Indoor Ho Ja (Go Inward)

I was 24. Fresh out of MBA. Three months of doing nothing after graduation. Then I got into academics. Should have been relieved. The first step was there. But within two months, I was already restless. This is not enough.

What next. Where will this go. What is the plan.

I went to meet my uncle in Indore. He was my guru. Not the kind you find on YouTube. The kind who listens to you for seven minutes and says one line that takes you twenty-four years to understand.

So I sat there. Talking. What will happen. How should I grow. Should I move out of Indore. What is the future. Career. Life. Direction. The usual anxiety of a young man who just got what he wanted and immediately wanted more.

He listened. Asked a few things here and there. I kept answering. Justifying. Explaining my grand plan for a life I hadn’t started living yet.

Then he said — “Indoor ho ja.”

I was confused. I am in Indore. I’m sitting in your house. In Indore. What do you mean go to Indore?

He didn’t explain. We laughed. Chatted about other things. I paid my respects and left.

That thought stayed with me. Not as wisdom. As confusion. A small itch I couldn’t scratch. What did he mean

Twenty-four years passed. I moved out of Indore. Moved cities. Changed jobs. Changed roles. CFO. COO. Strategy. Sales. Manufacturing. Retail. Insurance. Startups. Every few years, a new industry, a new challenge, a new version of the same question — what next.

Today. An hour ago. I came back from office, sat down, and opened the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. A few pages before sleep. A habit I try to build recently.

Verse 15 and 16 of Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. I’ve read it before. Twice. Maybe three times in the last few months. It never landed.

Tonight it did. The verse says — the joy, the real one, is experienced within. When the mind is free of thoughts. Not by chasing. Not by planning. Not by moving to the next city or the next role. When there are no thought-constructs. That stillness. That state. That is where it lives.

And verse 16 follows — that joy is pure. It pervades everything. If that is the nature of reality, then who is to be worshipped? Who is to be satisfied?
I put the book down. Indoor ho ja.

He wasn’t saying Indore. He was saying indoor. Go inward. That’s where the answer is. Not in the next city. Not in the next job. Not in the next plan. Indoor.

He said it in two words. Shiva took a hundred and twelve techniques to say the same thing. And I needed twenty-four years and both of them to hear it.
The man who gave me the answer is gone. The answer just arrived.

I don’t know what to do with it yet. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe “indoor ho ja” doesn’t need a plan. It just needs a pause.