“In India, you can stand in one place and look to your right, and you see a funeral. Look to your left, and you see a marriage. Look in front of you, and you see little children that are born and are starving in the streets. And look behind you, and somebody’s driving a Bentley. You’re suddenly faced with the contradictions of just living, and you realize just how mortal you are. And in that mortality, you’re pushed into the idea that life is not under your control — it’s completely chaotic. And unless you find a sense of harmony in that chaos, it’s very difficult to actually live.”
Shekhar Kapur
Through the above lines Shekhar Kapur has summed up life in its entirety in a very poetic, profound yet subtle manner. As he does that he also raises a question at the end of his statement. The question being, how do you find harmony amidst the chaos? And no matter how many words we put in here, only you individually can provide an answer to it; because the answer is unique and constantly changing for each one of us.
‘Harmony in chaos’ – a very heavy phrase, isn’t it? The kind that you come across in spirituality books. The kind that you read about, ponder slightly upon, bring up in discussions to impress people with your profundity and may be even post as a status message on your Facebook page. While you are doing all these things, there is also a rat race that you are a part of, in which a routine schedule has been designed, governing you and many others like you who are part of the race. Every single day you work for a deadline for five consecutive days of the week. For the remaining two days, the pending tasks of the past five days have to be worked upon, there are friends and relatives to be visited, then there is that little social cause which gives you immense satisfaction.
All these things that are mentioned above comprise of what you would call the chaos that your life is subjected to.
Harmony or a rhythm or an order is established in this chaos, when a certain realization dawns upon to you. A realization that the spiritual masters have termed as the state of ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ (God dwells within me).
Basically, that is when you know that come what may you will always abide by your conscience and no matter how dominating the noise outside is, it will never drown the voice within your soul. Out of this conscience or the space of consciousness, a rare conviction is born that takes you to places where you have a moment of ultimate discovery.
A discovery so pure that it liberates you of all the chains that were holding you down all this while. There was a time when inner power manifested in conquering the entire world like Alexander. The world could be conquered by winning over kingdoms and ending dynasties. The modern world can also be conquered but not by winning over the Wall Streets but by winning the hearts of the people that dwell in the world around us. The Alexander of today will find harmony within and then there will be harmony in the chaos without as well.
To Aniket Pathak, the most fascinating part of living is being able to tell a story, at times by being a part of it, at times by living it and at times being privileged enough to know it. All these stories are nothing but a collection of moments of varied emotions, of ultimate self discoveries and above all moments of infinite possibilities. To the world however, Aniket is a student and his blog Embraced Moments is where he is the book that he reads, the song that he sings, the music that he listens to, the movie that he watches…the moment that he lives.