2021- An ephemeral encounter with detachment

 Today is Friday, evening of Jan 7th, 2022.  I am overwhelmingly calm and happy since few days(4-5 days). I have observed that of late, I am having such bouts of happy days. I wonder whether I have gotten  possessed by some happy devil or someone feeds some happy pills to me secretly or the theory of quantum entanglement is actually applicable to huge bodies too and my quantum twin is having a great time. Is it the weather, is it my hormones, is it luck, enlightenment or am I at a polar end of bipolar disorder? When I muse about it, I have come to note that at such happy moments, I am not worrying about anything, neither apprehensive of future nor mulling over the past. I have no long term plans, no big dreams, no wants. I have started accepting myself as I am. No regrets about my decisions, no embarrassment about my mistakes. I am confident in my skin and poised in my personality. 

Probing deeper into my current status, if I run analytics, I realize that I have stopped questioning myself about the reasons behind my feelings towards people. I love few people, I hate few people, I enjoy the company of few and loathe few. I don't have to give reasons for my feelings to anyone. Neither I need to feel guilty about my desires and dislikes. Those feelings make me what I am. At the same time, I seem to have accepted that no one is perfect and I too need not be. This present situation of mine is not a sudden transformation. Our whole life is a metamorphosis. This might just be one of many significant changes in the course of time. 

I am just going with the flow. The hands of the clock seem to tick at a faster pace, the calendar seems to flip quicker than before because 2021 had been a fast moving year. Though the year seemed short, my mind took a topsy turvy course and each turn has been a good teacher. The year started with a cocktail of fear, apprehension, hope and optimism at the global front as well at my emotional front.

At the beginning of the year 2021, I had vowed to become mentally strong and emotionally independent. There are few words which lose their purpose once you utter them. Resolution is one such word. Somehow, I stuck to my resolution and started off with my diet. Right from my childhood, I have this habit of beginning to train my mind starting with controlling my tastebuds. That is a tough point to start. Scholars say that taste is the last  among the five senses to be tamed. But it is a solid ground. The objectives of diet control were to toughen my senses and also shed few kilos. I am a strong believer of eating less to lose weight. The results have been commendable earlier. We are what we eat. We are also what we control. I chose intermittent fasting as my means of dieting. Along with that, I gave up all the delectable savouries, stuck to spiceless dalia  khichdi with half spoon ghee and lot of vegetables as a one pot meal to be eaten once in the afternoon. Initially, no restrictions for tea and coffee. This plan did bear fruits and I lost 3 stubborn  kilos in 2 months. Success is the biggest motivator. I continued. 

I had planned to complete studying Upanishads. For a better understanding, I started listening to explanatory discourses from learned scholars on youtube. I am always a big follower and admirer of Sri Bannanje. I made him my unofficial youtube Guru. I bought yoga books of BSK Iyengar and started some simple ones. That sounds like a lot of self discipline. I meditated too for about 10 mins per day.  That too inspired  me in my pursuit of self control. Our desires are actually like reins of horses. Until you learn to control them, they keep taking you in whatever direction they want.

All this for 6 months, brought out major changes in me. I lost a total of six kilos. I had become calmer, less impulsive and felt mature. I started feeling that I own more materials than I require. As I had decluttered my mind, I felt a need to declutter my wardrobe too. I decided not to buy clothes and jewelries till I really felt the need for them.  

Such change was not without repercussions. The initial sense of tranquility in me slowly transformed into disinterest in life. I started becoming indifferent to the happenings around me, to people, to events. The characters that defined me became less intense. I became less possessive of the people I loved. That was a major transformation.  On one occasion, when I was listening to my Guru Bannanje, the truth struck me. He was preaching about women being discouraged from practicing certain austerities lest they become saints. A woman is the pivot of a family. It is her most important duty to be involved in the family. It is by this alone, her life finds meaning. It is then that I realised that indifference, renunciation are not meant for me. Though I was far from sainthood and detachment, the path itself was not for me at this stage of my life. I can trod along it after 10 more years if I want. Physical, emotional and moral involvement in the lives of my children, husband and parents is what is expected from me. Nevertheless, I had to reach a balance at my emotional front. Whatever factors had triggered my sojourn towards change must be left behind. I must see everything positively and do my best for the betterment of my family. 

In this course, my approach towards life has changed. I can't really pinpoint what or how, but I can feel the difference. It is like entering a parallel world or cocoon and coming out back to this world in a mature form. I read the trilogy 1q84 of Haruki Murakami this year and seems like I have  experienced it personally. I feel like a different person. I am at loss of words to express what I have gone through. As I read what I have written, I conclude that this expression is inadequate. I will keep trying to make more comprehensible.