'virahA'

After a sumptuous dinner at 8:30, I reached out for the old oxford Dictionary and my copy of "High school English Grammar" by Wren and Martin. These are essential to have a proper conversation with this particular friend of mine. With every essential thing in place, I reached out to my pocket for my cell phone, to find a soft prod of muslin against my thigh. I dug deeper with no significant results. A frantic search into the other-pocket, back-pocket, side-pocket, lower-pocket, inner-pocket, shirt-pocket and all I could fish out was an old crumpled, frayed, distorted, crumbling piece of paper with a greenish tinge and a vague digit ‘5’ etched in the centre and a still vague Gandhiji etched on a side. A round of search which involved upturning the whole room yielded no results. My roomy who turns wise occasionally asked me to list out all possible places where I keep my cell phone and then search in those places. I made a short list of all the places where I ever kept my cell phone.

Shirt pocket,

T-Shirt pockets,

Jumper pockets,

Trouser pockets,

Main zip of my travel bag,

Side pockets of my travel bag,

Front pocket of my travel bag,

Side pockets of my college bag,

Inner pockets of my college bag,

Front pockets of my college bag,

The pocket on the flap of my college bag,

The pocket under the flap of my college bag,

The pocket inside the flap pocket of my college bag

A half hour search into all the pockets yielded everything from squelched chocolates to shredded notebook leaves, even loose change worth 200 rupees which I never knew I had, but not my cell phone. After completing my list of possible places I made a few random checks on the shelves, under the pillow, over the mattress, in Bathroom étagère but in vain.

I had to face the reality “I had lost my phone”. I was not depressed because I had lost my cell phone. I had lost it several times only to retrieve it back in the most unlikely fashion, once I found it out in the college library’s restricted section after a week’s separation. In another case it mysteriously reappeared on the HOD’s desk the very next morning.

 I was depressed because I was missing my grammar classes. I was dejected……… forlorn….perhaps best described by the Sanskrit word ‘virahA’. This word with no corresponding term in English(at least to my knowledge), has crept into almost all the Indian languages more or less in the same form and with the same meaning; virhA or the colloquialism birhA in Hindi, virahamu in Telugu, viraham in Tamil. It describes the restlessness experienced due to the momentary or prolonged desertion of a loved one and in anticipation of a future meeting with him/her. The Great poet Kalidasa's mEghadUtam(The Cloud Messenger) epitomises this feeling.

As I could not write meghadUtam, I decided to watch 'Mission Impossible' for the nth time all the while envying Kalidasa for his skill.

* The words from Indian languages are spelled according to the Harvard Kyoto convention for romanisation.