The Rear-View Mirror: The Journey, a Taxi Driver and a Book

By Vineet Bhatt

Travel through the twisting, grinding and bumpy road of life demands frequent introspection and self interrogation. Pausing, reflecting, revisiting the route, examining the effect of your words and actions and doing a course correction is essential if you wish to craft a remarkable legacy worth emulating.
Philip Young was very proud of his background but was haunted by the fear of failure. His frantic clutch at security and his desperate longing for the comfort zone is remindful of our own certain tight spots in life.
What happened during that days travel and immediately thereafter that prompted a mysterious change in Philip which forty odd years couldnt? What was the treasure buried between the ears of a taxi driver and the wealth that lay in the pages of a book?
Experience the saga of the journey Philip Young was so sceptical about, the company of a taxi driver that was barely exciting to start with, and a book he carried merely to see him through the idle hours of the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jan 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482843354

Vineet Bhatt

Vineet R Bhatt hails from Jamshedpur and currently resides in Hyderabad, India. He is a qualified engineer and a postgraduate in business management. He enjoys reading, writing, and reflecting while physical fitness and family are his top priorities. He is also a public speaking trainer and leadership coach. www.vineetbhatt.com www.facebook.com - vineet bhatt www.twitter.com - @vineetrbhatt

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Copyright © 2015 by Vineet Bhatt.

ISBN:          Hardcover          978-1-4828-4337-8

                    Softcover           978-1-4828-4336-1

                    eBook                 978-1-4828-4335-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Partridge India

000 800 10062 62

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

I

dedicate this book with great respect to the first teachers of my life, my parents. Their sacrifices and their endeavours to provide their two sons the best of education they could afford, has made me what I am.

The harvest reaped by a generation is from the seeds sowed by its predecessors.

Keeping in good health is not only a fitness thing, it’s bigger; it’s a responsibility - a grave responsibility of happiness for yourself and for those around you.

Acknowledgement

N o project, big or small, is ever complete without the support of family, friends and in some cases people you may not know very well, all of whom may not necessarily be a stake holder to it. But it sets your heart ablaze when they support you expecting nothing for themselves and take pride in your achievements.

Writing such a piece, that is reflective in nature, calls for drawing all the learning that one has come across in life. Many thanks to my parents, my in-laws, my brother Mohit, my sister-in-law Sapna, nephew Raghav and niece Neha, my wife, my son, my relatives, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and all those strangers from whom I have had a lot to learn - some from whom I have learnt what to do and from some, what not to.

I extend my deepest gratitude to my school teachers of Loyola school, Jamshedpur and DBMS School, Jamshedpur, for laying the all important foundation, and to the greatest teacher of all - life itself. Thanks to my other educational institutions, NIT Rourkela and XLRI, Jamshedpur, for preparing me for the life ahead.

Thanks to my friends Kuldip Chawlla, Lipee Pattanaik, Debjani Chatterjee, SV Ramnath, Gurmeet Singh and my brother Mohit who helped me with their feedback by reviewing the first few chapters of this book.

In my early days of writing, doses of compliments from several friends injected in me the fancy for serious writing. A heartfelt thanks to my friends Gurmeet Singh, S Ramachandran, Arjun B, Govindarajan and Megala Karamadai, K Subba Raju, Negar Khan, Sharmistha Duttagupta, and my college friends Suresh Venkataraman, Sreedhar Venkat, Rajendra Panchbhai, Rajendra Sharma, Ramanand Shivashankar, Dinesh Manandhar, Manas Sahu, Lipee, Samir Dutt, Shreekanta Parida and the list goes on.

I am thankful to my publishers Partridge India for taking my creation to the world.

Dessert comes at the end of a meal and this is the place reserved for my wife Raina, an English teacher, and son Devesh. Raina’s editing skills made certain that the book get a respectable form. Her constant stimulation ensured I keep going with the venture; her support, patience and endurance and for ever being by my side has been such a great source of inspiration while Devesh has been very helpful with the images in this book.

Preface

W hile visiting a family friend, a question they flung at me sparked off fireworks of thoughts in me. The question was whether I was happy with life. It was a tough question especially when you are not prepared with a smart answer. Had I said a yes it would have meant I had no complaints, which was so untrue, and if I had answered to the contrary I would have been perceived as a person discontented in spite of the many good things life had to offer. Nevertheless, that innocuous query made me ponder over the very fundamental pursuit in life, that of peace, contentment and happiness and the ways to get there.

Freedom to do what you want to do, getting to your cherished goal, acquiring abundance of wealth, fame and recognition are all good reasons to feel happy about but they are mere achievements. On reaching every new level your heart strives for the next and the quest goes on till you have run out of time in the rough and tumble of life.

On greater reflection I made a discovery. When all your acquisition and attention is centred on yourself, on what you must acquire for yourself and what respect people ought to pay you, you will forever be miserable. But when you shift your focus to the larger things of life, things bigger than you and things outside you, and what you must do to uplift the environment around you then you have most certainly uncovered the secret of everlasting happiness. It therefore means that the greatest source of the inner glow, which also shows on your outer being, is your contribution in making the world a better place and that to me is a legacy worthy of reference.

Life is a succession of lessons, to be grasped, reflected upon and absorbed. The drive through the twisting, winding and bumpy road of life demands a frequent glance into the rear-view mirror, on the path travelled; requires pausing, examining the route, introspecting and doing a course correction if required. However, in a world where we are so accustomed to hurling ourselves into action, introspection is as rare as dew in the desert. Constantly examining and questioning yourself, keeping your eyes and ears and mind open at all times, absorbing the learning without prejudices purely on its merit and most importantly, applying every tiny fraction of it will almost certainly push you to a higher plane; higher than those who fail to do any self examination and utilisation of the learning.

During the course of my professional and social interactions I have come across various personalities - self centred and empathetic, very responsible and absolutely indifferent, humble and conceited and many more. Having run into such people with some regularity and having observed them closely I was encouraged to script this work of fiction which is aimed at picturing our own idiosyncrasies and quirks of behaviour that are so much in common with the main character of this story.

I have had to summon a great deal of my learning to accomplish this piece and having completed it I am quite convinced that a legacy worth emulating has to its core a certain responsibility in every action of yours that should tally with your education; a responsibility to give back to the world more than what you take from it and in doing so leave behind an impression that’s in direct relation with the way you conduct yourself.

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Chapter 1

T he table clock jangled with the same monotonous regularity as it did every day at six in the morning. Philip extended his arm lazily and groped for the clock to contain the freedom with which it reverberated. In his body he felt a heavy lassitude, and he stretched his limbs, like a young animal freshly awakened; took a deep inhalation followed by a yawn and disentangled himself from the bed sheet about his legs.

He looked out of the window. It was another beautiful morning. The sun’s broad disk was skirting the horizon, staining the sky orange and yellow. The sky was dappled with little white clouds, and the rays of the sun shot like lances as they struck their edge.

The sound of pots and pans issuing from the kitchen punctuated the morning stillness and suggested that his wife, Rose, was up and awake, busy with the ritual of her morning chores. She was an artist in the kitchen, and the competence with which she went about her duties accorded a moral significance to whatever she did. She had furnished the house with good taste, and everything that was capable of polish sparkled brilliantly in her territory. The delights of her ordered elegance always gave Philip a little warm feeling in the heart, and he held her mastery in quiet adulation.

Philip sauntered into the garden where nature lay in a trance. The morning tranquillity was interrupted by the twitter of the birds and the chirping of grasshoppers; hidden among the leaves in the branches of the tall trees, a bird rejoiced in its full-throated melody, and far away, like an echo, a fellow-bird called back. The crotons that lined the garden were a profusion of brilliant colours, and the trees were heavy with dense green foliage. The morning breeze, laden with pleasant odours of the earth due to a light rain the previous night, whispered across, and the leaves quivered in delight as it caressed them. The ground was a carpet of green velvet on which tiny drops of water glistened radiantly when touched by the rays of the sun. Nature was in her most benignant mood, and it swept away his low spirits, making him light-hearted and happy.

A savoury smell filled his nostrils as Philip strode back into the house.

‘When are you leaving for Bhubaneswar?’ Rose’s busy voice echoed as he heard her tread.

‘Monday morning.’

A quaint feeling stirred in his heart, the kind of feeling that’s a curious mix of dread, defeat, and desolation. He wished he was not reminded of this journey.

‘When’s the meeting?’

‘On Tuesday.’

‘Couldn’t you have taken the Tuesday early morning flight then?’ she queried.

‘I’m travelling by road.’

‘Why road?’

‘Train tickets are sold out, and flights are all full.’

‘What about the return?’

‘I will be taking the evening