Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet is the much awaited event which has started on 21st January 2023 and will continue to enthral us till 26th January. This is taking place at the lawns of Victoria memorial Hall, Kolkata. It’s a great opportunity for the bibliophiles to meet and greet with different authors and get to learn about their life experience and author experience and along with these there would
be performances, book reading, talk-shows, and award ceremonies as well. This 11th edition of lit meet has so many wow elements, one such was yesterday’s session. The renowned motivational speaker and spiritual personality Gaur Gopal Das inspired the audience of Literary Meet. It was Sunday morning and Kolkata’s energy could be measured by the presence of the full house audience.
He initiated the session by giving some insights about journey of life. He described the journey of life as a plane ride, birth as take-off, death as landing, suicide as emergency landing and turbulences as problems in life.
He said “if you are born crying that’s not your fault but if you die crying then you didn’t live right
guys”. Taking a reference from an old bollywood song “rotey hue aaate hai sab hasta hua jo jayega
wo mukkadar ka sikanda kehlayega”. Further he added that no one can anything about their birth and ending of the journey of our life which is death. He also defined suicide as emergency landing
whereas natural death is natural landing. He said that he feel strongly for those people who opt for suicide and prefer to choose death over life, as death is much easier for them. Coming to his next point he said despite of our wish when we want to die and where we want to die we can’t control
these things, it will happen in on its own terms.
He gave an example of a 65 years old lady who used to nudge her 30-35 years old bachelor nephew whenever there used to be a wedding that next is yours and her nephew used to hate and 8 months later there was a funeral in their family and both went to attend it and this time the nephew nudge his aunt saying next is your turn.
Next he said that we should always relish and enjoy the journey between the take-off and landing of our life otherwise the saffar (hindi word for journey) will become suffer.
He also talked about turbulences in life i.e. the problems and troubles which one faces. He describes one incident “one day a married guy came upto him and said Guruji, there are so many issues in married life so is there any solution?” So, as an answer Gaur Gopal Das said if I had a solution then I wouldn’t have been monk.
He further described one of his Singapore visit where he was invited for giving a lecture, and the
event was known as Master’s of the century. He got standing ovation for 5 mins after he finished his lecture and Singapore crowd also cheered for him but there was another half of the crowd which was cheering for Sophia, so he thought “is this Sophia of “Modern Family” fame?”
Amidst all this someone asked if he wants to meet her so he said ok, but initially he was denied entry by the bouncer saying that she is getting “plugged in” so Gaur Gopal Das thought “plugged in!”, may be some kind of internet lingo. He thought as most of the time as part of complement he often gets to hear from people that “Guruji you have killed it” so he thought it might be similar new gen Singaporean lingo but later he found out that Sophia is the humanoid and when they said “plugged in” means she was literally plugged in for the purpose of charging. Thus he got his inspiration for the first chapter of his new book “Energise Your Mind” which is called “You are not Sophia”. Our Kolkata correspondent asked Guruji that how he would define spirituality to a non-spiritual person then he said “Be mindful”. The event ended with the customary book signing before he left the venue.
By – Payal Das
Kolkata Correspondent
WOM
