The Rush

 

Hormones of his parents had rushed him into conception. He escaped being an illegitimate child because their parents prudently rushed into a marriage. He was delivered in a caesarean operation to suit the convenience of his parents as well as their high profile obstetrician. His parents soon divorced and he always rushed from one to the other. Both wanted to outbid each other to get his attention. Toys rushed into his room, delicacies into his mouth and they couldn’t take their eyes off this child prodigy whose genius was seen only by his mother and father. They rushed him in a preparatory school for the kinder-garten when he could barely walk. It was an age when one day’s facts becomes the next day’s history. The parents fought with each other to rush all the latest arts and sciences to their son’s brain.

Neither they had the time nor they wanted their son to learn to sit quiet.

The boy grew as planned. He took to motor sports. His father and mother pulled strings.

The boy rushed into big rallies. Rose higher and higher.

The biggest of all rallies came. He must win this one.

Suddenly the sky with all its stars fell down. It was some small matter with the engineer. There was a rush of words and suddenly his top blew off. He collapsed in exhaustion.

His dark coach smiled on him kindly. Something in his coach’s face lifted him up.

‘Don’t bother about the results. Just run the race, that will do you good, sonny’ said the guide.

He ran. He had started late, still won. But he cared no more.

 

Swami Sampurnananda, 24 October 2003.