What is Maya?

Biswajit Mishra

The year was 1962. Politically a very important year for India. As well as for the war that took place between China and India, in which India had a surrogated defeat. Many events had followed that year quickly one after another. Every incident that followed had some significance in one way or other. India’s economy was pushed back to a few decades. It was probably the biggest blunder of a decision after the decision of partition that took place in the year 1947 when India gained its freedom on the midnight of 15 August 1947. Destiny does not work according to one’s requirement. It works on its own principles whether you accept it or not. And it leads. It is the sum total of all the actions of a human being for many lives. The year 1962 has much other significance too. India lost the war with China but Daman and Diu, the last foreign-occupied territory of India, was integrated into India. This was the year when Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru was elected de facto Prime Minister of India. Thus it was a year of learning and teaching lessons.

In such a year of diversified occurrences of turbulence and achievement, I was born on Savitri Amabasya i.e. on the New moon day named after a pious lady called Savitri. Those who are acquainted with Indian spirituality or those who follow Indian tradition would know about Savitri Mahakavya, a very famous and a legendary epic poem which remain unfinished with 24,000 lines by Shri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet, a nationalist and a spiritual reformer.

In any case, till today, the Savitri Amavasya is considered a very pious day for the women of India and they perform a specific puja (worship) with deep austerity for the sake of their husbands. In any case, the birth was not normal. The Medical Science had not developed much in India during the early 60’s and I was told that I took a long time to come out from my mother’s womb (an 11month child, they say). In any case, both I and my mother survived and I was born a healthy child.

My first remembrance of myself is very unconventional. I remember a question that bothered me from my early childhood. I always thought I have a father who is responsible for my birth, and my father has also a father who is responsible for his birth. So forth so on. Then who was the father of the first person who took birth on this earth? And who created the earth? If it was God, then who created God? Then something will start rolling inside me, making me restless. I remember I must be about 5 years old. It normally happened in the evenings after I come back home from the playground. I must be studying in 1st or 2nd grade.

Now when I look back, I think, the query must have started long back… may be from many lives of the past… nobody knows… nobody will ever know… the episodes which started in the early childhood… stopped suddenly, I don’t remember when. It was good. Because whenever that question came I was so much disturbed that I thought I would go crazy. I had completely forgotten about that for many years until I was about 25 when it came back to me again in completely different circumstances. To know that we have to go a few years back when I was 10 or 12 years old. That was the time when I was introduced to Swami Vivekananda. I was in school and we were given 10 paise for pocket expenses. 10 paisa was a big amount back then, I used to have to have good snacks with the money. One day while passing through a small roadside bookshop I saw a book Titled: “Thus Spake Vivekananda”. The photo on the front page attracted me a lot. And coincidentally the cost of the book was 10 paisa! I bought the book by skipping my snack. It was a very interesting book. That was my first book apart from study lessons. With the passage of time, I found many other titles like, “Thus Spake Shri Ramakrishna” “Thus Spake Shri Krishna” and similar ones. Those short books were very interesting for me, and I read almost every single book available in that series. And thus without my knowing, I had put my first step into the world of spirituality.

To be continued…