CHAPTER 1. RAINING KNOCKS
I sat in my chair beside the window, staring at a sad rain falling on old trees and fresh cut grass. The smell of old cedar was emblazoning the wet air, a couple of squirrels playfully dancing up and down a dark tree trunk, an old red color Jeep standing leisurely on that dirty path that led to the portico of my log cabin. Raindrops kept dribbling from the cavities in the roof and I kept staring at those foggy mountains in the distant. There was a slight chill in the room as I didn’t bother turning on the heating system; I tucked myself into my favorite dark green cardigan and went outside. As I stepped out into the porch, a cold stream of wind inflated itself on my face which was followed by an outbreak of sadness.
I was still in search of life.
Two years back, being hardly twenty six, I had become the best Image Consultant in the country; my clients ranged from politicians, TV and sports stars, to large businesses and prolific entrepreneurs. I spent two years enjoying that fashionably chosen and exquisite lifestyle and then one day an utterly featureless meeting with a client threw me into the chasms of my own useless self.
She was presumably the greatest film star in the country whose aesthetics and persona was followed by millions; she was the cult figure who was impeccable in everything she did, in everything she said; it was all true until one day she entered my office.
“I am losing it all, I don’t know how long can I hold it, I can’t keep up, I am breaking down and I don’t want that to be seen. Help me, help me retain myself…” she kept on rambling and I kept on thinking, “I can’t do this, what help do these people want, they are already at the top, why do I do this.”
She turned out to be my last client; I gave up on everything, sold my car and apartment and left that egocentric city where everybody was wrapped around himself. Some two hundred miles to the north of the country, I bought a small log cabin with a breathtaking view on all sides and started working on my first book, “Selfless Victories”, exploring ways in which one could help others win, those who really deserved to win but their victories had already been expropriated by some self centered winners.
That day it rained heavily and the winds wouldn’t stop throwing those raindrops at my door; they kept knocking there, keeping me from writing a word. I opened the door and a thousand tiny wet hands slammed on my face and sprayed that unsaid silence onto my eyes.
“What is it that you want?” I asked myself, “Why can’t you just live for yourself?”
There was no answer, only a thousand more knocks, a thousand more hands, a thousand more pairs of eyes and a thousand more lives right there in front of me. What was it that I wanted out of my life; I was not heartbroken anymore; I was not in an unspoken love; neither was I in any sort of pain that was usually of emotional or pecuniary disposition. As a matter of fact, I was still living a veritably peaceful life. That rain kept falling helplessly on my face trying to wake me up. “Let me live for myself”, I finally spoke to it and went inside the cottage closing the door behind me. I had no words in my head to spread on paper, but I still sat there in my comfort chair beside the fireplace, rolling to and fro, holding my chin in my hand, staring at the clumsily dancing fire. My eyes were wandering aimlessly in the room when they finally focused on a two weeks old newspaper sneaking from underneath my laptop.
“Drought continues uninterrupted by rainfall for the fifth year in Thar; populace forced to drink polluted water.”
In the far corner of the room, played a song, “My heart is bigger than the small days I am given in my life; I live all my life today; I don’t worry about tomorrow for when my life brings pain it also brings the remedy.” I felt that radiant heat of the furnace hitting my right cheek, vocals of the rainfall hitting the door on my left, a promising yet sad song adding to the mist in the air and an unfinished paragraph fallen silently on a piece of paper floating unattended on the table. This was it, I knew what I was supposed to do; rain was sending me to a place where she couldn’t go herself. I was going to Thar.
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