MY HAPPY PLACE
I went to this overcrowded place but felt most alive.
Wait!! Before you believe that the picture shown above is my happy place, let me correct you: the picture below is not my happy place. This is the place where I talked about my happy place.
A few days back, during a short trip with my friends, I went to this place for dinner. To be honest, it is one of the fanciest places I have ever visited. That place was excessively beautiful, but fortunately, it wasn’t ridiculously expensive. God saved our pockets.
I’m coming back to my happy place story.
When we reached that place and took our seats, nearly five minutes later, I started talking about the place we visited before coming to this fabulous place.
That place was the bank of the river Ganga at Parmarth Niketan Ashram. Before we came for the dinner, we spent more than an hour at the bank to attend the Ganga aarti.
While we all were admiring the fancy dinner place, I had a sudden thought in my mind. Thought that said, “Yes, this place is beautiful in all senses, but you liked the previous one more. Right Ayushi?”
As soon as I realized that it had only been a few minutes since I left the place, but I had already started missing it, I uttered this in front of my friends. “You know what, this place is terrific and has an amazing vibe too, but what we experienced a few minutes before at Aarti was something different.”
Despite being overcrowded and having no sitting space, I still enjoyed it more and called it my happy place.
It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. It was either tears or goosebumps, nothing in between. It wasn’t the first time I visited the place, but this time it was different. As they say, no two experiences can be similar even if you are visiting the same place at the same time.
During my visit, a popular TV actor was standing beside me but nobody paid a minute attention to him. He was standing there just like us, jumping every minute to witness the beauty of the place. Trying to get a clear view while going through the pool of people. (And yes he looked very handsome, he didn’t have the makeup on that I can tell. Sorry for the unnecessary information:)
Everybody was so engrossed at that moment that anyone barely recognised him. It was after the Aarti that people gathered around him and asked for selfies. That was another moment that took my heart away, to be in a place where everyone was treated equally. People from various parts of the world were there with just one aim: to experience the holy Ganga aarti.
It’s a fact that I am a spiritual person, but it wasn’t my inclination towards spirituality that made the experience mesmerising. It was the energy, people, and flow of the river that kept me hooked.
This isn’t a brag about how spiritual I am or how I find happiness in little things. It’s just something that I felt at that place. It made me genuinely happy. The kind of happiness I felt after a long time.
I’m glad I visited that place with the most amazing people and got to live my happy place moment. If you also want a mesmerising experience then you should definitely attend the Ganga Aarti at Rishikesh. I am sure you’ll love it and it will make your heart full.
