Musings on ...........

being a superhero for instance. What if we are given super powers, or some of us are singled out and given super powers. Alright forget super powers, of the superman-spiderman-fantastic kind.
What if someone is given the gift or the curse of clairvoyance? To those who do not know what it is to be clairvoyant or any special gift, it is mysterious, the usual curiosity that accompanies the overwhelming need, in some cases, to know the unknown.
What if I had the power to know about something that is going to happen beforehand? Especially with regard to tragic circumstances? If I had the power to know that someone would meet with a fatal accident and instances like that way before it were to happen and had the power to do so, should I prevent it?
To start small, say the food chain, if I were to see a cat run after a frog, should I shoo the cat away, so that the frog may live longer, or should I watch the natural course of the food chain? When I was a kid, I remember having shooed a kitten away, in this case, I bodily removed her from the scene of action when I thought she was going to eat up a frog. My grandmother happened to watch it, and she said, that I should not have done that. It is the right of a being to eat what she deems right, and when she is hungry. Whether we feed the kitten or not, is a different issue altogether.
And at that point in time, I am supposed to have gone against dharma. Against the law of the universe.
When I came to know about the demise of someone close to us, and who was wayyyyy too young to pass into the other realm, leaving behind a family broken in soul. I was desperately wishing at that time, can't some power come back into that body so that they can come back to life? Or why die at all in the first place? Why not, say just fracture a limb or paralyze it instead?
And at that time I also wished that I had known about the imminent demise so that I could have told them not to take out their car on that particular day.
And eventually it led me to a lot of questions on whether I would be going against destiny. When I was young, I remember this line, said in the deep voice of a man I do not remember, "Mutthi main hai taqdeer hamari"; we hold our destiny in our fist. Whether we want to hold it tight, or loose, or not hold it at all, rests within us.
One cannot remain in this world for ever, there is a beginning and an end. But somewhere between all this, there is a choice of postponement. Could I have postponed someone dying before they should have? Or rather before I THOUGHT they should have?
What is right and what is wrong? Yin and Yang, with Yang having Yin within and Yin having Yang within.
In between all this there are things we learn while stepping on each grain of sand, pebble, stone, boulder and the rock in the road of time, where there is an imprint on the world outside, and more importantly the world inside. For whenever you step on anything, you feel the pressure in your foot and the subsequent changes that it brings about in your body. Sometimes the sands are cool, that each time the grains egg out from between your toes, you want to do it slower, so that you can savour it. And when the sands are hot, we run, trying our level best to just skim the surface of the ground below. We watch our footing when pebbles give way to stones or rocks. When the rocks are smooth we gotta watch it so that we don't slip. And in those times, we wish that the rocks are jagged, so that we can find crevices in between, to fit our feet, and remain there as long as necessary, and only until we find the next crevice.
And these lessons in all their complexity leave their imprint on us. Leave an imprint on a canvas, the colours of which constantly change. The pictures change.

We are given only one canvas. We start with a plain one. We first squiggle the colors, the scribble, then try and write, go into calligraphy, mess it up again, and then keep painting one over the other. Just because the painting on the top is the one that is perceived, the colours below remain, unchanged, and silent as layer after layer piles on.
When I was 10, I was given a box of Camlin paints. I could do whatever I wanted with them, and of course the expectation from my Art teacher was that probably I could be the gloriously talents artist that she could discover. Each time she handed out a box of paints, she probably wished, that maybe this time, she ll find her star pupil. One that could mix these coloured substances and bring about awe. And one fine day, I decided to find out what would happen if I mixed all the colours in the paint box. So I squeezed every tube in the box, in what I thought were equal portions and mixed them up. I thought I would discover a shade that the world did not know of and I could go and show off to my teacher about what I had discovered. The things that go on in a child's mind!!! And finally, all that I had was a palette with gray goo. I was disappointed of course that the world did not have a major discovery from me.
In a world full of colours, mixing them all would only give gray. Boring, dull, sick-looking, tired gray.
So when we die what colours do we take from our life? Is gray the colour of life?
Or should we look at it as an all encompassing colour that holds all the colours within, and yet looks uninteresting? Should we learn from gray that you can choose to look at the black or the white side of it?
Should I look at it as White which has been darkened by Black, or Black that has been whitened by gray? And does gray teach us that the colours are just there, but we will have to syringe it out of what appears?
And at the end of it all, what is right and what is wrong? That which is right for you, is wrong for someone else, and that which is wrong for someone else is right for you.
I seriously wished that I could have prevented someone from passing on, but would that mean I do not walk on the path of dharma? What is Dharma here? That he should die or that he should live? And if I had the power to change it, and make a dead person come to life, would that mean I have messed up someone else's life?

I believe that each life time we take is a lesson. Well at least so far. Because beliefs change as time passes, except the ones you expressly wish to hold on to. And if one's life is the it is, the way it appears, it is because you have made a decision between lifetimes that you need to learn some lesson, that you have failed to learn in the previous one. And you come back to this class to learn. And until you learn you keep going through the same thing, meet the same kind of people.
And does that mean that someone who passes on very young, has already learnt their lessons and now that their time was over, and they dont have to learn anything more for this one time, they had to move on? And if I had the superpower to change that, and if I did change it, does that mean I would have delayed their learning? Delayed a greater destiny? Or to come back to the basics, if I had had the power of clairvoyance, and I had prevented someone from any unforeseen circumstances, would that prevention be in their destiny too?
Whither the answer? As question after question floats up from the bedrock in the rivers of our life, where do I look? And if the question has come up, is the answer also there? Where is "there"? The "there", the "there" which has no address, no location, and therefrom will all the answers come. And therein lies the answer.