I got married to Arun Bhagat when I was 19 years old, and for nearly 60 years we lived a fulfilling life together. When I lost him on my birthday last year, I felt I was staring at an abyss. I hadn’t known me without him, or if I did, I don't remember. For all these years my life was anchored with his. Now all of a sudden, this new reality: the profound presence of his absence. Things will never be the same again.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. This crisis in life was an opportunity to rediscover me—the maiden Livleen for the annals of past. In all these years, I did miss me—the 19 years old bubbly girl, who had aspirations beyond getting married to a prince-charming.
These 60 years seem like just a few days, and I have to build a bridge to get back to the undiluted me. And for that to happen I needed to go to a new place and start afresh.
I always wanted a house of my own in the hills, and that need was the strongest at this juncture in my life. Perhaps, I manifested it strongly for my younger son, Arjun, had just finished building a cottage in the hills—that we have named the Wild Cherry Padam Cottage.
I moved in there when Delhi was getting warmer—in the early summers. I was accompanied by my dog Moca, and my wo-man Friday, Sanjana, and her life-partner. I lived here for the next six months; it was a break from the past that harbingered a new tomorrow.
Life in Delhi is sticky, my children and grandchildren are all in Delhi. It was not easy. It took me a month to get adjusted —to make this cottage my quintessential space. In the early days, it was raining incessantly. The rains washed me of the past, I felt, to start afresh.
Thankfully, four days after I arrived, I had four guests over, they are an extension of my family, and they are very expressive of their affection towards me, felt like the warmth of the winter sun, and made me feel good. I got the necessary encouragement. They acted as a cushion, and made the transition smoother.
So, I am here, all by myself, in my cottage nestled in nature, overlooking the snowline, icecaps that define the Himalayas, glowing in the golden hue of the summer sun; blue sky and green mountains were therapeutic. I was inspired to paint. And painted on chairs and doors inspired by nature.
Arun’s absence in my life appears to me like a clean canvas and I now have a responsibility unto myself to paint a beautiful picture.
The mountains transform visually with every season though inherently they are the same, a static witness to the passage of time. I started to love the time spent here--this prolonged date with my inherent self started to heal me.
Painting inspired by the bounty of nature gave me solace, The painting of the Padam tree on the glass pane of the kitchen window was a gradual process of rediscovering my self. I found me here. I like the way I look to me.
I made friends with the locals, and participated in the village life, whether it was dealing with a local sadhu who has travelled the world, or with the village school. They all accepted me with open arms, and I soon became integral to the local life as a village elder.
I also met with a lot of outsiders, mostly from Delhi, who like my son, have or are in the process of building a cottage in the hills. One of them is a young man who’d often join me for lunch. He’d be mostly spaced out and I’m high on life, and we hit off seamlessly. He’s having a good experiential life, for he’s not very demanding. He wants to spend time in nature to experience inert euphoria.
Then I had friends visiting me from Delhi, apart from my sons and grandchildren, and one of them was a young woman of 90 years. And youth is not about the number of years spent on this planet; it has a lot to do with the zest for life, ability and curiosity to learn new things and to be open to experiences, things that life offers, including change.
I read a lot. Historical and spiritual texts. Looking back in time helped make sense of the present. I read about women saints, that was the kind of engagement I needed. Lalleshwari, lived between 1320–1392, popularly called Lal Ded, was a Kashmiri mystic, a worshipper of Shiva, practiced advaita or the trans-sectarian monist consciousness, and she lived naked in the higher reaches of the mountain. She was untouched by the fallacies of the material world and the conditionality of mind, and experienced unfiltered bliss—that cannot be expressed in words, is an experience that makes all other experiences redundant.
Also, about Janabai, she became a saint at the age of 8 years, and wrote abhanga—devotional poetry. She was from a low-caste, and as a child she was taken to the temple of Vitthal or Vithoba in the city of Pandharpur, is the centre of the ‘Varkari’ Hindu tradition. She refused to leave the temple as a child and lived her whole life there devoted to the service to God.
I have many books about the life of saints, most of them procured from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan. Osho, Neem Karoli Baba—who’s ashram is an hours’ drive from the cottage—gave me good company.
I planted trees, not just in the cottage but also in the village. I also created a little ‘Zen patch’ outside of the kitchen, a concoction of plants, to me symbolizes, as the name suggests, the direct experience of the ultimate reality, or the absolute, that is vibrant yet subtle, the essential unity of all life forms, even death is not the end.
I’m an artist by heart, and now I’m living this artistic aspect of me in full measure. When I look inwards, in these seraphic settings, I realise I’m sufficient. That’s a good feeling. And I’m grateful for what life has given me, and there’s no malice for what was taken away from me.
Arun’s absence in my life appears to me like a clean canvas, and I now have a responsibility unto myself to paint a beautiful picture.
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