Tryst with Angels


Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night,
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
- James Henry Leigh Hunt

I have always been fascinated by this poem, since the time I first read the same. The interest seems to have evolved over the years that I have read it - first as a memorizer, then as a part of nostalgia and finally as a walk of life. Somewhere in between those lines, it impresses me with two important maxims of life - "Put in your sincere efforts and don't care about the results, because they are surely going to follow you" and "Love your fellow men ahead of the Lord" and then the Lord would be the happiest person on the earth (Err !! I don?t know where He dwells).

For yours truly, there have been a number of encounters with the angels in the past. May be every time, the angel drops in hoping that this kiddo might have matured over the time, but alas, every time he has to return disappointed. Well one (out of the many) of the most famous trysts with the angel dates back to my Engineering days. Well every time there was a semester exam, the Trio (me, Pavnya and Sadya) would meet and discuss the topics to be studied and the ones to be ignored. An important composition of the same would be to try hurling out stones to aim at an electric pole. No there wasn't any Swayamvar contest that was on, but this was our superstition - to assume a certain result in the exam and then chuck the stone at the pole. If it hits the assumed result would hold good. The actual results rarely matched, but our fielding skills definitely improved. It happened one day, that a old gentle man was strolling by that path and we were busy with our regular schedule - throwing stones (if somebody would have monitored us more often and closely, we three would have been in mental hospital - Luckily this was an isolated path and only the one was only used for morning and evening walks) I don't quiet remember, what did he say, but his intention meant that we went inside and studied for the D-day - the next day. We ignored him and continued with our pep talk (I used to improve their confidence by telling then that this topic was easy or this won't bother you in the exams, in return they would bring my morale down, by announcing that they had already started with their revision and I was still struggling to come to terms with the first of the five mandatory units. But this would certainly spur me to accelerate from my tortoise pace of completing the units). But when we looked back to trace where exactly was our newly found uncle heading towards, he was seen nowhere - he had disappeared. We never knew - where he had disappeared, but my friends packed up our bags and went home much early than their regular time. The next day, there was a surprise in store for us - the very frightening Machine Tool Design paper seemed very easy and we could tame the paper easily. All the three of us secured good marks in the same, but this always raised hope that the angel would return back on the same road, bringing us some luck in the next examinations.
The most recent of those rendezvous had been this Saturday, when this Abou was still sleeping in broad daylight and the 12 hour sleep had been interrupted by a ringing door bell (Well now a days, angels have the courtesy of coming through the door especially when they arrive broad daylight). I was looking for the golden book in his hand, but instead he had a bag carrying various types of pappads and he enquired whether I would need a few of the packs of the same. I never wanted any of those, but as I was about to say a nay, when my instincts took over and asked for the price of one and before I could realize, what had happened, I had already bought 5 of those packets. Thanks to my room mate, who had to run hard to buy a milk packet from the grocery store, after I had promised the angel a cup of tea. Well the angel was quiet impressed about my mobile cover and I then gifted him the same. Well I did everything I could to impress upon him, so that I feature in his list of names and I wasted a complete Sunday expecting that he would drop in and show his book of gold. Neither did him nor was his book was to be seen. This again leads us back to the same maxim - Put in your sincere efforts and don't care about the results, because they are surely going to follow you.