On my Birthday

Sometimes life throws some inexplicable surprise at you that you can only be dazzled by it and nothing else is possible. My birthday was on August 19th and I had a bad day just the day before, for no reason I was feeling very low. Just before going to bed I sat wondering as to how will be birthday turn out to be and desperately wanted it to be “Just fine” and not a repeat of what had happened on that day. Lost in my thoughts and struggling to get some sleep as I lay on my bed watching the moon outside the window in my room, my mobile beeps and forces me out of my lost world. I see a message and assume that It must be from one of close friends with a birthday wish, but to my surprise I find the message from one of my college friend and it turns out to be one of the regular message that she sends us as a routine.


This friend of mine is a very sweet one, she sends the messages to our whole college group every day. Sometimes the messages are funny, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes pathetic shayari, sometimes hopeless romantic, sometimes philosophical and sometimes inspirational. The sweet part is that she sends this to all of us without fail and continues even if you 'don’t respond to her. I like the messages sometimes that she sends us and acknowledge the fact that “this was a good one”. This is her way of remaining in touch with all of us, because she cannot come to meet us when we gather together. It’s because she comes from a very orthodox family where e they don’t allow her to go out unless and until there is something important. Yes, I know sometimes we don’t realize that normal things like going out with friends can be a real gift to someone simply because they hardly get that chance. Anyways as I had said that this message was from her and the message read something like this:

“Face everything in your life ,it will make you discover many things in life and you will realize the meaning of life. Life never seems happy. WE SHOULD MAKE IT HAPPY!! ”

I know many of them will feel that it is one of the full of gyaan message, but the fact was that it came at that moment in my life just few minutes before my birthday and when I especially needed that “something” to go ahead. I messaged her “Thank you” and she wished me “Good Night”. Well, she did not remember my birthday and neither did she wish me, but what remains a fact is that with her simple gesture that she actually gifted me something for my life and I will always cherish that. I know that this message was not exclusively for me, but still it changed that very instant something in me or at least triggered a few thoughts in me. I decided to read that again in the morning and think about it. With a new found hope I slept a peaceful sleep.

Waking up in the morning, getting ready I thought about the message and decided that today and any other day I am going to do things that will make me happy. I am not going to worry about what others did and from today I will do what I am supposed to do ( justly, righteously, ideally) and that will make me happy. Deciding that, I was on my way to office and listening to some new songs in my iPod. One song that played first and continued to play for the rest of the day. That song seemed to answer a few questions which was disturbing me for long…Questions like I did make the decision to be happy, but how will I do it. Sometimes you need a lot of strength to carry out such decisions; I always felt that I never had that much of a courage pr strength both to carry out any of my decision. But I was thinking of making an exception this time and so I needed to gather everything around me and get back that spirit in me, which says , yes I can go for this and I will not FAIL. And this song seem to give me the answer for that question. It’s a prayer to the Almighty and that’s where I derive from inspiration from Everyday of my life.

The song is written by our great poet Rabindranth Tagore find its lyrics in English transcript here below:

http://geetabitan.com/lyric_eng/P/ly_PRAN_BHORIYE_TRISA_HARIY_401.htm

I have tried to translate/summarize the song in English …find it below

Fill me with life, full of life, filling all the thirst in me.
Give me a place in your world, in your abode ||

Give me some more light, more light into my eyes
Fill me with all the music of the world and give me more songs||

Give me more Pain, Give me more pain and give me more knowledge
Remove all the obstacles and protecting me from everything ||

Give me more love, more love, let my ego vanish in that love
Fill me with more nectar of life, fill me with more life, more life ||

Fill me with life, full of life, filling all the thirst in me.
Give me a place in your world, in your abode||

Praying to the Lord Almighty to give me more life, more light, more love and more knowledge…

With this prayer I proceeded to start my day at office and the rest of the day just followed in its melody. This may not be the accurate translation of the song, because I did this on the fly while the song is playing in my iPod. But nevertheless it does convey the core meaning of it.