Most people get heart attacks. Some suffer brain strokes. Others face paralysis. I, however, seem to be afflicted by something entirely different — sudden attacks of vairagya and attacks of renunciation.
Out of nowhere, a thought strikes my mind like lightning: “This is all maya. Every bit of it. What exactly am I doing here?”
Now, when I say I feel like leaving everything, I do not mean it in the way our Prime Minister often jokes, “What do I have? I can simply pick up my jhola and walk away.” No, my version of renunciation is a little different. I do not necessarily wish to run away from the world. I simply feel that I can remain in the middle of it while belonging to none of it.
I can stand in a crowd and remain alone. I can sit alone and still feel surrounded by the crowd. The world may continue moving around me, yet inwardly I feel detached from its endless race.
Then suddenly, death becomes visible.
Not in a frightening sense, but in a very real sense.
I begin to see time slipping away, second by second, day by day. A realization dawns upon me that this journey is not infinite. The clock is ticking, whether I acknowledge it or not. And then another thought follows: “God has given me this extraordinarily precious human body. Am I truly using it for the purpose for which it was given?”
This phenomenon has no timetable. Sometimes it visits me after weeks. Sometimes after months. Occasionally, it arrives twice in a single day. There is no warning, no appointment, no notification. It simply appears and takes over my thoughts.
Frankly, I do not know whether to call it a condition or a blessing.
On one hand, it interrupts the comfortable illusion in which most of us spend our lives. On the other hand, perhaps that is precisely its purpose.
It feels as though God periodically pinches me awake whenever I become too comfortable in worldly sleep.
As if He is saying:
"Wake up, Vikram. Wake up, dear one. Why are you sleeping so deeply? This is all temporary. These possessions, these ambitions, these victories, these worries — they are all sand dunes in a desert. They look permanent until the wind changes direction. You too are not what you think you are. Come closer. Turn towards Me. Immerse yourself in devotion."
And so, while others may fear heart attacks, I occasionally find myself experiencing attacks of vairagya.
Strangely enough, I am not entirely sure they are something from which I want to be cured. For every time they arrive, they remind me that life is finite, time is precious, and the purpose of existence may be far greater than the small dramas that occupy most of our days.