Looking for the Pause Button

by Indrajit Sundaram

I was enjoying the guitar chemistry in an Eagles’ concert on YouTube last night, when I started thinking about the lines in Take it Easy:

Take it easy, take it easy…

Don’t let the sound of your own wheels

Drive you crazy…

I hadn’t realized how much the sound of my own wheels, turning, grinding, trying to find some elusive traction in the sludge of impossible plans and circumstances, was driving me to the breaking point. It was quite by chance I was able to hit the Pause button, not even realizing I had stopped looking for it. Maybe that’s why one can retire to India, the many-layered, kaleidoscope land where on one switchboard you can find the Pause and Turbo buttons almost side by side. Let me tell you where I found the Pause button at the right moment of my screaming soundtrack.

Jedidiah, whom we call Jedi, my daughter Hannah’s favourite cousin on my wife’s side, had called us for a meal to their place up in Pedong, about 45 minutes jeep-ride from Kalimpong. Kalimpong is the small town up in the hills, about 2.5 hours from Siliguri where we live. Hannah was born there, spending the first four months of her life there before we moved. Pedong is ancestral land for my wife on both parents’ side, and the place I’m going to tell you about is 21st Mile, also called Sakyong Village, a mountain-side of houses, where a very special family live.

The Pedong viewpoint

Anyway, on with the tale. The day we were supposed to reach Jedi’s place around afternoon, happened to be one when all the Siliguri to Kalimpong jeeps were reported missing in action. After spending almost two hours in the slowly growing, increasingly irritable crowd, I ran into someone I knew from Kalimpong when I used to live there, and along with one other person whom he knew, we booked a private car to take us up. The reason I’m saying this is because I was surprised as to how little I wanted to chat with someone I was meeting after a long time.

The entire journey up, I was sandwiched between the two large guys who talked the entire journey, an endless conversation which, while not boring, I felt a thousand light years distant from. Thankfully, the guys were city hybrids who had already morphed so much, they were able to both connect as well as disconnect at the drop of a hat, if one could get it off one’s head in time, dropping it in the process. I was thankful for that as the customary sense of obligation and sociability that is so signature to hill cultures, was thin, almost by mutual understanding. Reflecting on this put me to sleep for part of the way. At that time, I hadn’t been able to pin down that my lack of sociability with an old friend was a sign of my own wheels having driven me to emotional saturation.

We reached Jedi’s house late in the evening. I was very tired and cold by then, but the house that I hadn’t visited in a very long time, was utterly changed, and it was a relief to be in a modern, tastefully decorated house, well lit and warm, with what was promising to be an incredible dinner being rustled up by Jedi himself.

That beautiful sitting room

The breakfast table

Jedi’s father Ron and I chatted, a personal and profound sharing of journeys, meeting after so many years. Jedi, all the while chatting with Hannah, was making sure that the spagetti and chicken were emulating Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, and transcending to perfection. Ron, is a church leader whom I deeply respect, his journey with Christ continuing further in and further up in ways so very different from his peers. It may have been in that time, tired, with a splitting headache, that my eyes were being directed to my spinning wheels. And after that excellent meal, we all sat down to chat, Jedi, in his inimitable way, going straight for the gut with deep and searching questions that led to more stories and thoughts. Jedi… an extraordinary young man, a year older than Hannah, with a profundity of depth and thought and expression that quite takes my breath away. I hear the conversations between him and Hannah and feel a deep gratefulness for how the Sprit of God takes our feeble attempts at parenting and gives the clay feet of those truly fragile efforts wings to fly and touch the face of the stars, as Loreena McKennit, the Celtic singer puts it. Strangely, I didn’t sleep well that night. Perhaps I was too cold and didn’t get warm, or I was overtired, or I had the sound of my own wheels driving me crazy…

Jedi and Hannah

The next day swung gently in, golden with glorious sunshine, sky of pure azure, every leaf and rock crystal clear in that cleansing light. The hills basked in those good, warming rays, as I went blearily outside and sat on the swing looking out at the valley. My head felt leaden, thoughts slow, aching to just exist in the moment in that wonderful sunlight. After a heartwarming breakfast, I did not find the liver to join the Sunday worship and go through the social formalities of meeting everyone. Ron quietly understood, and gave me the run of the house, while the family and Hannah left for church. I went back to the swing, and for the next three hours, just sat there soaking in the quiet, and finally let go, thanking God that I had the moment to myself, and there was nothing else in that moment controlling me. I couldn’t remember when last I had felt that any moment of the day or night was truly mine. I felt ragged, but I could finally hear the silence now that the scream had stopped. And slowly, the pieces that unnoticed by us are torn asunder, have the grace and time to come together and begin to heal. I held on to that when I returned to Siliguri, trying to hold the silence deep in my heart, even as the noise of everyday life returned.

Clear sunlit day on a Pedong trail

It was grace, and grace alone that I could find that Pause button, let alone press it just in time. So many never find that elusive button that always stays full in sight. And once we find it, so many of us misplace it again so very quicky, and later, I found that writing this blog post too, presses that button to pause the sound of those neverending wheels, spinning to drive us crazy… if we just let them.