This post is dedicated to my Mother, who went to the other side of the Universe, 6 months back. It’s her birthday today. This journey from a story listener to a storyteller, Book reader to a writer, would not have been possible without her.

She loved reading books and I remember her two green diaries, one for her songs with musical notes and another one with her recipes and important addresses. She never let us touch those dairies when we were kids. When I started my college, she gave me those diaries for the recipes and addresses, and another one when I started learning music. After Dad’s retirement, during our move, those dairies were lost but every scribbling was intact in my heart. I guess from there I started to keep everything in writing. On every birthday gift and card, she asked me to write birthday messages. When I was a kid, she was my storyteller and then she gave me my first storybook to read independently without any help.

She used to read legends of writing like Mahadevi Verma ji, Niralaji, Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan ji, Munshi Premchand, Rabindranath Tagore, Tasleema Nasreen and the list is very long, along with these classics she reads novels as well. I remember her annual membership with Diamond Publications. My mom’s collection has every genre, she always used to say we should read everything, then only you will learn what is right and what is wrong in life.

As the time flies, my mom not only became my friend but my spiritual guru. She used to tell me all stories about our Vedas and Puranas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharat, Geeta, Bhagwaan Mahavir, Gautam Buddha, Bible, Guru Granth Sahib, Quran and so on. Those stories lead me to the path of a search, a search of truth. I read each and every one of them and found that every journey has same path and destination. The path is Karma and destination is Nirvana.

Last year on her birthday, I had my wisdom tooth surgery, after which I started my ZEN spiritual journey through the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism. It helped me to understand my true potential and change my Karma. Today, I take a pledge with this last post that I will try my best to spread this mystic law to as many, so they can also find a way to get solutions to their problems and become Bodhisattvas.

In the end, I want to say Thank you to Natasha Sinha di, who is not only my sister but a mentor and my Shakabuku mother.

Happy Birthday, Ma!

-GS Nidhi

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pic source: https://www.zenprogrammer.org/en/10-rules-of-a-zen-programmer.html