Of Satsangs and ego

                    

“ Beta”. The endearment floated melliflously somewhere over my head and out of the window ,towards the rose bushes I had been gazing covetously at, fretting why my  desi gulabs  were not doing as well as the English roses , my objet de l'attention.

 “ Beta”. Lost in the enjoyable  planning of the conversation I would be having with the gardener on  the  demerits of desi gulabs , planted at his insistence, viz a viz  the merits of the red beauties  I was enviously staring at, the word again curled up like a ball, ready to be thrown out of the window, but at the last minute snatched back from the jaws of oblivion by my intuitiveness. Yes, the  intuition,  maligned by husband and children, cause of much mirth to them , spoke in my ears, ”forget the gardener -look in front”. I  looked in front , straight into the impatient  eyes of a benign figure in white .

 Dear reader , if you find it oxymoronish  that a benign figure should have impatient eyes, pick no quarrel with me for I speak the truth . The benign  mouth stretched to form a beatific smile before opening up to say, " Beta. You looked distressed. Tell Ma Pritamamma everything. Ma will provide a solution for all the worries creasing your brows ". This sounded good and  I looked around for Ma whatshername  only to be pinched by my friend who whispered, “ she is Ma Pritamamma’. Realizing that my friend  must be right , she being the one to drag me to her satsang- , I said , “ my troubles are endless . The son has said he doesn’t want to do engineering after school  but not said what he wants to do , the daughter says that she has only  one drink once a month but I think  it is the other way round- once a month she has one drink and the other days she doesn’t count ,  the husband  thinks I  hyperventilate, the maid watches television all the time, even when rolling out rotis , so that our rotis take on shapes hitherto confined to mathematics books, the gardener …’ Here I paused to draw a breath ,  realizing that the shenanigans of the gardener would need some explaining  but Ma  expertly stepped into the silence of the drawn breath and addressing the sorority of sisters said ,”  this  proves my point about the importance of not letting our ego rule over us. Our poor sister here , ( pitying looks in yours truly direction) has allowed herself to be sucked into the fictitious  world of ego. For her it is my son, my daughter, my maid . She has not yet understood that there is no my. True happiness and salvation can be achieved only when we let go of …”

We are watching television, an euphemism for changing channels. Correction- the husband is watching while  I have one eye on the television and the other on the maid rolling out – you guessed it- rotis. And then, this beatific vision comes on the screen . She is being interviewed by Sharnab Hoswami.

Q .  One last question- any message for the viewers?

B.V ( beatific vision) I would just want to thank my followers, my bhakts , my satsangis for…

Whatever happened to the ego now?