THE IMAGE OF A SMILE

The light has been made
The Simile;
By the heart, by calling
Every tear a star 

                  A big life size portrait of Abbaji (daddy) is hung in my drawing room. The rest of the rooms too have his photographs, smaller, as decorative ornaments and all the recesses of my heart too are adorned with his memorabilia. It is a long time since he expired but his photographs keep reminding me that he is alive and keeping a close watch on my every movement. The portrait in the drawing room is different from other photographs in the sense that it expresses his saintly grace very lucidly. It is quite different from the artificial grace of the so-called leaders’ photographs that are usually made to impress and inspire. The face of Abbaji in the photograph is lit with the inner light of his noble soul, particularly his luminous eyes that seem to hold a treasure of untold secrets. Whenever I do something good in the way of God and humanity I feel his eyes in the portrait sparkling with delight. And when I do something wrong and sinful, keeping it away from the general knowledge and hiding it as a secret I can notice the displeasure and dislike peeping through his eyes. I feel getting scorched by the heat of the flame of anger that starts leaping out of his burning eyes. If somebody commits excesses against me and I retaliate and pay him in the same coin the eyes of Abbaji in the portrait begin to display his disappointment. “He wronged you and hurt you, of course, that were shameful. But your paying him in the same coin did you no good. Try to bear and savor the taste of excesses and see!” He seemed to be saying this many a time.
                     Some younger brothers too wronged me and when I tried to level the score the eyes of my father looked painful. They seemed to be saying. “All of you are my identity. They are younger and ignorant. If you hurt them it would be like hurting yourself. Winning or losing in such matters doesn’t count. You will find yourself a loser at the end and in your losing I too stand to lose!
                    Sometimes I feel like a teenager before his portrait and his admonishing and guiding on every step to help me walk on the way he had paved, make me feel a vagabond. And sometimes I feel as if I am standing before a mirror instead of his portrait and find myself looking at my real self. And then I feel capable of differentiating between good and bad, or right and wrong.
                   I had snapped a photograph of Abbaji, once, with all my three sons. Tipu was on his lap and Zulfi and Shazi were at his right and left. When I looked at the photograph after a long time I thought that though I was not there in the photograph I was still there. How could I be there in the photograph as I had myself clicked it (the slow advance of the technology too had forced me to remain away at that time) But feeling myself present in the photograph without being there made me enter the gates of evidence.  I felt the present, past and the future become one in my inner most being and the whole span of time shrink into a dot. The witness and the witnessed had formed into one. But if the witness and the witnessed are the same then why Abbaji keeps objecting and advising. The question I put to myself made the dot expand and I began to enter into adulthood disengaging myself from my childhood. I made the entrance nonchalantly, totally oblivious of all kinds of advices and milestones. There was an overwhelming rush of ambitions and desires on one side and I alone on the other. The ambitions and desires kept changing their faces as per the advancing age, though, but they never stopped demanding more and more like the infernal fire!
                  Man by nature is greedy. He won’t stop at millions if he is within reach of billions. Instead of remaining contented and grateful to God he will start pestering him for more. The hell of desires knows no bounds.  It is better to relinquish it altogether. When I made up my mind and relinquished the inferno of desires and ambitions I met my Gotham Budh, my Abbaji after a long time. I saw the shadows of annoyance and the light of happiness mingling in his eyes. I felt the echoes of his sayings reverberating through my being.
        “Desires never get satiated, instead, they turn into greed. The more the desires get fulfilled the more the greed increases. This fire never gets extinguished. The desires are like the tidal waves of an unending MIRAGE!”
            “Abbaji, I am not a yogi, a sofi or a recluse. I respect them wholeheartedly but I do not want to be like them. I want to be like you. I want to conclude my life by enduring its belaboring manly. But unlike you my desires start turning into greed and all my labor gets lost.  And what is significant and mentionable here is that you never advised me to be contended. Perhaps that is the reason I am unable to abandon my desires fully!” 
              The one-way traffic of dialogues, my soliloquy, brought tears from within and my eyes brimmed over. The scene before my eyes became foggy.  But what was that? 
            I know the difference between an inner world and an outer world. What takes place in the inner world is far different from that of the outer world. My touch with Abbaji’s portrait was purely an internal one and there was nothing external about it. But what I saw with my teary eyes was enough to sweep me off my feet. Abbaji physically emerged out of the portrait frame and finding me collapsed on a sofa in front, sat beside me and affectionately wiped away my tears with a hanging end of his turban. But the flooding tears didn’t subside. It seemed they were bent on submerging the jungle of my desires. Abbaji hugged me tightly. He looked incapable of speaking but he was trying hard to console me and assuage my hurt feelings. The experience of getting my tears wiped and his embracing me affectionately was a purely physical event. It didn’t have to do anything with fantasy. 
              When I wiped my eyes to clear them fully of any fogginess I was taken aback by a strange scene. All my three sons were around me. Tipu was hugging me tightly. Shazi was pressing and rubbing my shoulders and Zulfi was standing before me with a wet handkerchief in his hands. 
             “Abbaji, are you ok! You seemed to be in pain. Should we call a doctor? I didn’t know who was speaking out of the three? I couldn’t differentiate. It looked as though along with my Abbaji, my grand father and my great grand father had come to inquire after me, and my grand children and great grand children too were with them. The great span of time began to shrink again into a dot and I couldn’t stop smiling. I looked again at Abbaji’s portrait hanging on the wall before me and I saw the same smile playing on his lips, a brightly lit twinkling smile!
           I don’t know whether it was an image of my own smile or my own lips were reflecting Abbaji’s smile. I simply don’t know!
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