 Pranab Ghosh is a journalist, blogger and poet. His poems have been published in Tuck Magazine, Dissident Voice, Leaves of Ink, Hans India, Literature Studio Review and Scarlet Leaf Review, among others. He also writes short stories. He has co-authored a book of poems, Air & Age. He has also translated a book of Bengali short stories into English. The name of the book is Bougainvillea And Other Stories. He, at present, lives in Kolkata, India. Worldly Man turns Yogi In front of a burning pyre sits a man, his torso bare, a white cloth worn like a lungi at the bottom. He sits erect in front of the pyre, the flame from which is now dying out. He is looking straight at the top of the flame, from where the smoke rises. He is trying to chart the flight path. The path of the spirit of his beloved, who has now turned into ashes. The coy look, the black eyelids casting a mystery around the downcast face. The red bindi, the golden sari with blue anchal. Etched in memory is the first look of his beloved and then wife for twenty years. All have gone up in flames. The first evening out. The bhelpuri, the phuckas, the mela, the ride in the toy train, the boat ride in the ‘death cave’. The end of courtship after marriage. The first child born. A baby girl. A bundle of emotions. An ocean of expenses. Love wins. Expenses are managed and forgotten. The joy lives on. Today after 20 years of ‘sansar’ – the baby girl in her late teens – the bride departs. The man is still looking at the flame. His friends have left. His relations too. His soul companion, his daughter, is still waiting for him, all alone, outside the ‘samshan ghat’. The man sits erect, watching the dying flame rise, dance, flicker and then finally die. Everything has come to an end: The fight. The tears. The joy. The laughter. Everything. Everything Everything. Alone the man looks at the ashes. There is a touch on his shoulder. He looks back. “Simanti!” He was about to exclaim. No it’s not his wife, but the representative she left behind. “Maya, looks exactly like her,” he thinks. “Dad, it’s better we leave,” Maya implores. The man rises. His desire, his laughter, his agony, his pain, all ashes now, are left behind. The yogi is born! Becoming a Yogi! The body is the source of all pain. It causes sufferings. It brings tears. It enjoys. It devours. It glorifies you and finally it gives up. Your mind gives up all worldly pleasures and all the zeal to seek those. It recoils within and looks for inner peace and inner joy. It forgets to seek happiness outside and finds it within. It has by then renounced. But true renunciation comes only after you have experienced the worldly pleasures and the accompanying pangs. And once you renunciate You become a YOGI! The death of Simanti triggered in the man the process of giving up all worldly pleasures and made him look within for eternal happiness. He stayed a man of the world. Yet be became a yogi, who did his ‘karma’. His daughter successfully completed education and then he got her married and helped her settle down in life. These were all his duties and he performed it dutifully. He was at peace with himself. He was ready to leave this worldly habitat of his and finally reunite with his Simanti. Not all yogis are born thus. But most of the worldly men, who mentally metamorphose into yogis – if you look beneath their veneer you will see that they lose or give up something very dear to them in life and then become renunciates. They stay duty-bound; engulfed in their ‘karma’. But they stay yogis at heart. Far away from the worldly pleasures and pain they build a castle of peace and happiness within them and happily live there. LIVING LIKE A YOGI!
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