Riff
Daily scribble in English
If Thought Had a Texture…
When you struggle to express real thoughts and feelings—so that they produce the same waves within the minds of a reader or a listener—you reach for analogies. You search for something tactile, something universal. Not to simplify, but to make the invisible felt.
But even then, what you offer is only a doorway. One’s own interpretation enters, lingers, and leaves behind traces—like footsteps on a dew-covered field.
One such exercise is to ask: If thought had a texture… what would it feel like?
Some thoughts arrive like silk—soft, flowing, effortless. They move through the mind with ease, like water over polished stone. You don’t fight them. You welcome them. They feel like clarity.
Others? Coarse like burlap. They scratch. They chafe. These are the ones you can’t shake off—the uncomfortable truths, the questions without answers. They demand to be sat with, not solved.
Imagination might feel like velvet—rich, pliant, and alive with color even before it’s seen. Precision might be cold metal—exact, sharp, reliable. While memory? Memory often arrives like old parchment—fragile, yellowed, and perfumed with nostalgia.
And grief. Grief is a texture all its own. Heavy like soaked wool, warm yet suffocating. It clings. And yet—hope still finds its way. Light as dew on the morning grass. Barely there. But undeniably present.
We use texture to feel our way toward expression. Because sometimes words are not enough. Sometimes the right gesture, or even silence, says more than speech ever could.
And love? If thought had a texture, love might be the worn cotton of a childhood blanket—faded, torn at the edges, but impossible to part with. Not perfect, but deeply known.
Maybe this is what makes language magical—not just the vocabulary of intellect, but the sensation it leaves behind. The textures it conjures. The way it turns thought into feeling, and feeling back into thought.
In the end, we don’t just share ideas—we offer textures of our inner world. And in that moment, connection begins.
The Master’s Final Lesson
They say attachment is never one-sided. If one end remains tied, the more you try to break free, the more entangled you become. And while you may walk away from something, it never truly leaves you. Life, in its quiet wisdom, teaches us this again and again—sometimes through longing, sometimes through loss, and sometimes through the unexpected grace of reunion.
I had the rare privilege of being trained by a master of the Rigveda, a man whose wisdom flowed like an ancient river—steady, deep, and timeless. His second son became my closest friend, and for over fifty years, our lives remained intertwined, bound not just by shared memories but by the unshakable lessons his father passed down.
Then, life shifted in an instant. A sudden fever took away our master’s wife—his companion of seventy years. Perhaps it was grief, or perhaps it was vairagya, the call of detachment, that stirred within him. One Sunday morning, he was gone.
All he left behind was a note blessing his children and, for me, a notebook filled with his learnings—his final gift. We searched desperately, even filing a police report, but he had vanished. Time moved forward, yet his absence remained, an unspoken void in our hearts.
My friend, unable to bear this emptiness, left his medical practice and joined an ashram in Haridwar. He tended to wandering seekers, treating their wounds and illnesses. “Perhaps I’ll find my father someday,” he once told me. “But I feel him blessing me every day.”
Five years passed. On a trek to the Valley of Flowers, I felt an inexplicable pull to take a small detour to a hillock, intending to stay for a couple of days. Seeking shelter, I was directed to a Veda school run by an elderly master. Something about the description stirred a deep familiarity.
And there he was.
Sitting among young students, teaching with the same quiet intensity as before, was my master—now in his nineties. We stood in silence, time folding in on itself. He looked up, and in that instant, disbelief turned into quiet joy.
For two days, we spoke as if no time had passed. He had left behind his home, his name, his past—but teaching had never left him. It was not just what he did; it was who he was.
And then, something even more remarkable unfolded. My friend, who had spent years just miles away in his ashram, had never once found his father. Yet, by pure chance—or the grace of time—I had. I called him, and when he heard my voice, he did not hesitate. He left everything and came.
For ten days and nights, we sat together, talking, laughing, reflecting on life’s mysteries. It felt as though time had given us a rare and precious second chance. My friend left that evening to pack his things, ready to return for good.
That night, as I sat beside my master, he looked at me with a knowing gaze.
“The call has come,” he said, his voice calm, his eyes steady. He asked me to complete his last rites, even if his children arrived. I hesitated. He only smiled.
The next morning, I sent word to my friend and his siblings, though my master had wished otherwise. My friend arrived at 11:45 AM—just in time to witness his father leave this world, peaceful, unburdened, free.
As we performed his final rites, something shifted within us. The hollow we had carried for years—the ache of separation, the longing for closure—was gone. In its place was something indescribable, a quiet fullness, a sense of completion.
Perhaps this was true fulfillment—the final, unspoken lesson from our master.
And so, he departed, not with sorrow, but with the serenity of one who had already let go.
Some ties are beyond time. Some lessons are beyond words. And some journeys, no matter how far they take us, always lead us back home.