Inner Compass – Shalini Sareen – Life & Executive Coach

“Miracles do occur”. I had read these lines often and a part of me always believed in them too, but when I personally experienced one in my own lifetime, I was finally able to comprehend, sense and understand the implication of a miracle, which is primarily a peek into gaining an insight of a sense of higher power and energies in the universe. It led me to an understanding of the limitations of the five senses and the presence of a higher energy in the universe, that is beyond the comprehension of our mind, and something which needs to be experienced, in order to be understood.

I grew up in an Indian household and nurtured a strong bond with my father. My father was an affectionate, loving, patient, balanced, highly accomplished and a well-rounded man. He was my Hero and as seen from my eyes, simply the best. One autumn, he fell very sick and as his condition grew worse, he had to be hospitalized. On one such evening in October, in the hospital, he happened to have asked me for a musk melon, complaining that his mouth was beginning to feel very dry. In those days musk melon was a seasonal fruit and not available, at that time of the year. Although, we tried at every possible store, I was, to my despair, unable to get it for him. After his sudden and unexpected demise, I remember being flooded with a surge of sadness and sorrow, for a long time to come. Having taken a sabbatical from my work to be with him, taking care of him day and night, for months, he had literally become a part of me, with my world centering around him, making the loss even more unbearable. Amidst such feelings of aftershock and emptiness, I found myself taking a vow, along with my family, to not eating musk melon ever again and agreeing to not buy or bring musk melon into the house.

Years passed, we changed cities, moved houses, changed jobs and life moved on, without anyone of us ever eating a slice of musk melon; all this while, keeping him in our hearts, learning to live without him, feeling his presence guiding us and doing our best to imbibe some of the values and principles that he stood for. A couple of years later, on a cold Sunday winter morning, as I sat in my garden, reading the newspaper; to my unbridled excitement and shock, I realized that the basil pot had a small plant growing alongside with two small tennis ball sized fruit hanging on it…there were “two tiny ripe succulent, sweet and juicy musk melons with those unmistakable green stripes”.

Being an avid gardener myself, I knew how hard it is to grow musk melons, let alone growing it when they were not planted in the first place. Multiple thoughts ran parallelly and one theory that I remember us debating in particular, amongst ourselves, was whether the seeds of some eaten-up musk melon found its way to the pot, but that theory had no steam either, as no one in our family, had ever brought or eaten the fruit, since his demise. To this date, how the musk melon plant grew and found its way in the pot is unknown and soon became irrelevant. The fact as to how no one noticed the presence of two fruits sprouting and growing all that time and ripening while they were as tiny as a tennis ball, in size, are nothing short of a mystery. We believed that a miracle found its way to us and that we, each one of us, sacredly and personally considered it as a sign of our dad’s blessings.

To me, perhaps, they were the last few lessons that I needed to learn from my dad; to learn the art of letting go, to learn forgiveness, to be grateful for having him in our lives and the constant reminder of how his good Karmic deeds transformed as guidance and blessings, for his family, when needed, long after he had physically departed.