.....Spiritual Orientation Days.....!!!!

......Gud Friday....Easter....rings a familiar bell in the Minds Eye....!!!!...the Serpentine Ganges on one side nd :with its ever changing routes.....to the lofty Rajmahal Hills on the other.....tucked in between lay our School St.Xavier's Sahibganj...!!!....as we sat in our respective designated desk for the Evening study @6pm....cursory glance thru the panes would reveal the silhouettes of the dark Hills with rows of bush fire twinkling like as if it was Diwali....the abode of the aborigines in the hills: bush fire were common :both man made or accidental...as I grappled with text books nd assignments it fired my imagination in no uncertain terms....!!....whilst the vision frm the Dormitory panes past 9.30pm atop my Double decker bunk bed was different with fire raging nd twinkling at a gr8 distance on the Holi River Bank of a funeral pyre..the final passage to oblivion & Eternity.....!!!...both these celestial occurence were regular features....the bush fire igniting my feel of an adventure nd the eternal fire stoked my formative feelings to abject surrender to the Lord...!!...the routined round the clock meticulously planned Days rolled by with us aspiring for the best in all deptts.....the break wud come frm the stipulated Retreat Days : of Spiritual Orientation....!!!!...wherein we stayed away frm the routine for a couple of days...huddled together in generating or focussing on all things thts Positive....Fr.Briffa SJ would motion us to different modules nd we enjoyed every bit of it nd came out of the Retreat ....to the mainstream fully rejuvenated......!!!!....rechurning of those thoughts of yester yrs ...its as effective and relevant as it were those days.....!!!!

......The Indian Ocean Diary....!!!!

.....9.30am...Ur name....?....Ghulam Mehdi....pat came the reply....frm Baltistan area of Baluchistan Ghulam hailed, now in front of me with acute back pain....Billal,hails frm Bangladesh nd Ghulam wrks with him in one of the Islands....for a moment the trio of Indian ,Pakistani nd Bangladeshi hobbled to find a solution to this pain.....whenever this happens ...I am forced to ponder of reports of beheading....torture across the border nd equally venemous rhetoric frm our side....!!!...here Ghulam Mehdi a Skardu resident of Pakistan was no different thn other Nationals  Sri Lankan, Maldivian ,Indonesian or European who represent the clientele.....with pain largely writ on his face he was honorable enough to thank me profusely nd his mannerism even in this painful hour was unblemished......this Maldivian Odyssey cutting across multiple Nationality nd the Sub continent bolsters my faith as to the Nationality called Humanity.....which is so evident.....nd omnipresent ....!!!...the colossal loss of time engaged by establishments bereft of the Human angle needs to be condemned....for the common people r innocent....the Sub continent got dismembered due to partisan nd selfish aspirations of a few.....I had no difficulty in relating to Skardu resident Ghulam Mehdi accompanied by Comuilla resident Billal...nd the entire border & delineation looked unreal.....!!!!

.....the Ide's of March.....passing very peacefully here as of date...as I pen down the latest.....this being the Election Year & a new found Democracy... there is jockeying & positioning for the Apple pie of Sept.instant...with a small community interspersed in 240 plus habitated Islands out of a nearly 1800,the demography concentration is in a handful few & the majority remotely & sparsely populated..its a logistic wonder & a nightmare in the same breath I must say....!....the undersea ridge extending frm far south of the Chagos Islands to India's Laccadives thru Maldives is the seat for these coral pearls of an archipelago.....so 8yrs.frm now,whn the Dash8 aircraft  flew frm Male' late eve with our 103kg of baggage load,flying low :the sea simmering over the moonlit nite,the moon appeared a handshake away as it was fulmoon,heading down south....220kms frm Male'....little Doel & Archana peered thru the panes to identify twinkling lites of a few Islands we flew past down south.....the moon menacingly near...as it is seen in the Doldrums : the latitude....!!!....shaking of all timidity we landed tht late evening in a Southern Atoll Island to be our abode in the nxt few mths....!!!...to chalk out a coarse of history....& tryst with Destiny.....!!(...to be Concluded...)

......taking guard once again....!!!

.......the yr holds promise ....the innings evenly poised.....taking guard  again ..... @5pm....the calcium carbonate pitch beckoning....of this Coral Island....!!...with cylinders fully charged nd blazing with the recipe of the hurricane tour frm 22nd till today.....with so much imbibed....soaked nd drenched to the tee frm the moisture frm the deeply embedded roots of Bihar nd Jharkhand....!!...as we climbed up the ramp in foggy conditions in the wee hrs frm BLR to PAT via CCU...the genetic predisposition of being an Eastern Indian ....not North or South Indian....weighed heavily....the touchdown at Netaji Subhash @ CCU with ultimate landing @JaiprakashNarain in PAT threw me in a spell of space nd time.....as I took my children down the ramp a gentle breeze was already blowing....I inhaled nd exhaled nd urged my fledgling team to do the same...tht of our homeland in truest sense....which nurtured & given me so much of building material of the formative years....Patna looked like a flooding populace:admixture of old & new.....people looked more or less the same as we had left them 14yrs ago.....it had to be tht way,sheerly for their uniqueness....savouries of SweetHome near HeeraPanna were delicious nd the Chinese Window:our favorite joint of Mauryalok is  where I hosted  Chinese for a core group of Barat Party for their supper in the train for TATA, having reached earlier thn them.....as I strolled past Tricel:our book shop still clinging on to its space....I could feel the change ....no wonder Patna & Hathwa mkts were visited du2 nostalgia....nd both Archana & Myself partook the Kachauri with dry Chana in tht corner shop at Hathwa mkt holding on to its legacy...!!...as the Indigo with Hariprasad at helm waded thru the street beside the area whr Rupak Cinema stood amidst thick traffic....I could feel the city bursting at its seam....remembered Anindya,Amita,VijaySingh many a times as we wr located in GINGER @ Bistupur for the most imp.task of solemnising & witnessing Kunal's marriage with Payal...& were bowled over by the sweets & savouries there.....!!!!.....missed a heart beat whn a call frm Dhanbad frm Baba ignited my spirit...frnds will always be frnds....however & whtevr...it felt as if it was yestday...& was touched by the warmth of BABA's spirit...!!!: our star striker of Futbol team....!!!....Nanu & Doel absorbed the tru Village spirit whn we went back with the bride to Kunal's native Village off MFP.....I ate lots of fried fish frm the local river with bhuja ,chana & Chura....as the cavalcade rolled over the dirt tracks in pleasant Feb.eve with cascading thoughts of oneness with one's own soil & serenity.......the Hurricane tour of Nativeland felt like a journey into Eternity.....!!!!