Every year during summers I and my son take off to Mangalore. All the same, we are there to be with our tribe ; but we do not wink at way out engagements like weddings, naming ceremonies, house warming and you name it. We are driven to remain sane and folks need not break out in sweat over our solitude. Although, we uphold our self inflicted isolation there is my mom who is equally committed to her family ties and rituals. So while we can shut out the entire world we are clay pigeons coming down to mom. Incidentally on our part, we were sent on a temple visit. We went along to invoke the blessings of the deity to keep us on the path of remoteness. That was satire. At the temple while performing our ‘parikrama’ our feet were burning under the blazing Sun beating down the stone paved floor. My son was quick to jump over to the shadier segment of the temple canopy to complete his ‘parikrama’. I was tickled when others followed suit. It set me thinking. People often advocate adherence to faith and belief but they want to walk in the shade themselves. Supposing we did not have the choice of walking in the shade, wouldn’t we opt to walk in the Sun? We probably would have, as it was important for us to comply with the ritual.It occurred to me that while we walked under the temple canopy we missed the sky. To have a slice of the sky we have to step away from the shade. On our journey, walking in the shade may be comforting but we are likely to miss the blue. The path we pick leads to a destination but may be different from what we had pictured. It is upto us to hang in there and make the most of it or else retrace our path back to where we started. The best option would be to weigh our chances at the journey’s end, the one that we have arrived rather than wasting time in hoping madly to be at our dream destination. Whatever the pick we have to burn our feet for our slice of sky.
