The Sweetness You Didn’t Share

I was back from office. Changed into my comfort clothes. Settled into my corner of the bed — the one I’m habituated to. No family conversation demanding my attention. Everything seemed in control.

I was drifting. Like a wave receding back to the ocean. At work you’re in high tide — making a living, pushing forward. And now returning to your norm. Your rhythm. The shore still meters away from where you were at peak. A feeling of pause. Thehrav.

I picked up a few lines from the book on Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. Something in them felt close — not enlightenment, but close to something. And with it came the urge to write.

That urge. It’s the same thing that happens when we travel to scenic places. We click more photographs than we need to. And somewhere between the clicking, we forget to look. We miss the experience we went there for.

The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra has this idea — when joy arises, it’s not coming from the moment. It was already in you. The moment just made it visible.

Now when I post about it, what am I really doing? I’m taking this thing that was sitting quietly inside and converting it into words and images.

It’s like goonge ko gur khilana. You feed jaggery to someone who can’t speak. They taste it. Maybe the sweetness hits them the same way it hit you. Maybe it doesn’t. You ask — how was it? They shake their head.

Was that a yes or a no? Was it “this is the best thing I’ve tasted” or “it’s okay, nothing special”?

You’ll never know. All you have is the head-shake. And your interpretation of it.

That’s what every shared experience becomes. A head-shake. Expressionless. You have no way of knowing if any of it actually landed. And if happiness is goonge ka gur, why even try sharing

Maybe the sweetness was always meant to stay within.

I’m not saying don’t share. That would be odd coming from someone writing a newsletter about exactly this. I know.

I’ve been paying attention to that small gap lately. Between feeling something and reaching for the phone. When you sit with it — don’t name it, don’t type it out — something shifts. The feeling doesn’t disappear. It just sits longer. Goes somewhere deeper than a post would have taken it.

The Ashtavakra Gita would call this sakshi bhaav. The witness. You watch the joy come. You don’t grab it, you don’t put a frame around it. You just let it be there. And somehow, in not doing anything with it, you stay inside it longer than you would have if you’d rushed to share.

There’s a mithai you eat alone in the kitchen past midnight. No photo. Nobody watching. You chew slowly. You don’t even describe it to yourself.

That’s the one you remember next month. The one you posted about — you remember the post. The caption. Maybe the comments. Not the taste.

I think thehrav lives somewhere in that gap. Between feeling it and forwarding it.