Chinese new year ! C took us to the most famous sea food restaurant here. ABC seafood center ! We spent a good 20 minutes to find a place to park only to find over 20 people waiting in line. But luckily C had arranged for everything and we just had to go to the table where he and other team members were sitting. But I wondered.. why so many? what do they sell here? why so many people? The restaurant was a huge circular hall and it looked same from all sides. Seemed as though there were circular tables all over and the same group of people sitting around every table. I looked again .. and again. They looked so alike. It is difficult to tell one Chinese from another and the big crowd in front gave the impression of 100s of duplicates sitting next to each other and chattering. There .. a vision of unity, of co-operation, of singleness of purpose.
Some days all he did in the college was to speak to SN. When it came to philosophy, about the purpose of life, the meaning of life and things around, there was none better than SN. It sometimes seemed to him as though SN had a complete grasp of the whole universe. There were so many things that SN seemed to know. Those days SN was learning Sanskrit in his spare time.None could fathom SN’s knowledge from outside. SN came across as jolly-jovial-loved-by-all chap. SN was very clear in his speech. Very lucid. One would never miss a point when SN spoke. SN never hurried.
Once SN had come to his home. The moment they saw him, his mother and sisters had exclaimed. ‘Oh ! he looks so alike you’, they told him. SN’s parents too were surprised at the similarity. Those days a stranger might easily have taken them for brothers.
He later looked at himself in the mirror. He was never one to bother much about the way he looked. So he couldn’t tell if he had changed or not! But he found that he spoke slower that he used to. Words were not gushing out of his mouth anymore. They were coming out slowly, purposefully. They soothed him and those whom he spoke with.