The Seventh Day

Monday last week I was in office. Not fully there. Something in me was still elsewhere. I showed up anyway. Opened the laptop. Answered what needed answering.

Then a thought came. I want to go away for a bit. Immediately another one, almost irritated at the first — if stillness is always available, why does the mind need hills? Isn’t wanting a break just the mind avoiding itself?

I sat with that. I went on leave but did not leave for a day. Stayed at home. I countered ambitious impulses to be away forever. Instead, spent time at home wondering why do I need to go away.

Seven days. Hills. Away from the usual rhythm. No plan. Just out.

Now I am back. Seven days back. I am not longing to return. No ache for the hills, no grief that it ended. But I am also not buzzing with that fresh-start feeling people talk about after a break — the one that lasts exactly four days before the inbox catches up.

I am just here. Back in the meetings, back on the calls, family around. In all of it. And also, somehow, one step removed from all of it. Watching it happen without needing it to be different from what it is.

I wrote that last line and stopped. It sounds like a claim. And I have learned to be suspicious of claims about inner states — they are the first thing the ego reaches for when it wants to look good.

So let me say it plainly. Something shifted. Not a transformation. The noise that was loud before I left is quieter now. Certain outcomes I was gripping — certain timelines, a few conversations I kept rehearsing in my head — the hold loosened. Not gone. Just not as tight.
That is all and may be that is enough.

There is a word in the older texts — Drishta. The witness. When most people hear this, they imagine someone sitting very still while life passes by. Unmoved and a little absent.

It is not that. The witness decided to leave, checked weather forecast and opted for car over bike.

Goes to the hills. Comes back. Picks up the phone. Feels the tiredness at the end of a long day and shows up the next morning anyway. It just does not become the tiredness.

There is a small distance between experiencing something and being taken over by it. That distance — I do not know what else to call it. It is not detachment. It is not indifference. It is more like the difference between standing in the rain and drowning in it.

Before I left, I kept asking myself — if stillness is always there, what am I going somewhere to find? But this is a wrong question.

The observer does not need a break. But the body carrying the observer does. The nervous system collects things quietly, without announcing it. The mind processes even when it seems quiet.
Going was not running away from something. It was just knowing what was needed and doing it without making a story of it.

Seven days away. Seven days back. The one who went was not escaping. The one who returned is not new. Just the same one — who went, came back, and is here now. In the work. In the family. In the day. Not gripping any of it too hard.

That is what thehrav feels like, I think.
Not a state you arrive at, just what is left when you stop pulling.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​