Yugandhar is the chaser and you are his prey. You hold
Yugandhar in eternal awe. He is the master of your shivers. But who is this
Yugandhar anyway?
Well, the first known Yugandhar dates back to your early childhood. He was your father's friend who, you were led to believe, owned the local jail. You
took refuge under the dining table or in the wardrobe when you sensed his
arrival. You cried silently when your sister called out your name from outside your hideout. Later Yugandhar turned himself into the school teacher who wore a
constant frown on her face that towered down at you from a great distance in
sky. You swore you would never in life displease this monster of a Yugandhar. You
turn 15 and he turns 15. He outdoes you at school, play and girls. It’s as if
he reads your bid the night before and pegs higher. You see him drive nail
after nail in the coffin of your ego. In your mental Wikipedia you update the 'list
of my Yugandhars with the new name and write half-heartedly yet submissively
"in office - 2002 to present". Your legend has it that a brotherhood
of Yugandhars exists. They hold ceremonies to induct a new member. They constantly research on ways to torment you. Some good days you
thought God would appoint a counter Yugandhar brotherhood. You badly wanted to
get in should there be one.
But your
common sense and courage sometimes convince the better part of you. You rubbish
these theories and breathe easy. But you are silently looking for clues to
re-affirm your old faiths. It’s as if you have slammed the door on the face of
your fears and waited behind eagerly with an ear pressed to the door. But then
Yugandhar is your brain-child, your magnum opus. How can you abandon it? You
slowly learn ways to accommodate the theories and look at yourself as a victim
of someone else rather than one of yourself.
But let’s hear the case for the Yugandhars. They hardly spoke to you. They held
no malice for you. In fact some did not know you. They hold it against you that
it is you who constantly scanned for Yugandhars. You sought applications,
scrutinized their formidability and recruited. You kept raising the bar. You
always wanted the most fearsome Yugandhar.You painted people black and white,you marked them as Yugandhar or not. And then you crawled back, panicked
in the shell of your life after having found him. They swear they gave up on
you at times. But you acted weird in those days. You did OK for some time. But gradually you started acting as if your life forces have ceased to operate. Your
mind is out of balance and you need the constant suppressant of the fear of a reigning
Yugandhar. They declared you a Yugandhar-addict, a masochist and no cure is in
sight. They hid or ran away from you. But you sought them with your
supernatural senses. You found them and pleaded them to torment you. They
learnt that the pain you suffer while having them was far less than your
struggle and anxiety in their absence. They convinced themselves to submit to
your cause.
So who is the
Yugandhar now? A circling question?
First, you know you are being chased. Second,
you know you are chasing too.The closer you get to him the farther you get away from him.The chaser stops and the chased stops. Third and important, you should discover that there is
only one circling around the tree. And a circling answer indeed.
