OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI

Traveling everyday from home to work & back is indeed a stressful experience given the increased number of vehicles in the road and the terrible weather condition. I felt I am always unlucky to have caught-up in almost all traffic signals on the way to office. I am spending almost 2-3 hours a day in traveling, which would actually take hardly one and half hours if there were no heavy traffic in the roads of Chennai. With this thoughts ringing in my mind, I decided to try something unique while traveling. Meditation!!! Yes, I am going to meditate.

After all those good morning SMS, songs in Sun Music & Zoom, News in NDTV and, sumptuous breakfast (everyday it is Dosa and Chutney for bf ;-)), I along with my friend Praabhu headed to the place where I spend most of the time, my office. Everyday we try to catch a limited stop bus, which will take us to the office relatively faster. There is one more attraction to that bus; a Lady drives it. She is really fast but the problem is that she has a tendency to honk frequently and apply sudden breaks. I thought this would cause distraction for my proposed meditation exercise. So I opted out that bus. Got into the next bus, which was relatively free and I got a seat somewhere in the middle.

I was back in the “Road of Reality”. All the energy, composure, and motivation started evaporating on seeing the traffic. My tolerance levels seem to fade very fast but I controlled myself. The first traffic signal is passed-by and I thought it’s high time I started doing “the exercise”. As I was trying to get into the world of tranquility, the noise of the horns and the crowd in the bus woke me up. I decided to resume meditating after the bus crossed Adyar signal, till there traffic used to be at it’s peak. In the mean time I browsed through the small note containing tips on “how to mediate?” which I collected from various websites.

Once the Bus crossed Adyar fly-over I closed my eyes, and made myself comfortable by loosening the muscles. Initially I struggled a bit to concentrate but slowly started falling into the world of serenity. I imagined myself as a rock in the midst of an ocean (as I was supposed to do according the tips on meditation). Waves arise; they dashed the rock several times. The rock is unaffected, calm, tranquil, peaceful and serene. That was the last thing I could remember, I didn’t know what was happening around me. After some time I felt somebody is tapping my shoulder. I vehemently tried keeping my eyes closed, as I didn’t want to get distracted. The gentle tap turned to be a sturdy shake. I had no way other than opening my eyes. I turned back to see who woke me up from the world of tranquility. It was Praabhu, my friend. He said, “Bus stop has come, lets get down”.

As we both were walking towards the office from the bus stop I gave myself a mental pat for having meditated for more than half an our with out any distractions. I told Praabhu what I was doing and how happy I am on this. He smiled gently and told, “Actually you were snoring”.

"Meditation is an effort in the beginning. Later on it becomes habitual and gives bliss, joy and peace." – Swami Sivananda