ODE TO JOY
“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?” Unknown M y friend, and a fellow-learner in our Tai Chi group, Venkat, had shared this gem, one Monday morning: ‘Written on the board of a cemetery: “A LOT OF THE FELLOWS HERE BELIEVED, THAT THE WORLD, OR SOME PART OF THE WORLD, COULDN’T RUN WITHOUT THEM.” This friend of mine is in his mid-forties. Apparently, he and his wife had made a conscious decision, early during their married life, that they would stop working before they were forty… Would have reasonable amount of savings… No children to raise… A few simple (crumpled but clean) clothes to wear, and, above all, backpack to every remote corner of our country and some neighbouring ones. So, they have been, literally, living their lives without any baggage… (My friends Venkat and Priya presently backpacking at Kumta-Belekhan-Gokarna trek.) Well, to most of us, such a life seems either an ideal or outright i...