Rainbow…

I saw a rainbow today.

As we were returning from our meeting at Worli to get to our humble homes at Goregaon, my colleagues and I saw a spectacular rainbow as we were crossing the Worli sea link. It was a beautiful sight!

It was difficult to take our eyes off of the beautiful band of color spanning across the sky, like the colorful wake of a pixie leaping from cloud to cloud!

Being from Lonavla, I rarely ever saw a rainbow in my childhood. It is way too rainy and cloudy there for too many of these beauties to happen.

I was delighted! And my delight was beyond compare when we saw one more further along the highway!

I was ecstatic and expected to find people ogling the beautiful phenomena all around me.

Disappointing.

Nobody  seemed interested. Worse. No one noticed! The cars zipped by, hurrying to wherever it was they were supposed to reach.

And I wondered.

What sort of a life do we live? What were we doing?

I don’t believe in any certain deity or god but I do believe in something that’s more powerful, much more vast than anything that I can imagine. Call it the universal consciousness or the superbeing or just nature. There is something that makes all these wonderful things happen and I think, somewhere, the intention of giving us our sensory organs and our life span was to allow us to enjoy all these amazing natural things!

I think we were supposed to watch every sun rise and draw strength from the unfailing way in which the light always came back. Always.

I think we were supposed to listen to the whispering of the wind in the woods and understand the power of being calm.

We were supposed to feel the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves and learn to let our hearts echo that constant, restless energy.

We were supposed to observe as the rains and the earth join forces to nurture new life from tiny seeds and take lessons in parenting; knowing how to grow our young.

we were supposed to look up to the mountains and find strength in ourselves.

We were supposed to look up at the stars, discover the vastness of the universe and feel humbled at the mere microscopic nature of our own existence. Then we were supposed to look at the detailing of each snowflake, each leaf, each fingerprint and feel assured that though we were a tiny fraction of Creation, we weren’t insignificant. We were just as detailed and carefully made as any of the large stars and galaxies.

And every once in a while, we were supposed to see things like Rainbows and fluffy clouds and natural caves and feel Delight and Awe. The most important feeling, Awe. That sensation of your heart swelling up to bursting point with mere wonder. The awe that eventually leads to a profound respect for the forces that made these miracles happen; nature or, god or whatever you wish to label it. A respect that further lead to a symbiotic relationship with everything around.

We were supposed to learn from the world around; to draw strength from the soft lessons kept there for us.

We were supposed to be lively, inquisitive, yearning to learn. I may sound pompous when I say this, but this world holds miracles beyond imagination and we were meant to see them all and grow!

What we were definitely NOT supposed to be were mere robots shuffling from spot A to spot B for the major parts of our natural lives. But we’ve become exactly that! What sort of creatures are we? Do most of us realize that we are damned lucky to have color vision? That being able to see a rainbow in itself too is a miracle? Then why do people not have even a simple smile on their faces when there’s a rainbow in the sky? What are we soooo busy chasing? It’s not like we see rainbows everyday! THey come out once in a while!

Where has the wonder in us gone?

Like I said, I don’t really believe in God… but if there were a God, He must feel hurt every time people passed by a rainbow or a sun rise and didn’t give it a second glance or a thought….

No wonder this world is going to hell this fast…