MANJU ON PERSONAL SPACE – 2

“COSMIC LILA”

The middling years have arrived. Space has now brought a new friend along, called Time.

You have all the space that you ever wanted but you don’t have the time. Space is happy, but time is overworked.

Something’s gotta give!

From somewhere in the vast vistas of the mind, the promised Questions start to tumble pretty much like your kids’ old toys out of the cardboard box.

What is happiness? What is my real purpose? Then, there are memories, memories and a clutter of memories to deal with.

You walk around like a question mark that has come alive, with a furrowed brow to match. A well-wisher then suggests that you get into a good meditation class.

So you enroll into the nearest center, mat and mind in tow.

You close your eyes for a moment like the teacher told you to do; only to pop those wide open in an instant, fear clutching your heart in its cold clasp.

Did you lock the front door?

A few sessions more, you start forgetting about doors and dustpans.

Something new dawns on you ever so slowly, like the changing hues of the rising sun.

You surrender to the Space within. Time takes a breather.

The vacillating relationships and undulating emotions begin to still like a pendulum about to reach the centre.

'You’re making progress!' teacher says, one day. You want to jump for joy but you merely smile briefly. After all, life is to be viewed with equanimity as a good book says...

As you lie on your bed that night, another Truth dawns on you. That silent meddler Space has been constantly playing with your life, growing, shrinking, stifling, yawning.

Life’s just got to be a Cosmic Lila. Hmmm….such fine words, fine thoughts! You must be poised to get enlightened. You feel it in your bones. You close your eyes.

Waiting for the Moment…waiting for the stream of light… that will shine through...waiting...

BUZZ…BUZZ…BUZZ!!

Huh? Wazzat?

In one frenzied movement of your hand, you knock off the bedside alarm.

Sigh! It’s time to wake up.

MANJU ON PERSONAL SPACE – 1

“TANGY TOMATOES & TAILOR-MADE TUNES”

When we were kids, a friend and I once walked the streets, with a guitar, wondering how life could ever be this good. We sang new tunes and enjoyed eating wholesome slices of spiced-up tomato on the balcony. If life blessed us with tangy tomatoes and tailor-made tunes, who needed space? Twenty-four hours wouldn't have been enough for us to be together! We were like two peas in a pod, with as little space in between.

As babies, we can't seem to get enough of our mothers. As we grow older into kids, we can't seem to get enough of our friends.

And then somewhere down the road, a more ‘mature’ relationship touches us like a delicate feather dropping onto the shoulder. Suddenly space emerges as a high-flying word in the dictionary. You need to hang out with your friends while he needs his football buddies.

If you ever get to work out the space index at this stage, you might walk the altar with this man. Now, space suddenly begins to shrink considerably. You want to do everything together like a happily married couple.

So you squint painfully at the TV, watching the baseball game with him. And soon space is hovering like a tiny bubble right above you.

Come Thanksgiving, you’re at your wits’ end, preparing a dinner for HIS family. Dinner over, you decide you are too tired to go upstairs to the bedroom and slump onto the couch.

The space bubble has grown even larger and is glistening in a multitude of colors.

If the kids eventually happen, there is NO space in the house! In a medley of school trips, piano classes, football games and SAT scores, you’re holding onto your sanity as the space bubble grows and shrinks undecidedly all the years.

When the kids have moved out, your husband has settled nicely in a routine of newspaper and the net.

Now the space has made a decisive invasion into your life.

‘Will someone please call? you wonder.