Life is full of paradoxes, they say. Night is darkest before the dawn and that you never understand true happiness until you have experienced tremendous pain. I have understood these edicts of life, well, I dare say. It’s the intensity or depth I am trying to reconcile with. ‘Tremendous’, is my pain presently, and I am sure I have reached such a degree of ‘tremendousness’ that I am absolutely ready to understand true happiness, if life gives me a chance. But apparently, it still thinks my pain is not tremendous enough. It keeps on bolstering my experience of pain. Someone remarkably heartbroken had defined experience as the comb life gives you when you are bald. My own experiences have been a bounty in this regard.

 

 

You feel like the little boy standing almost on your toes to catch the thread of the balloon as it goes up and up. It is within your reach and so not! You work hard to save the money to buy the best dress but when you do manage to collect it all, the dress (rather the size that can carry the dress) is gone. You put in hours and hours of your time-starved life improving your own culinary skills to the level of your mother’s skills, so that you can eat your favourite sweet to your heart’s fill. But, when you reach that golden point, your doc advises you to ‘Say ‘no’ to sugar’. Counting your own losses earned by not listening to your parents, you mug up the entire list of dos and don’ts to bequeath those to your children only to see them listening in absentia. (They have your genes, they are in no need of your wisdom). Life’s ironies have been many! Just when you think you have achieved something, life ups the ante. Take my recent heartbreak for example. I had moved a mountain to mint gold but now that very gold is sitting on the mountain! Consuming too much news and social media that my poor, dear country was getting richer by each passing day, I took it for granted that its wealth can’t pass me by.

 

 

Though my accounts merited no such feeling, feelings hardly care about being accounted for. So, I had made up my mind to convince myself (and others for sure) of my wealth. Even in the times of iPhones, the gold of all wealth is gold itself. I need not speak too much of an Indian woman’s love for the yellow metal. It’s epic. So, I began my maneuvers. As said earlier, I did move a mountain – my husband. Talking of buying gold to him is like talking of ceasefire to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The guy just won’t listen! But I am no helpless UN or ‘yours truly’ US. I am the wife. I mean business. From Chanakya’s – ‘SAM, DAM, DAND, BHED’ to Jaishankar’s ‘straight talk,’ I employed every weapon in my arsenal to defeat a stoic indifference and procure that unthinkable ‘yes’. He did say ‘yes’, if only to keep a warring wife at bay. So, it was all set, this Diwali, I was to buy the most beautiful trinket of purest of pure metals. This Diwali was going to be the brightest. Its light was going to be the most sparkling. Husband dear, did mention the bright light making his purse lighter, but since the golden hues were yet to dazzle my neck, I took it in a lighter vein. Alas! in face of paradox‘icity’ of life, a poor woman’s dreams stood no chance. Her little victories were easily defeated by a war-soaked world.

 

It tied the gold price to an inflated balloon and let it fly in the air even as my poor self, like the little boy, tried to catch hold of it. ‘Gold prices surpass Rs 80,000 mark,’ screamed the newspaper. As the prices soared, my hopes tanked. I was again rendered too poor for the precious metal. Oh! The ways of the world. Mankind is anything but kind. You see when your heart is so prone to breaking, it develops a mechanism to survive attacks. It takes solace in whatever little comes its way as succour. It takes heart from the like-minded gentry – women with equally broken hearts. And oh, the women’s world is full of survivors! Survivors are best advisers. “At the time of my marriage, gold was just Rs 300,” my mother said by way of consolation. “No wonder you were so loaded,” came my retort. “Nay, it was because only gold was gold, not every other thing. Today you have so many ‘must buy things.’ Most of them add no value to your life. I say even gold does not. Value comes from you not allowing life’s many paradoxes to control your happiness. Be happy, my dear. Life – breathing – is pure gold.” I smiled at my folly and mom’s wisdom. Sometimes we fail to see the gold in simplest of the simple things. …In the debris of homes in war-torn parts of the world, many such trinkets would have lost their owners. War – the most tragic of all tragedies, folly of all follies, again reinforces the supreme wisdom that life – breathing – is pure gold. n