What was the starting point of my life? I was pondering over this thought for quite some time.

It was rather a lonely return flight from the land of big A~ A for Apple, Ambition, Attitude, Authority, Affluence, Audacity, Arrogance et all. All capital.

Crossing the Atlantic, I was looking unmindfully through the window. Occasional clouds fly by.

I could see a dark spot, miles down there! Is it a big floating ship, making its way through the largish ocean? Or, is it a lonely island, just managing to stay afloat in the passage of time? My thoughts were interrupted. And felt thirsty way down to my navel. Time to have some water and free the knees! The next moment, I was walking down the aisle.

Back to my seat, I again stared out. That dark spot was still hovering around. Even after laps of good fifteen - twenty minutes! Strange! I thought. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my left palm and tried to refocus. Coming out of the haze of the just rubbed eyes, it was neither a floating ship, not at all a floating island! It turned out to be a small speck on the outer pane of the aircraft window.

So close to my eyes! Yet, so illusionary!

It kept on moving with me. And since it was on the outside surface of the pane, I could do nothing to.... wish it away.

I tried to reassemble my interrupted thought once again. The starting point of my life.
No, not the biological one, but the real one - the effective one. To search the within and find the beyond. To look for the shadows and discover the trees. To see through the paintings and reach the painter's brush.

Will it be difficult? I questioned me. May be, I replied to myself. To hold an egg and imagine the color of the hen!

Was it the moment, when I just crossed seven and fell down three floors in an attempt to grab the tempting thread of a floating and colorful kite?

Can it be the very afternoon, when I was merely nine and had the courage to request my parents to send me hundred odd miles away to my uncle's for a stable school education?

Was it the day I had to decide against joining the Junior State Basketball team and rather concentrate on the preparations for the ensuing School Board finals?

Would it be the time when I decided to continue my engineering studies foregoing the irresistive call from the Calcutta Medical College considering my family's then socio-economic conditions and to uphold the past three generations' tradition of graduating from BE College?

Was it the day, after passing Engineering, I decided to join a construction company and come out to work at a place two thousand kilometers away from home when I had three other opportunities to start my carrier at Calcutta itself?

Was it the time, I fell in love with...

I need to explore, one at a time and let you know all of these, later.

The jingling sweet sounds of the approaching drinks trolley and the faint mystic aroma of the air hostess' perfume swept my mind across for the time being... Cheers.

A Voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings ~ Kahlil Gibran