While it is all in the cycle of things, it can also be a matter of imaginations. The imagination of a new beginning is celebrated with the metaphorical arrival of the Goddess with her family in the earthly domain. The imagination of the end of a cycle is perpetuated by the bisarjan of the same Goddess and her family into the rivers. The holiness is part of the imagination. The godliness is part of the imagination. It is pure imagination that makes you believe that the burning of the effigy of the Ravana is the beginning of the end of evil. It is imagination that powers the images of the Goddess and her said family, and, that of Ravana.
The last time we went to the doctor for a check-up of our little man, the one thing she asked among others was if the little man participated in imaginary play. Imaginary play is an important part of the mental growth of a child. The little man stays busy with imaginary cooking with his cars and the freshly bought vegetables. He cleans the house with anything cylindrical, imagining it to be the broom. His cars enter imaginary tunnels and emerge from them equally magically. His cars are fed with milk in imaginary bottles and are put to sleep each night. The magic wand of imagination has touched him.
As a child, i exercised my imagination to the fullest. i had an imaginary friend with whom i shared my thoughts. It was a happy sort of imagination. The line between imagination and reality was clearly marked. It was in the final school years that i started believing that i could read people's thoughts and heard them say things. The voices were clearly heard and there was no reason to disbelieve them.
They told me how worthless my life was and how much excess i was blessed with. The subscriptions to magazines i read were a waste for my family, they said. The art class i enrolled in was better off without me, they said. They were the voices i heard. They were the voices i believed in. It was the voices that was the first sign of my illness. My auditory hallucinations, along with my belief that i was to be harmed were diagnosed as preemptive symptoms of schizophrenia. It was with my family's support that i was kept under medicines and continuous supervision. i look back to those days with thankfulness.
In the scheme of things, there is one individual, besides my dear doctor uncle, who helped me get back to life. He is Professor Somnath Bhattacharya, a retired Professor of Psyhcology in the University of Calcutta. What he did was put me through exercises of mindfulness. Our sessions included discussing the Gita, the Upanisads, listening to music and discussing dream sequences that i had.
As i see my little man imagining a world of things, i only hope that he does them mindfully. Asking it from a two year old is possibly crazy, but i truly wish he learns to play mindfully, that he learns to live mindfully. The walking on the thin line between imagination and reality that i had experienced, i wish not for him. But the awareness of that line may be a worthwhile lesson learnt.
*the title of the post is a quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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