The Ring of Fire

It was while putting together our annual off-sites at the workplace that I got to know Tito Chandy.

Tito ran a company that used sport as a metaphor, to put together team-building activities. Employees would be divided into teams and made to play games that were crafted based on a brief given to him, and the manner in which the teams went about their games would  then be dissected to draw parallels to their roles at the workplace. 

He'd used Plato's insight about how one can  "discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation", to evolve an engaging, effective method of group introspection. 

Tito's fundamental methodolgy of taking learning outdoors was by itself a breath of fresh air. He was an outdoorsy guy himself, a far cry from those of us who'd gotten very comfortable within the confines of our air-conditioned cubicles.

"How much of life can one learn in a  corporate petridish?", he'd ask.

Ever so often, he'd pack his haversack with the bare minimum that he needed and wander into the neighboring forests of Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh, where he'd pitch tent for anywhere between a few days to a few weeks

"There've been times when I haven't met a single soul. There've been others where some interesting encounters have taken place - like once when a 'swamy' kind of guy who wandered into my campsite and it was hard to say who was more surprised at seeing the other! I could smell him from a mile because he couldn't care less about worldly things like bathing", he chuckled

He then told me about another of his trips where he found a place in the woods, by the riverside, and decided to set up shop. He could catch fish, light a fire and cook it, take a dip in the river and get his fix of mother nature till he was ready to head back to the city.

"I gathered some wood that evening and made a fire, downed a couple of rums while getting dinner ready. As I sat back to bask on a job well done I looked out and  felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold outside. There was the fire, and I could see everything that was in its immediate periphery. Then, there was the space outside covered in a blanket of darkness in which I could see nothing...nothing at all", he recounted

"Surely, that wasn't new to you? Wasn't your first time, was it?", I wanted to know.

  "Not the first time at all", he clarified. "I can't quite capture that sense of foreboding that came with that kind of darkness. For the first time in my life, I felt cold sweat. The fire didn't help. Neither did my trusted Old Monk"

 "What happened then?", I asked, feeling a bit out of breath myself.

 "I couldn't see the vast expanse outside, I could only sense it. I tried to take my mind off by focusing on what I could see and that was the little patch lit up by the fire"

 "And just like that, epiphanically, I became aware of  just how tiny I was in the larger scheme of things. Here I was, sitting in a little speck of light, surrounded by a world of darkness. What mattered, however, was that little speck. It was small, but not insignificant"

"I made up a prayer instinctively to whatever that bigger power is". Tito continued.

"Whoever you are - I'll take care of  whatever's within my reach, in this little  ring of fire; whatever's outside of it that I can't, can You please take care for me?"  was his prayer.

Deep.

"It's something I've since fallen back upon in every other phase of my life", he signed off.

We got ourselves a cold one after that. Because it was within our reach.