Make your Life, your living, unputdownable!

Pour yourself into your work. And you will unite with it.

This may seem so abstract. But it is so fundamental, so true and so possible. Remember your teens? You were reading Fredrick Forsyth, Sidney Sheldon or a Mills & Boons romance. Your mom shouted out to you, summoning you for running an errand. You could hear her, but you weren’t listening. Because you were one with the plot of the novel that you were reading. You found the book unputdownable. That’s really what we need to make of our lives to make them interesting and happening. We need to make living, our Life, unputdownable! And that can be achieved when you are immersed in your Life, in living it, fully, wholesomely, blissfully!

Dawoo Khan
Picture Courtesy: The New Indian Express/Internet

I remember attending a home concert at a friend’s place some time back, where a group of folk music artistes from the Manganiar community of Rajasthan performed. The Manganiars consider themselves descendants of the warrior community of Rajputs and are renowned as highly skilled folk musicians of the Thar desert in Rajasthan, bordering Pakistan. Their songs are passed from generation to generation as a form of oral history of the desert. Though Manganiars are Muslims, many Manganiar songs are in praise of Hindu deities and they even sing songs in praise of Alexander The Great! Their music is characterized by their full-throated, high-pitch singing and is supported by three key instruments: the khamaycha, a 17-string bowed instrument made of mango wood; the khartaal, a kind of castenet made of teak, beating two pieces of which using the hand produces a rare rhythm; and the dholak, which is a drum similar to a bongo but played sideways. One of the most acclaimed khartaal artistes is Dawoo Khan, who performed at the concert that I attended. He not only used the two pieces of teak in either hand to create magic, he was drenched to his soul in the songs that he rendered. There was something mystical to his rendition that made the listener unite with the singer and suddenly there was no musician, no audience, just plain, soulful, music. Just music. Just magic!

After the concert, I asked him how he managed to sing so effortlessly, so soulfully. He replied, “I don’t sing Sir. I just live. Just as I breathe, I also sing. It is living, not singing. There is not a moment that I am not singing, just as there is not a moment when I am not breathing! I may not be at a stage performance or concert all the time, but I am still singing, within me.” Dawoo Khan, to me, epitomizes, personifies, what Osho, the Master, describes so beautifully, “When you lose yourself in whatever you do, something breaks down within, all barriers cease to exist, a great orgasm takes over your entire being, you are in tune with existence__and you become one, you unify with creation.” This is the quality we need to bring to our thinking, living and working. And that can happen when you pour yourself into your work. That’s really when your Life__your living__will become unputdownable! And so will you!!!