57TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION : 10TH JUNE, 2018

The hour dawns when one revisits one's moment of first inspiration. At that pristine moment when everything was new and a fresh awakening had reinforced life into things, when everything that was old was renewed in a magical spell of cosmic proportions, one must have wondered at the enormity of the celebrations that Nature had stored for one's first moment of truth. In those baby eyes that have gazed over aeons at the myriad mysteries of Nature were fresh awakened perhaps the cosmic rhythms of life in ripples of light streaming across the vast reaches of forgotten space, of times unborn only to meet familiar terrain in distant kinship, in bonds of old fresh-forged in the rapt wonderment of the baby eye. Who will tell how that first moment was for we all infer from the reference point of maturer years when modes and methods have robbed the vision that the babe did see at its first inception ?

So it is that I do stand fifty-seven summers from that distant day even in the sunshine of that primal morn. Behold I today the womb that held in loving care the babe to be, the arms that held me high over the waves that menacing came like onrushing death; behold I now the peerless love of a sister who ever saved her lozenges gifted in school for a brother at home and never ate once in folly ever. Behold I my boyhood days in ardent study and frolic and fun, my growing years in intense thought, metamorphosed by poetic flights till in the high noon of youth the blazing light of life and truth and the God within alters the very form of things and renders all divine. The dream doth break only to reform into a fairer shape and greener meadows unfold before the peeled vision. A clearer sight, a more painful plight, so often is heaven the heart that is, so far yet the heaven to be.

Afternoon it is when the dawn arrives once more in the awakening sun, the harbinger of hope, the promise of fulfilment of unspelt moods, aspirations divine. A rebirth it is and a constancy of soul, the progression unto a maturer self. And then the cascade of living streams, rushing, whirling, rippling through, dainty brooks and cataracts, eddies, fountains, lakes and seas, flowing mass of innocence, they have filled my life with fathomless joy that life itself is ecstasy.

What more to say but to wind up now that benediction be the lot of all that did love me so and brought anew every time the sun did cross my path of old, this monsoon morn that had thundered heavens the first time on, so be it, so let it be ! Many a summer perchance will come in its wake as yet, many a monsoon will herald times unborn, my life to be, many a familiar face flitting by, so many sweet ones bedecking me now, how many more will flow in yet to fill, fulfil the even-moods. Thus perchance will the swansong be, heard even in a fresher birth in distant clime, in unborn time, the self-same fool to jest again in this playhouse of life to seek applause from kindred souls. But the play is on, let's rejoice, lest the hour pass by shorn of fruit. Welcome to all in the mansion of my life, my playmates, my helpmates, my soulmate, my all.