What next?

I knew this question as early as my earliest memory can reach! That was my question too, when a kid... and precisely why I could provide a clue, when somebody told me, pointing to his mischievous kid, 'Look at that rascal, his stare ... so innocent-looking, blank-looking... is in fact, a warning, he is up to something afresh, just the 'commercial-break' he is affording us, with his own search for “what next”...!!!..' I provided a clue, 'Oh! Then, just make sure there is nothing-next-to-him that will provide THE next thing to do something with...' 'Roger', he agreed, and gently did that reverse-theorem of 'presto!' (not just a converse theory), and one by one, the breakables disappeared from that kid's reach!

I retired abruptly.... the question 'cropped' up... what next!

Oh! the question is as old as me... I told myself... (So, why not look at how others deal with their 'next'.... be it a nagging spouse even?... and, now... I did not have to seek my own 'next' for the next several 'period-of-time'!!!.... not even the next blog.... it has to be 'allowed' to happen by itself... what ever makes it happen!)

Kid age, what next (mischief)

school age ... what next (books, painfully long period going through the very same books, then exaams, the results, the promotion, ... after a few repetitions, the question finds its own answers!)..

meanwhile, in the gaps of time during the 'school-debacle', that is... small spaces of 'what next' searches... that was decades ago... now the kids are loaded with enough homework, tv-work, gadget-fiddling-work, etc... so much that.... they hardly look up to the closed lid to ask 'what next' to find any new dish being dished out of that dish and served 'dishoom' on to the dinner plate! Most of it is off-the-shelf... or still worse... that cold-hearted-fridge, looking so vengence-fully, when the hunger seeks a 'matching' temperature of food! (That is why, perhaps, the ancient query, 'can she cook well' is outdated during match-making now!... all we need is good cookers, not just a good-cook!)... anyway, that is not the-next on our agenda right now!

Marriage/job/kids/home-loan, home/ par-motion(promotion)... each suffixed by 'what next' leads sequentially to 'the' next...!!! These are serious 'nexts' nested badly around us... but life is not entirely without humor... For instance, a colleague of mine, eager to try it out in Engleesh, his usual query (mere leye agla kaam kya hai?), blurted thus: 'What is next... to me?'... Inadvertently I replied without a thought or batting-of-eye-lid, “Bhooth!”... He got scared, while others had a hearty laugh (it was just the preceding day that I narrated my adventures to the, during my preceding few days, pursuing occult-kinda-people ... being a genuine and single bachelor, I had lot of leisure on non-working-days, to hunt for 'anything that has anything to do with spirituality'... and occult people seemed to offer it 'off-the-shelf' ... till I saw the point that there was 'nothing more in it'!!!_ than some materialistic-oriented-powers!... I was after nothing-less, than the nothing-more-than something, already!)

At times, 'who next' scares us... The who is 'next to me' does matter in some cases...

It goes on... perhaps, till we are next-to-nothing! And if we decide further again, the very same way, yet another something-next is already in the offing! ( I dunno! If it was the one thing that kept me so busy, that other trifles of 'what nexts'' did not really bother me too much, and took off the mischief in me, when the elders around 'found' my inconspicousness to be a heavily felt absence during my youth days, when my search within kept me away from that 'what next' for too long-a-while... ).... and after all.... now that I find myself next-to-nothing... there is really nothing-next-to-me... to boggle me with 'what next'!!! That is about the mystic-nothingness!

(somebody gave me a puzzle, while at school... it was a copy-by-heart... but quite a good starter for 'what-next'... he said, use the same word to fill in all the three sentences... 1) dash is greater than God, 2)dash is worse than devil and 3) if we eat dash, we will die!... I did not 'dash' my head for too long... I said, it means to me 'nothing'... other kids wondered, when the asker applauded!... That was how nothing-next-to-me befriended me right from the kid age!)

what next, yours (is the turn!)

psn ( 28th July, 2013)