Carving a Sky: A Perspective on Life

By Samarpan

Evocative, expansive and intensely spiritual, Carving a Sky explores the necessity of space in a human's life that leads one to attain intellectual and emotional fulfilment. It narrates the story of a monk and a passenger on a train who discuss the meaning of existence and the roots of a person's strength, growth and freedom.Deeply embedded in Hindu scriptures, this book will be an invaluable guide in your life's journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Element
• Release date: Sep 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9789352640164

Samarpan

Samarpan is a monk who teaches ancient and modern scriptures. He is the author of Tiya: A Parrot's Journey Home, Param and Junglezen Sheru. He has also published a collection of poetry, Pathik, in Hindi.

Book preview

Preface

To be human is to aspire for excellence. The desire to be unique, and possibly the best, is innate in us all. This is true not only of the educated and the capable; even an illiterate beggar endeavours to become an alpha beggar.

As one trudges towards excellence, one starts growing in stature first in one’s own eyes, then in the eyes of those around, and finally one’s growth is noted by all. This transformation from being no one to becoming someone demands a mental state that is popularly known as one’s individual space, which no one else can intrude upon.

Unfortunately, for most people, success is achieved through self-centredness, which, by its very nature, limits one’s inner space, beyond which, one feels invaded by ideas, objects and people that are not to one’s liking. Regular invasion such as this makes one lose one’s peace, sensitivity and happiness. The smaller the exclusive space one has, the more one’s misery, sense of unfulfilment and loneliness. Often this lack of space is cited as the prime cause of marriage breakdowns, strained relations between relatives, frequent changes in profession, depression and even suicide. Like the demon of myth, the problem of space seems to be eating up all that is good and noble within humans.

Carving a Sky is about creating space for oneself in life and work. In the process, it discusses the roots of one’s existence, strength, growth and freedom. Without understanding these concepts fully, one cannot understand what space means and how to carve it out for oneself.

This book builds on the age-old wisdom of the sages, who knew well the principles of life that are rooted in inclusiveness. These principles can be applied at any age and to any profession by making proper adjustments to suit the capabilities of its practitioners. Examples have been taken from different sources to highlight the fact that, at its core, human wisdom is the same everywhere.

There are many books on the subject, but this one has an Indian perspective on life. The stories and examples are taken mostly from traditional sources to highlight key points, and they illustrate how the wisdom of the sages is as relevant today as it was in the past.

To make it an easy read, the book is presented in the form of a travel story, but it is neither a travel story, nor is it a personality-building book. It touches the core of human issues and describes their dissemination and workings. A few suggestions are included to demonstrate how these ideas can be implemented, but these are not exhaustive.

Before It Began...

I walked leisurely down the Howrah station platform towards my compartment. The insane hustle of travellers that is usual here was missing that day. It was early April, and the gods were yet to wake up from their winter slumber in the Himalayas and invite their devotees to visit them. This helped people like me to enjoy the travel that had to be undertaken for reasons more serious than merely visiting the gods or kicking the snow.

Upasana Express. From Howrah to Dehradun, knifing through Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, to rest finally in Uttarakhand. A man with a more poetic smell would probably see in this journey an effort to take the sacred Ganga back from Gangasagar to Gangotri, the way a spiritual person makes an effort to go back to his source of existence. However, I am not a poetic man: I can tolerate popular songs that rake the rhymes to make people dance, but poetry is something that I find inane. I am more inclined to call a spade a spade than to call it the ‘prober of earth’s bosom’. So, my journey was to be a mere journey, without any shades or overtones.

‘Tea, sir,’ called out the vendor who smelt a potential customer in me.

There was still time for the train to depart so I decided to oblige the vendor. With the cup in my hand I felt happy, thinking that the journey would be peaceful without a crushing crowd. During the travel season every berth gets occupied and many more hopefuls keep trailing the conductor to extract the non-existent from him. Such crowds annoy me. When I was young, I loved the crowd and the noise, but that has changed now. With my growing responsibilities, I now always crave space. At my workplace, at my nest and during the breaks, I struggle to claw out the little extra sky that I can. So a relatively empty railway compartment was going to be a bonus during this journey.

Standing at the tea stall, I looked at the crowd. It was the usual mix of harried-looking parents, excited kids, porters pushing the crowd away from their carts and railway staff pasting reservation charts. There was also a monk walking down the platform looking for his compartment.

I am not the type that fawns or frowns upon the oranged. To me they seem to belong from a different world that has nothing common with mine. Given a choice, I would prefer to leave them alone and also be left to myself. So when I saw the monk entering the coach in which I was, I hoped and prayed that I did not have to bear his company. But I am told that God rarely answers frivolous prayers. In fact, I doubted if He ever answered any prayers.

To my chagrin, I found that the monk was sitting right opposite me. My first reaction was to file a suit against the railways. Why did they have to place two people so near each other when the coach was mostly empty? Good God! When I could have enjoyed all this space by myself, I was saddled with the holy by the unholy computer system of the railways!

I pushed my bag under the berth. The powerful kick that I gave it probably produced higher decibels than was intended. The monk asked with concern, ‘Hurt?’

I felt annoyed at the intrusion. How did it matter to him if I was hurt? Some people love to get familiar without realizing how invasive they are. However, I hid my feelings and smiled at him. During my training as a manager, we had learnt to mask our emotions to suit the situation. A friend of mine had imbibed this lesson so well that he practised it at home too, that it resulted in his divorce. But I was the prudent type who knew what not to do and when. It is good to know what to do, but it is far better to know what not to.

Once settled down, I looked at the monk who kept aside his serious-looking English book and smiled, ‘Going far?’

At least he was the educated type, I thought with considerable relief. If I was going to be saddled with him during this journey, I was better off carrying the load of the educated than the riff-raff.

‘Lucknow,’ I replied.

‘The train reaches there early morning, an auspicious hour to begin the day.’

What began as a trickle of words soon grew into a stream that guided my thoughts, now softly, now strongly, carrying me along with it. I floated with that stream and at one point introduced myself. ‘Arpo. My friends call me Arpo.’

‘Old Monk. My detractors call me Old Monk,’ he said.

‘You look too fresh to be called an Old Monk,’ I said, and wondered if his name had something to do with the famous rum. Maybe he had secret sins of his own.

‘My detractors, and there are many—God bless them—prefer calling me by that name. And I love it. You do not get the respect of a monk when you’re young, so it is fine by me.’ The monk smiled.

‘Politics must be there in the heavens too then! Monks too have defamers!’ I joked, gently letting go of my own prejudices. I too belonged to that vast majority of beings who defend those whom they know and despise those whom they don’t.

The monk replied, ‘One needs space to survive, you know. There are those who chisel out a space for themselves, and there are those who pull down others to limit their space. This way the naysayers feel good thinking that they own larger space than those whom they condemn.’

I looked dumbly at him. Space, did he say? Wasn’t I just thinking about it? What a coincidence! I decided to probe him further, but had to wait. The train had started creeping forward, and the monk did a namaskar to the unseen God, and muttered some prayer. Must be some ritual like our ‘touch wood’, I thought, and waited.

Upasana Express had crossed Belur, and was now heading towards the chord line that shortened the distance to Burdwan by some kilometres. I did not like this route much. It shoots through the eye-tiring green of the Bengal rice belt, making the journey monotonous. I preferred the main line that went along the Ganga till Bandel through Serampore and Chandernagore, where the early history of modern India was etched out on every street and by-lane. These towns introduced the Dutch, English and French ways of life to the elites of Bengal, and even a casual visitor there could smell the diffused scents of culture. Although nearly forgotten in present times, these towns introduced English education and the art of free-thinking associated with it. The intelligent minds of the period caught the spark that resulted in India’s liberation from its cultural shackles of hundreds of years, if not thousands. To think that subjects like science, geography and history were introduced to the masses only after India adopted the English way of education! Blessed were these towns.

The train hooted its way along the chord line towards Haridwar where the old monk was to get off on his way to Gangotri. The speeding train and a fast-decreasing distance to our destinations softened me further. I requested him to express his take on space.

‘Every object occupies a definable shape,’ said the monk, ‘around which it carries a space in which it extends its influence in the form of gravitational and electromagnetic fields. In its gravitational field, an object attracts every other object towards it, while in the electromagnetic field, an object repels similar objects and attracts opposites.

‘Living beings are different. In their personalized space, marked out variously, they tend to attack those whom they don’t like, and attract those with whom they feel a bond. A bird has a space centring on its nest where it does not allow other birds entry; a dog marks out its territory with its smell which other dogs cannot trespass without a fight. Space being the signature of one’s worth, the rich build mansions, the poor huts, and the teenager marks a room which their mother cannot invade.

‘Unlike animals and the uneducated, for the intellectually evolved, mental space is more important than the physical. Many people may agree to let go of their physical space, but few will tolerate any encroachment