हिंदी / अंग्रेजी साहित्य – आलेख/Articles ☆ गर्दिश के दिन: Days of Despair ☆ Shri Jagat Singh Bisht ☆

Shri Jagat Singh Bisht

(Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker.)

Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!

😎 गर्दिश के दिन: Days of Despair 🥸

(हिंदी और अंग्रेजी में एक मिश्रित / A bilingual experiment in Hindi and English)

काफी समय पूर्व, एक प्रतिष्ठित पत्रिका में, कई लेखकों ने अपने गर्दिश के दिनों पर लिखा था। उन्होंने सफल और महान होने के बाद, संपादक के आग्रह पर, ऐसा किया था। मैं सफल और महान हुए बिना, ऐसा अपनी मर्जी से कर रहा हूं।

उम्र के अनेक मोड़ पार कर चुका हूं। अब तक न सफल हुआ हूं और न ही महान बन पाया हूं। मेरे देखते-देखते, मुझसे कम योग्य लोग मुझसे अधिक सफल हो चुके हैं और मुझसे घटिया लोग महान बन गए हैं। यही मेरे दुख का कारण है।

A long time ago—long enough for nostalgia to acquire a few grey hairs of its own—a reputed Hindi magazine brought out a remarkable series. It was dedicated to the days of despair of celebrated writers: tales of their hollow pockets, hollow kitchens, and occasionally hollow souls. The contributors were friendly luminaries who had, by then, climbed to heights from where despair looked like a poetic childhood disease—painful at the time, but now excellent material for charming anecdotes at literary gatherings.

They wrote of wretched rooms where even hope hesitated to enter; they narrated the evenings when the lamp had more soot than light, and the mornings when fortune seemed to have overslept on purpose. Their stories reminded us that greatness, like good compost, must sprout from organic suffering.

They were invited by the Editor because they were great, famous, and suitably wrinkled by experience.

I, however, attempt the same task without possessing greatness, fame, or even the sort of wrinkles that literary editors find aesthetically inspiring. If anything, mine are plain domestic creases, the ordinary lines produced by old age and electric bills.

I have grown old—old enough to avoid mentioning numbers, lest someone mistakes my age for a historical period—but alas, greatness has not arrived. Nor has fame. Nor has even that modest rumour that “someone in our locality is doing something interesting.” I have waited politely. Greatness, it seems, has not reciprocated the courtesy.

What adds flavour to this mild tragedy is that, as the years have trotted past, I have seen—quite helplessly—the rise of men lesser, meaner, and, in some extreme cases, louder than me. They flourished with the ease of mildew in monsoon. Every time a new one rose, I experienced an unhappiness so refined and aristocratic that Oscar Wilde himself might have complimented it.

My friends, naturally, have prospered beyond belief. Their bungalows are so large that one needs Google Maps to locate the guest bathroom. Their chauffeur-driven luxury cars glide through town like well-bred crocodiles. Their wives, robust in both health and wealth, supervise homes where everything—including the dogs of foreign breed—has a higher market value than my bank balance. They possess vast fortunes in Swiss banks, majestic collections of fat, cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. I possess none of these. Not even the cholesterol.

I am a tortoise. They are hares—and some, on festive days, hunt with the hounds too. But before you assume I lack talent or refinement, let me clarify with the humility of a saint and the accuracy of a government form: I am physically, mentally, and spiritually sound; honest to a degree that makes honesty awkward; and financially and intellectually cleaner than freshly laundered linen.

My achievements—scattered across reading, writing, sports, games, love, sex, and friendship—are enough to fill a respectable diary, if not a library. But I cannot bring myself to practise sycophancy. I cannot flatter a man merely because he has a necktie and a position. Had I embraced hypocrisy with the enthusiasm of my peers, I, too, might have gathered a following of disoriented devotees. But shame is a stubborn thing.

Over time, I have read the autobiographies of the great. They describe how they saw poverty, hunger, disease, famine, and other educational experiences; how they struggled bravely, laboured endlessly, and rose steeply; how they eventually reached the mountaintop, from where everything below looked small—especially other people’s problems.

And then, feeling generous, they shared the stories of their struggles for the benefit of lesser mortals.

I, unfortunately, do not believe in shortcuts. As I read and write and wander into the dense forest of spirituality, I realise that a vast world remains unconquered. And I, firmly stationed at the starting point, can only wave at potential as it passes by.

So here I am—no one, nowhere—trudging along with my despair and gloom walking faithfully beside me, like two old companions who have tired of trying to cheer me up and now simply keep pace out of habit.

Greatness may yet arrive. Fame may yet stumble upon me. But until then, I shall continue writing pre-fame memoirs of despair, hoping they will someday become post-fame classics.

After all, even a tortoise deserves a footnote in literary history.

लोगों ने गरीबी देखी, भूख देखी, अकाल देखा, बीमारी देखी, संघर्ष किया, साधना की, और महान हो गए। महानता के शिखर पर पहुंचने के बाद, वो पीछे मुड़कर अपने गर्दिश के दिनों पर विहंगम दृष्टि डाल सकते हैं। यह उनका सौभाग्य है।

सफलता के टीले पर, शॉल ओढ़े बैठकर, गर्दिश के दिनों को याद करने की रूमानियत मेरे नसीब में नहीं है। जितना पड़ता जाता हूं, उतना ही पाता हूं कि अभी तो अनंत आयाम बाकी हैं जानने को। जितना लिखता जाता हूं, उतना ही पाता हूं कि कलम बहुत छोटी है और स्याही बहुत कम। मेरी गर्दिश और गहराती जाती है।

झूठमूठ की सफलता और महानता के शॉर्टकट मैं नहीं पकड़ पाता। मेरी गर्दिश मेरे संग-संग चलती है!

(इस रचना के हिंदी अंश तीस बरस पहले लिखे गए थे और अंग्रेज़ी वाला हिस्सा अब लिखा है।

The Hindi portion of this article was written thirty years ago and the English portion has been blended now.)