Sailing in the ocean of time one hardly realises the speed at which a moment turns into a story. One attempts to cling to the moment but all one is clinging to is the story of the moment gone by. Live in the moment, the wise men say. ‘Carpe Diem’ is the slogan. That will, of course not stop time, but will make a good story. And good story is the next best thing to a good moment. Or perhaps a good story is a good moment stretched to eternity! So, let us all make good stories. But the toughest part of life is to realise that every moment is a story in making. Most people just keep preparing when the time for real play has just passed by. When I look back at my own life, most moments seems like a preparation for life rather than life lived. Born, now grow up. Study so that you become something. Work so that you can earn. Cook, so that you can eat. Travel so that you can enjoy. Enjoy, so you can relax.....Love, so that you are loved in return. All moments dedicated to some other moments. All paths leading to some other place! Life, of course, is a journey and journey has to have a destination. But in this eagerness of reaching, one keeps forgetting that life is moment lived throughout journey.

 

Destination will come when it will come. When I recall my journeys they sometime seem so much in the ’go’ of things that I think I had even failed to realise when I had arrived. As a child I remember wanting so badly to grow up. Kids, I thought, do not get the respect they deserve. Growing up seemed the only good alternative. At that tender age I did not realise that growing up was so relative a term. My sister was the eldest and much more respected in a way kids were allowed to be respected back then. From my point, her position was enviable. And I envied. She, like most prolific elders, made the most of her situation. She could command so she commanded. I so badly wanted to reverse the tide and all my hopes were with the growing-up business. Alas! She still continues to be my elder sister. It has dawned upon me now that I could also have made most of my situation from being the younger one but I was, all the while, preparing to grow up forgoing my advantages of being the kid sister.

 

There is also this ‘arrived at’ business which rather than bringing the feeling of ‘Phew!’ or ‘Hurray, Arrived!’ comes as a heartbreaking moment. It so happened that our troop of sisters-in-law were invited for a baby shower of a near relative. The sweet-little mother-to-be was all beaming receiving congratulations, greetings and blessings. As I greeted her, she smiled and said “Thank you, Aunty.” I forged a smile as my other sisters-in-law (most of them my seniors) beat a hasty retreat. “Aunty?!?!?” “How dare she?” ‘We could not have been her seniors by a couple of years’, we consoled one another. But a quick calculation gave an inappropriate answer. We must have been her seniors by a couple of decades. Oh! How time flies. It was just yesterday when we were just a couple of decades old and another couple of decades got added in a jiffy! As a child, I always thought ‘Aunties’ were these super women who knew everything about everything. They had answers to everything. I thought they pretty much handled everything in the world. They seemed like its undisputed rulers. In short, they were fantastic. Yet when I arrived at becoming an ‘aunty’, it hardly seemed like ‘rulers of the world’.

 

It sounded like an age gone by. It seemed like I had arrived racing, leaving something important behind but now cannot turn, run again and get it back. No, It could not have been age. For, I did celebrate all my birthdays with zeal counting years properly. My receding energy-levels, the growing silvery shimmer on my thick, dark hair, my beautician's changing stance, my kid’s growing height and arguments....there were many indicators, I could not have missed them. It was not age. May be, they were moments that I left behind? Moments that could have made wonderful stories had I not left them incomplete in my hurry to reach a certain destination. There was this moment and that and a life enwrapped in that. ‘Aunty’ was like the whistle of a train announcing a station as you start to collect your bags while hoping that the train keeps running for a little while more so that you can have one real good last look at those passing green fields. But the train stops. You have arrived at the destination you were heading towards and that which you always wanted to reach and yet...!!! During one of our family trips, as a bus full of relatives was passing through lush, green meadows, I remember asking my nephew to play some old classics.

 

He readily obliged. And as we all uncles and aunties waited to hear a Dev Anand crooning a romantic number or the soulful Kishor Kumar leading us to heights of melody, the song started.... “Akele hain to kya ghum hai...” Aamir Khan...?, Juhi Chawla...?, Qayamat se Qayamat tak...? Old Classics...?!?!?!? A generation, silently, suffered a heartbreak that day. The bus was moving but we had arrived. Well, Well! I may have arrived but life is moving. One destination is reached, another beckons. They say, the more thoughtfully you travel, the more wisdom you gain. So, henceforth, I will be thoughtful, mindful of moments and of the life enwrapped in them. For, I do not want to reach a station with a desire to still look back for the green fields. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough”. --Rabindranath Tagore n