All you have to do is ‘Just Look Around’
By: Mary Suja (July 23rd, 2008)
” ‘VIBGYOR’- this is how you will remember the color pattern of the rainbow, OKAY??”
” Yes, ma’am” said everyone in a uniform chorus.
“Gud”- smiled she.
“Ma’am when do we find the rainbow in the sky?” asked one.
“Oh, the rainbow appears during the rainy season or during the last days of the rainy season”
Everyone’s eyes still fixed on the teacher and wondering if she was telling us the truth or was she introducing us to some imaginary fairytale thingy.
“Ma’am, can you show us the rainbow during the rainy days?” asked another one.
“Well, it’s not exactly the same as it’s shown in your book. It may appear, or it may not even. And even if it appears, it won’t be as big. You will have to look carefully onto the sky to locate it.”
“And how long will it be there on the sky, ma’am?”
“Oh, well…I cannot say that..May be for 5 minutes, may be 10 minutes…It’s part of the natural system…No one can tell for how long it will appear on the sky.”
“Oooh…kay..”
“Alright, now c’mmon color your rainbow in the color pattern that I told you to.”
“ok, ma’am” again everyone said in a uniform chorus and stormed to find the colors that they were sharing with- each student with his or her own good friend.
* * * * *
“And what did our Suja ma’am learn today?”
“MOOOOOOOOMmmy! You know what our ma’am taught us today?”
“What?”
“Rainbow!! And you know what did Aditi tell me about rainbow? She said that the rainbow was some Indra bhaagvan’s bow and that he is the god of lightning and thunder, you know?And she also told me that…”
Mom as patient as she was, so much that she was getting used to her blabber mouth daughter, she didn’t interrupt her, when her daughter was enacting each and every move of the ma’am and the students’ conversation, switching roles and apparently changing the voice tones..After she had finished, mom took her on her lap and said- “Now, lemme tell you the story behind Rainbow’s origin”.
“Some thousands of years ago, when people disobeyed our Lord, our Lord became angry and warned them many a times to turn from their wicked ways. And when they didn’t, Lord decided to punish them. But then he found on this earth a noble man, with an obedient heart (stressing on the word- ‘obedience’) . His name was Noah. Noah and his wife had three obedient boys (again stressing on the word-’obedience’) who were married. Our Lord, told the plan that he had in his mind only to Noah and no one else. He asked him to built a big ark which could easily accommodate every pair of living creature on this earth. Then for forty whole days and night it rained and rained. Every living being on this earth was destroyed except for the Noah family in the ark. And after some 40 days when they landed on the soil, God said to Noah and his sons that he is going establish a covenant between Him and every kind of living beings on this earth, in form a sign and that is the rainbow!” ….By this time the girl was lost in her own imaginary world of Noah, his sons and…a rainbow!
Rainbow, which was the center of talk for the kid for a week, gradually eroded from her memory as she grew…slowly she saw herself equipped with wings to fly higher, probably more higher than the rainbow on the sky…
* * * * *
After resigning from a job in media, she thought of laying her hand on another pie. After strutting her way through the hall room on the last day at her previous office, making herself deaf to her mom’s loud reminders that she was already late for her interview; she directly walked to her room, closed the door and came back out after 5 mins and said that she was ready to go for the interview. Eyelids shut, a quick pray muttered and then a final loud- “Bye guys, wish me gud luck!”
Mom sighed, phew!! “She just won’t change”
45 minutes later. “Mooooooooooommy! I am selected and will have to join from the coming monday”
“Oh, didn’t they have any problem with you having no MBA degree?”
“Whooooooaa, who do you think I am, mom? I have never been rejected by any interviewer so far. Its never happened to me that I have to agree upon somethin due to lack of options, it’s always by my choice. It’s I who choose of all the choices that I get”
“Don’t ever say like that, you never know what happens next! Okay?”
“Ohhh…c’mmon mummy! You are always like this, discouraging me!” quipped she.
The day arrived and when she went to the office, not even in her wildest dreams had she thought that they would come up with an excuse as lame as possible. Depressed that she was, she instead of going home went to some other company that she had in mind to give interview. After finding some solace in that office’s response, she headed home and narrated the entire episode and said that she was not upset as she had got a positive response from the other company though.
Days went by and so did weeks, not being able to keep herself mum, she thought of calling the company and ask about her joining date, as blunt came the reply as if an arrow was shot at the other end, which landed straight into my heart on this end. The front desk lady said that they at present didn’t require any one to fill that position. Interviews call came and went. Rejection after rejection.
The girl who once upon a time was tagged as a workaholic, couldn’t find anything to hold on to say as what was known as- ‘work’. Each rejection was a slap not on her face but on her self esteem. Each rejection taught her more than any effective sermon that she had witnessed. These had battered her to such an extent that she pushed underground. She then disliked meeting her friends out of frustration. She gave into self doubt which thence resulted her in fumbling in front of one the interviewer.
And amidst all this, this was the time when she actually looked beyond all those things there were so certain, she could see things and situations from a different perspective. She became sensitive to all the small things around her. Everything around her seemed to stand for a purpose. She could sense that each and every situations around her were not following a process of so called cycle- the life, but it was as if there was Someone more powerful who was in charge of every minutest particle around her, Who was making everything happen in a particular way… And for all this she was so thankful to her mom, who had introduced her to the One, during her childhood days. And she knew that this Person whom she had been introduced to, would never let her down. As each day passed by, she learnt enough from Him to reason her own mistakes and more importantly to humble. And she then remembered the verse, her mom used to say often tht- “For when I am weak, He is strong”
As she was left with nothing to do the entire day, her elder sister took pity on her and proposed the plan of taking to her office, to which she jumped gleefully. And as she had decided in her heart to tell others about her true life incident, in her elder sister’s room she found four other colleagues who soon developed taste listening to her rattling. She befriended all four within couple of minutes to an extent that they would eat out of her hands. And sooner one of those four decided to introduce her to a professor in their office who would give some trivial job to her. And the once-upon-a-time-girl who boasted about her achievements at her previous jobs was left with nothing but to accept the small token that this professor was giving. But she did that job dutifully with a content heart. But somewhere she still couldn’t come in terms with the fact that now that the Lord had corrected her, why was He taking soooooo long to relieve her and throw her into the normalcy of the system. She thirst for just a slightest sign from Him, that He had not forgotten her. She looked around her for any such signs from above, but nothing happened.
And in one fine day of late September, during the break time in the evening when our girl was loitering to the canteen which was at a walking distance with one of her sister’s colleague, the colleague was chirping away to glory about something, which was being attended attentively by the girl. And while returning from the canteen while they both were walking towards the office room, suddenly the girl felt that her sister’s colleague had deserted her and was no longer walking beside her. So she turned and before she could notice her sister’s colleague, what she noticed was that all the paths leading from canteen to the office to the hostel dorms were flooded by people who had by this time become spectators, pausing at their places and looking above. And there she was, the sister’s colleague who like others, by this time had taken out her camera phone and was adjusting something looking up. Our little girl was a bit shocked but didn’t look up as anything exciting in this world had also turned bland for her.
She just tried to pull her sister’s colleague over to her side, to keep walking towards the office. But an otherwise shy and calm girl, said shouting- “Atleast, look at this nah…you will surely like it”. As it was around 5:30 and the sun was yet to set, our girl lifted her left hand as a shade to make herself comfortable to look above. And to her amazement she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. ‘Twas a REAL big Rainbow!
And why not, this rainbow was so big and so distinct in it’s color, although the Violet and Indigo could not be differentiated but Big enough to steal everyone’s attention. Now, the eyes had beheld what it was waiting to see since such a long time, which she had even forgotten. Even when she was lost looking at this, her sister’s colleague said that- “Don’t you think that this is a bit odd time for the rainbow to appear on the sky”. But it didn’t even fall into our girl’s ears, coz by this time she knew why the rainbow had appeared. She knew that the rainbow was meant for her from the One above to again reassure her that he had once made a covenant that he wouldn’t destroy any kind of living being on this earth. He wouldn’t let her die, the way she had thought that she was going to get erased.
“Mary, Mary! Mary!!, you listening to me?” said she.
“Oh yeah!”
“Did you see how wonderful the rainbow is? I have never seen such big and distinct rainbow ever in my life? Have you ever seen such beautiful rainbow, Mary?”
“Oh…nope. This is my first rainbow. I mean I have seen a one or two during my school days maybe, but they were very faint ones and small, unlike this”
“Ohh…do you know what is this phenomenon of rainbow and it’s occurrence?” asked she.
“Oh yeah! Now lemme tell you the story behind the rainbow’s origin….” She placed her hand on her shoulder and they started walking towards the office.
Tags: God's promise, Noah, Rainbow
August 1st, 2008 at 10:48 am
well…I think we should not always wait for the rainbow…
sometimes we should just move ahead at the sight of the silver lining on the dark clouds…