CHAPTER 1 : TRAFFIC
It was his usual habit to sit at the bus stop near his house every night for an hour or two after his office time. He liked watching traffic jams and also listening to it’s noise; because it resembled his own mind’s traffic jam formed by flashbacks of past and noise of future.
His had been a rollercoaster filled with intense moments. As he looked at a car stuck in traffic on road he felt it was himself stuck in traffic of his mind. Another reason he liked traffic was the loud noise of silence in his house was much more painful than noise of traffic, thus he preferred the latter. He had a lavish flat on 16th floor of a sea facing building in the city of dreams – Mumbai.
He sat at the bus stop till his brain was tired of the chaos inside as well as outside. Then he would walk towards his building – press '16' on lift button panel – open main door of his house – and enter into whole another world of his own. A world paradoxically ‘successful’ in eyes of society but insanely unsuccessful in his own eyes. He would drop his bag on the couch and walk towards his balcony to admire the scenic beauty of night sky glittering with stars along with reflection of moon in the sea and melodic sound of waves coming to shore and retreating back.
Paras, a 28 years old brilliant IIM Ahmedabad graduate working in core management team of an MNC. Topper of his school, topper of his engineering college and also topper at IIM. He also bagged the biggest package in the placements. If there would have been an award for good looks he would have got that one too ! He was pure genius in his work, sometimes very tough on his subordinates too but just to get the work done efficiently. He was emotionally quite intelligent but in some areas of life he felt emotionally weak too. He was not a manufactured product of the education system but rather a naturally rebellious curious student. Some questions of life in various domains like love, heartbreak, purpose of life, god, success etc. had made huge home in his mind, each question had it’s past flashbacks and future noises but he was determined to understand and tame them.
This created innumerable permutations and combinations of more questions in his brain. His brain was kind of laboratory where he experimented with all those permutations and combinations to reach conclusions just like Edison found the light bulb. He always felt there is some pattern in this traffic of flashbacks and noises of future like a sine or cosine wave or some formula of series or just some artistic pattern or maybe some message of universe which need to be decoded or maybe there is nothing. Well even to find there is nothing at the end also means you have found something!!!
He always read alot about ‘present moment’ philosophy but always felt it is like the famous song ‘despacito’ lyrics – you never understand it but you like the rhythm of it, but he was determined to understand it one day. He rarely gave up because he chose his battles wisely and in case he gave up it was mostly because he realised it was more important for other person to win. It simply made no sense for him to enter present moment by ignoring past flashbacks and noises of future because he didn’t find much logic to leave what you have in front of you to reach the 'present moment' rather he felt that to find answers to these questions is the journey and 'the present moment' as they call it is the destination. How can you reach the destination without going through the journey?
He felt the traffic on road of past and future must be cleared rather than to leave your car mid way and enter a new empty road of present moment. He took responsibility to find a way through the traffic of future and past to reach towards present because maybe the only way is THROUGH it to reach TO it.
When you make way THROUGH it, you not only make traffic clear for yourself but for many others too who are stuck like you !
So he decided to stay in the traffic .