Everyone is searching for something or someone. The whole purpose of every living being is the search. For animals, it can be the search for food and water and for humans it is for food, water and everything else. Everyone gets up in the morning only because of the need for the Search. It can be new ways to make money or a new project or even find a new job. If nothing else, it could just be a search for a new meaning to life.
Many people are searching for a soul mate while many others are just searching for companionship. The politicians are also always searching. When in power, they search for solutions to problems while in the opposition they search for problems to solutions. Many scientists are searching for making our life easier while many religious zealots are searching for things to make our life hard.
Doctors and health professionals are always searching for ways to make the patient’s life easier while patients these days use Google to search and make life as difficult as possible for the doctor. Many astronomers are searching for human life in any other planet while many of us are constantly searching for a humane life on earth!
Children usually search for new things to get in trouble while parents are searching things to keep them away from trouble. They, of course, join forces every day to search for that elusive TV REMOTE which I feel is the biggest mystery. The phenomenon of the missing remote is even more mysterious than the Bermuda Triangle. The places from where the remote goes missing and is later found will always remain an enigma and that’s probably why the gadget is known as a remote.
The day you get up in the morning and realize your search has finally ended is the day of your reckoning. My biggest search every morning is for that rare entity—the pair of the sock in my hand. I will always get the first one but finding the pair is indeed an arduous task. Every night, I would remember tucking (read that line again slowly and it is clean!!) the sock with its pair and the next morning it would adulterously pair with another sock of a different colour, length, and type, in a cozy embrace.
I would then call out to my wife to see if she has seen my sock.
She would then ask me to check a place which is alien to me — familiar only to the mother or the wife! That place is very clear in their minds when they describe it but when I hear about it, it transforms into an enigma. Only brave hearts and possibly a guy in a hurry would ever dare to ask “where’s the …”? I asked this question since I belong to the latter bunch. My wife would finally mention about the SOCK DRAWER. However, I did not want to admit that I was unaware about the existence of the place called ‘sock drawer’. I would then answer precariously “It’s not there”.
The next step of the search begins here! You would place the sock in your hand (not in the sock drawer) on a table from where you know for sure that the sock would not dare escape! (“I am on to you the breaker of the sacred commandment!”) You see, socks have an inherent pride. So I go inside and search in my cup board when after five minutes my wife would call out those magical words (No, it’s not “I love you”; you will believe me more after you get married) It is, “I FOUND IT!!” the sound to which I run with happiness only to realize that she found the same sock which I had kept on the table so safely.
My sadness then equates to the person who has just been told that you have come first only to be told later that it was a mistake. I would then reluctantly start the search again giving my wife a look of an injured lion who had just lost his kill. Then in the wee corners of the drawer, I would find that sock just trying to escape. And that too by disguising itself as another sock! My search for the day would have finally ended.
Many times people have asked me how I can come to work every day with a smile on my face (They of course are polite enough to not to say that I was mad!). Mostly I wouldn’t say anything but I would think of the search that ended in victory. I had found the pair. Of course that’s only till another search begins.
My pearl of wisdom for the day, “It is the journey of searching that keeps you alive! So without worrying about the end enjoy the search journey!”
About the Author:
Dr. Sriram Nathan, an ENT and Head and Neck Surgeon working at the Narayana Health Hospital in whitefield, Bengaluru.
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