Hide N Seek…I never particularly liked that game as a kid. I used to hate it even more when I had to seek. I had a fear I would always be overthrown by the smarter lot and the rules of the game were unacceptable to me as they favoured the hiders more than the seeker. It was unfair. Fifteen years from then, the game finds its way again into my life. This time it’s about seeking little pleasures that hide behind the most obvious things. The rules still govern supreme but now I consider them more justified than ever before. The pleasure no more lies in hiding but it lies in seeking. It’s that intriguing search for the Zahir.
Little children chasing soap bubbles on the beach, the pinwheel spinning at the command of the wind, the lazy flight of the gas balloons, the gentle bob of the fisherman’s boat anchored near the shore, the meandering train engine through the woods in the valley…everything around seems to be restlessly and obsessively engaged in the idea of seeking that one single thing so neatly carved in the mind that not thinking about it would mean doing injustice to the power of thought. The earth itself seems to be excited by this unearthly desire as it spins around its own axis in perfect synchrony with time.
The quest is like an abysmal vortex. The more you try, the deeper you go and the deeper you go the more you try. The moment of revelation may never come, the verdict on the existence of your grail may never be declared, the thirst may never be quenched, but the journey is an experience of a lifetime. If life was to be measured by the number of moments that took your breath away, here you would witness a thousand reasons that left you gasping for breath.
I have sought nuggets of happiness and bits of pristine pleasure all my way. I am still in search of that moment of exhilaration when life would serve me on a silver platter the feeling of having reached the pinnacle of the best that it can offer. Till then my Zahir beckons me from a distance and I run towards it like a deer towards a mirage in the desert of life. It’s hope that keeps me alive. It’s like a playing hide and seek. And this time I am game.