Dr. Surendra Gandhi

Dr. Surendra Gandhi

 

મારા બ્લોગ “પ્રવીણ શાસ્ત્રીની વાર્તાઓ”માં અત્યાર સુધી મેં માત્ર મારી વાર્તાઓ જ મારા વાચક મિત્રો માટે રજુ કરી છે. ગીત, કાવ્ય, ગઝલ ચિંતનાત્મક માહિતિસભર લેખ મારે માટે ખાટી દ્રાક્ષ છે. હવેથી મારા બ્લોગમાં લેખક મિત્રોની મૌલિક પ્રસાદી રજુ કરવાનો નિર્ણય કર્યો છે. ચાલો એવા એક મિત્રની આપને ઓળખાણ કરાવું…

અનેકવિધ પ્રવૃત્તિમાં વ્યસ્ત મારા મિત્ર ડો.સુરેન્દ્ર એસ. ગાંધી એક વિચારશીલ લેખક છે. હાલ તો રિટાયર્ડ સાઈકોલોજીસ્ટ છે. મુંબઈમાં જન્મ અને ઉછેર. બોમ્બે હોમિયોપેથીક મેડિકલ કોલેજમાં અભ્યાસ કરીને વ્યાવસારિક કારકિર્દીની શરૂઆત કરી. પાંચ વર્ષ સુધી Human Physiology ના લેક્ચરર તરીકે કામગીરી બજાવી. ૧૯૬૮માં અમેરિકા આવ્યા.   CYSTOLOGIS માં  ટ્રેઈનીંગ લઈ એ ક્ષેત્રમાં વર્ષો સુધી સેવા આપી એમાંથી યે નિવૃત્ત થયા. સળવળીયો જીવ. મીતભાષી સુરેન્દ્રભાઈએ પોતાના વિચારોને કલમ દ્વારા વાચા આપી. ન્યુ જર્સીના સ્થાનિક પત્રો ‘ગુજરાત દર્પણ’ અને ‘તિરંગા ઈન ન્યુ જર્સી’માં લખવા માંડ્યું.

એમણે વ્યાવસાયિક વિષયો પર તો લખવાની શરૂઆત ૧૯૫૯થી કરેલી પણ કવિ હૃદયમાંથી સરતી કવિતા, ગઝલ, શાયરી, અંગ્રેજી, ગુજરાતી ગદ્યનું અખંડ વ્હેણ તો શરૂ થયુ નિવૃત્તિ બાદ જ.

‘વ્યોમ વિહાર’, ‘તરંગના તળીએથી’ અને ‘રંગમંચ રાજકારણમાં’ ગુજરાતીમાં અને અંગ્રેજીમાં એમની વર્ષોથી વંચાતી Triumphant Ttio, Caricature, Editorial પ્રસિધ્ધ કોલમ છે. વાર્તા’ ગઝલ’ ગુજરાતી કાવ્ય સર્જન નિજાનંદ  માટે સર્જાતા રહ્યા  છે.

સુરેન્દ્રભાઈની નવલકથાઓ “ભિતરના વહેણ”, “આગીયાની ચમક” ન્યુ જર્સીના પત્રોમાં પગટ થઈ હતી. નવલકથા ઉપરાંત “પલ્લવી સ્પૃહા”, અને “આશાના અજવાળાં” ના કાવ્ય સંગ્રહમાંથી સાહિત્ય રસિયાઓએ એમના કેટલાક કાવ્યાસ્વાદ પણ મા ણ્યા છે  

વર્ષોથી અમેરિકા સ્થાયી થયા હોવાથી એમના લેખો દ્વારા અમેરિકાના સાંપ્રત સમાજ અને રાજકારણના મંતવ્ય જાણવા માણવા જેવા હોય છે. મારા વાચક મિત્રો માટે એમના તરફથી મળતી પ્રસાદી મારા બ્લોગમાં મુકતો રહીશ.

આજે આપને માટે  “Scrolls in the winds” વાર્તા રજુ કરૂ છું. આશા છે કે આપને એ ગમશે.

 આપનો પ્રતિભાવ લેખ નીચેની કોમેન્ટ્સમાં જણાવશો તો અમને ઘણો આનંદ થશે. એમની કૃતિ માટે આપનો અભિપ્રાય  surugandhi@gmail.com ના સરનામે પણ મોકલી શકશો.

                         Scrolls in the Wind

                       Short stories

                               by

                    Surendra Gandhi

 

It is a beautiful road unsullied by builders and developers and therefore a paradise for outdoor fans. The Jogging and biking enthusiasts. It also gives chance to the drivers in a hurry  to assault the prescribed speed limits and now and then victimize an innocent driver or a pedestrian. It would be surprising, if a month went by without a serious accident. Some what in similar fashion Samay’s life was unsullied by unforeseen events and on an even keel. Until one day when the harsh realities came calling and created a turmoil no lesser than a Tsunami or an earth quake way high on the Richter scale.

                           The tincture of the arriving fall was on the vegetation and foliage. Samay was  sitting on the patio as the shades of the departing dusk gave way to the arriving night. The beauty of the dark night  lies in the fact that it brightens the lights. A light bulb  usually no match for a bright day light, shines like a beacon in total darkness. It defines shadows clearly. May be that is why Samay liked darkness because it  illuminated the shadows of his past . The darkness was his friend. It always guided him through the vestiges of his dreams. Samay was a dreamer. Then again all of us have dreams. To turn them into realities is another matter. The best of the best have floundered in this arena. They have their dreams shattered into pieces in no time at all. Samay’s dreams were not extraordinary, yet he was not unambitious. His marriage was rock solid, though not made in heaven. He was therefore shocked  when he came face to face with the realities of a break up. All of a sudden it all came down crashing and he was left with nothing more to lose.

                            The whole incident was crystal clear to him. Once his wife decided to break up their marriage her sullen mood brightened. There was a clarity in her expression. He wanted to recount all the details. The first encounter between them  after the initiation of the demolition was archived vividly in his memory vaults. Whenever, he connected the dots one by one, the emerging picture couldn’t have been any sharper. How many times had he connected the dots? The answer would not sound cliché’d and say too many. He glanced at the caller id   of his mind  and hesitated  to thwart the temptation to revisit the past. Because he  was aware of  countless attempts which resulted in failures. In the end he trudged his mind through the  barricaded memories. He knew how dire the straits were.

                   The Telomeres located at the tip of  our  marriage shortened each time by  divisive episodes, and differences of opinions. Our marriage became dysfunctional by the  excessive shortening of the telomeres. The net effect of the shrinkage of Telomeres sentenced our marriage to death at a very young age.

 I know we were not evolved to indifferently tolerate prolonged emotional defeat and unresolved conflicts. Our minds were poisoned by the intense desire for status in weakly cohesive ways. This  massive stressful state degraded our lives and took away our freedom and triggered dissatisfaction, depression and behavioral blizzards. Thus chilling our relations. We both knew that our potential was limited by natural constraints over our bodies and minds. There was no way to reengineer the Telomeres of our marriage and control their shrinkage. We lost the race  with time to reinforce our failing marriage

                  Little did we know that life is a continued struggle to be what we are not and to do what we can not. Our over ambition allowed our minds to exceed its grasp. We failed to recognize that there was  a limit to maintain our personal relations. And yet our lust for recognition in addition to our ego and inventive potential propelled us in to larger arenas of increasingly larger complexities.

                           Too gradually  We traded the fully satisfactory goals for a quest for relevance and purpose of our marriage.  Our reasonable goals became grandiose which resulted in defeat and failure. There are never any prizes for losers, we learned the hard way. Yet we pressed on. Because we  were obsessed by things beyond our reach, by what we did not have and what we could not be. Our success was unhealthy because it lacked a personal goal. This Tsunami of obsession engulfed us and we failed to correct the course, and  to change our attitudes. This signaled a very lonely and unhappy existence for the rest of our lives. We failed to learn that progress and material comfort alone can not count for happiness. Our astronomical desire  to amass more motivated as well as frustrated us because we could not strike a balance.

               We settled in USA and made good and decent lives for us as well as our children and family members, who in turn accomplished their own dreams. In the shadowy corners of Samay’s vacant mind the guttural rumblings of the past went on. Like the snow drifts piled on the vestigial dunes of the ashes of their marriage. At times it also felt like ripples over the black skin of the pool of memories long gone.

               His mind was running a mile a minute. It was the mix of thoughts and remembrances. He was thinking about his marriage and its demise. Usually he did not mix thoughts and remembrances and now he felt as though he was transfixed and  couldn’t stay focused. He laughed at himself when he heard the crazy high cackle of this lunacy. He wrapped his arms around his chest as if he was trying to keep himself from falling apart and he walked a bit closer to the dark and choppy pool of memories, which was alarmingly rushing towards the shore of consciousness.

             He breathed and was motionless and the sound of air filling his lungs brought him back to reality. He was tired. He was tired of all of it. The long icicles still hanged down from the edges of  the bare  branches of ancient memories. It was a weird feeling and he didn’t like it, when it happened, and it seemed to be happening more and more. It was as if everything outside of him was happening in a flash of rewind, and he was all alone in a dark corner watching it all.

        He remembered first seeing her many years ago on the college campus. He knew she was a freshman. How could he ignore the tall gorgeous girl with a smiling face  and striking sculpted  features? Everything about her was pristine, precise and pleasant. He was not obsessed with her, yet she gently stayed in his thoughts. Like an imperceptible fresh breeze. He could never get involved with her even if she did have a body that would cause traffic jam. After all he was beyond the rank of a student even though he was not older than most of the seniors. He held an academic fellowship. In his otherwise rudderless life there were no ceilings to be cracked, no heights to be scaled. Of course an amorphous  plan for the future was outlined. But the progression of life or destiny is never rectilinear. There are always turns and twists. Before too much sand would slip through the hour glass of life, he found courage to express his feelings for  her.  They were in unison when she resonated his feelings. The whirlwind of courtship blurred any incongruity. He was an optimist. He saw an opportunity in every difficulty and with her by his side his confidence level soared. He was touched by her kaleidoscopic individuality. Because  his slightest touch revealed  her  vividness. It was then and this was now.

                   It looked as if he hadn’t slept since the time the legal papers arrived. He was surprised by the knot in his throat that made it impossible for him to say or do anything any more. He hadn’t let himself think about it. The fact that their marriage was on the brink of annulment  was pegged in his mind.  But there was nothing more than that, nothing he felt except a vacuous numbness and nothing he would let himself think about.

                What were you thinking? He asked himself and he verbalized it more like a plea than an answer.

 “ That our lives were a fairy tale and that such tragedies can happen to others. Not us.” He stopped and sighed, a long drawn breath was in reality a moan, a sigh and the sound itself seemed to acknowledge the fact and accept it. A single word came out like a dolorous grunt.

                         His clothes were faded and weightless. As it happens after hundreds of washings. They were more like parchments than cloth. Beneath his bare feet, the cold marble floor of his living room greedily siphoned the warmth out of his body. Goose bumps erupted  all over his skin, which were easily ignored. Concerns of physical appearance and bodily comforts were not the priority of the moment. His mission was to dig himself out of the bottomless vacuous pit.

                     A hint of progression flickered. A subtle shift in the attitude stirred an unfamiliar urgency. He could see a window of  hope opening up. It was imperative to activate a positive flow of energy. A prolonged social quarantine had not deterred his focus. Patience was his only compass which helped him navigate the most difficult circumstances. Even with his resolve at its weakest his spirit was not dampened.

                  One final time standing alone in the darkest hour of his life, he stood in front of two options. He took a deep breath and stepped towards a flickering pale fluorescence.  He ignored the cadaveric  coldness and the motley cast of haunting events, both pleasant as well as unpleasant that paraded in an innocuous manner. He squinted his eyes adjusting to the flickering fluorescence and inventoried the balance sheet of his bankrupt life one final time. He cringed. Choosing despair  and  despondency would be safer. Disgusting but safer. Because he would be less vulnerable to yet another potential disappointment of  a renewed relationship.

                Finally staring defiantly he smashed the remnants of the past. All that mattered was executing the escape sequence. He bolted out in an unknown and unfamiliar corridor, springing to reach hope. As he fled the past began to close in on him like falling dominos. He plowed , ignoring the echoes of multiple foot steps of the past. He wanted the past to converge as much as possible because it was all going to be left behind.

               He burst through and breathed a sigh of relief. The long makeshift rope weaved out of hope and instincts was now in his hands. After taking a deep breath, he took a leap of faith. For the last time the converged remnants of past swarmed over him and peered down at the pale form plunging away.

             Indeed the fall was scary and clumsy. He was rushing towards ground. Thoughts of injury flooded his mind. With no time to spare, a gentle hand of deceleration hit him like a freight train and saved him from the pull of the gravitational force. It was a revealing unraveling. The decelerating hand facilitated a soft landing. The jump won him a substantial lead. Yet he could hear the footsteps of the past growing louder, closing the gap. A panic walled up inside him. There was an exit. Unfamiliar to him. The truth was that he didn’t know what would happen when he tried to go through that door. It might be locked, could lead to another corridor. There could be a stone wall on the other side. There was no turning back now. He almost barreled into that exit door. It opened so easily that he lost his composure and tumbled. He struggled  and regained  his balance. He was standing in the middle of  an unfamiliar intersection. His pupils were still adjusting to the bright light and fading dark shadows of the past. Bewildered , he took stock of his surroundings. He had yet to consider what he would do if and when he emerged….

       He walked and a guiding light illuminated his way. The light was bright and beautiful. Behind the light was a jovial and reassuring smile. In an instant he knew that it was a new beginning, a new dawn… a journey to destination within their hearts and souls…