I would look at the sky and cry, and cry. The sky was too big. stars were too many, it was difficult to comprehend and was little familiar. So I would cry. Mom would caress me, would rock me, would tell me songs, but so long I was under the sky, i would cry. Ans as soon as she would take me in, I would stop crying.
Later in life I would wake up in night and start crying. parents would try to silence me, would try to know the reason, would try to make me know that they were there.
There was a fear of loss. Lying on the bed i would think what would I do if my parents are lost. It scared me, I felt less secure, I would cry.
Still later in life I would cry in the nights. Was I growing into a sissy boy? The reason for crying now was different. The reason this time was death. I have been raised up with the idea of re-birth and Karma. What if I am born next time as a dog? I won’t even be able to speak! If born as human, I will have to learn everything all again. As if it is very easy learning this one time, how would I do it again? Temporary nature of things intrigued and worried me.
I would only cry at nights, perhaps because I had nothing to do at nights. There were just two TV channels that too Doordarshans! There was nothing to keep me busy in the night. Somehow crying would really relieve me.
My fears allayed with time. I stopped crying as I grew older. But that does not mean that my nights became any easier. There still were many doubts, many questions and many fears. And now they were only more. I had started feeling convenient with my present identity. Idea of death brought new doubts now. Would I feel this same ‘me’ in the next life? This feeling is better felt than written. To be more lucid, the one who is feeling himself as ‘Chinmay’ here-now, is he going to remain the same in the next life, even if he is born as a dog? Or to say it even better, is there going to be some common thread between my this existence and the next existence, the thread that I can associate with myself, which I can call myself. Or to say it still better, if this identity of myself is not permanent, is there something that I can call myself. Death would take this body and so would it take this consciousness, then what would remain that would be me, and how would I feel that if at all that could be felt. The answer is perhaps what we call the soul, ‘atma’, but I could never really feel that and that could mean to me nothing more than a concept. What I really wanted was some sort of realization that would put these questions to an end and not some rhetoric.
And this question would worry me though I would not cry.
You may laugh at all this, but all this was pretty real and raised horrible doubts in me. I still have found no answer, though have come to a truce with these questions.
Such questions when put before, may sound like even foolish doubts, but when they emanate from within, they really trouble a lot and nothing remains more important than the answer to these questions.
