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