A THERAPIST FOR THE COUNSELLOR!

The waves lapped gently at my feet and I saw crabs scuttling away from the vicinity as I stood early morning at the beach, marveling at the different sounds of silence. The visitors were few at that time. Though the sea was rough, I felt an underlying calm that somehow resonated with what I was feeling.
A woman approached me and giving me a hesitant smile, invited me to visit her shop at a shack a few furlongs away. For want of anything better to do, I started chatting with her. She seemed to be only too willing to share her woes with me. She was widowed eleven years ago, and lost five of her seven children to the sea. She was now taking care of two of her grandchildren, along with her daughter-in-law, and struggling to make a living. She did not know how to sell fish, she said, and all she could do was to sell souvenirs to the foreigners who came to the resort. But there too, she felt at a disadvantage, as she was not a very good salesperson! After sharing her life sketch, she declared that there was no God: he went out with the tsunami! But in spite of all this hardships, she had a smile on her face. No, she said, she never thought of moving to the city; city life has no values, according to her. Here, in spite of the hardships, people could be trusted, they were human and dependable. The bonding was something that made up for all the hardships. In a city, you only had to look away for a minute, and your baggage would be taken away under your very nose! The girls in the city too were very fast, she opioned. That is why boys prefer girls from a village as their bride… They may not be very smart or even even well-educated – but they were sound in their values. Her basics were very clear!!!
After eliciting a promise from me to visit her shop, she walked away, leaving me musing on her simple views on life. Here we were, all running a race for I don’t know what, working 24x7, chasing dreams that we had no real faith in, but went along because we lived more of a fictional life than an authentic one. Now and then, we find our authentic self calling, like it happened to me, and that is when we head for the seas and the sands, to the mountains and the hills, in the hope of a reconnection with our true selves. I am not very sure it happens, but it does provide a much needed brake in the race. It did to me; I realized how much I had lost myself in the daily chores of life, and the reconnections did wonders to my spirits. In some way, this woman made me talk to myself, to that part of her in me, who still believed that there are joys in relationships, in connecting with people, and restore faith in the fact that in spite of a lot of misfortunes, we can continue to find joy, and count our blessings.
She did wonder though, what made her talk and open up with me so comfortably, share so much of her life when I had hardly known her for five minutes: I did not tell her that though I may have been wearing the invisible halo of a counselor that I was, I had been counseled by her for a change! At a time when I was skeptical about human relationships, her strong faith in humanity more than in divinity, gave me a much-needed anchor. I hope I keep my promise though, and visit her shop tomorrow morning before I head back for the humdrum city life. If I do, that will be one more person who would prove her belief in humanity right! And just for that sake, I will visit her shop: I will keep my promise: both to her, and to myself….
Mohana Narayanan