‘Really?’ Tell me about it; you’ve almost made me curious!’ he cried. Anu smiled a smile of wisdom. She knew she was game for an audience. It did not matter then that the audience only comprised of her father. ‘Well, for starters’, she began, ‘I’ve made a new discovery. That the dash so far has followed me like a popular telecom company. It has made me look up various ways people call each other when they get bored. The dash has taught me that like a smile, it can make us look at things differently’ she said.
‘Oh! And how is that?’ asked Papa.
‘See this Papa, the dates of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’, Anu explained.
‘So what of that beta?’ he asked.
‘Well you see it’s not only a date, it has a dash.’
‘Yes I can see that but what’s your point.’
‘Ok, I’ll explain Papa, but you must promise me that you will be patient.
‘I’ll try to beta,’ he smiled.
‘You see the date here Papa. It says 31 October 1875 dash 15 December 1950. Notice the dash over here.
‘So’, he questioned.
‘You told me that you would be patient papa. Pray hear me out, please!’
‘Ok, ok,’ said he.
‘Like I was saying, Vallabhbhai’s dates have a dash in between. Do you know what it
means?’ she asked
‘Oh that way, yeah sure I know what it means. It means that he was born on the 31st of October and passed away on the 15th of December; see so simple’, he smiled again.
‘Well, you’re partially right Papa. You got the dates right but not the meaning.
‘As in?’ he asked again.
‘Well agreed that Vallabhbhai was born on the mentioned date but his actually life was in that little dash. Like it is for all of us! Like it is on the tombstones! Born so-and-so and dead, so-and-so! What we really live is in that dash. We laugh in that dash, cry in that dash, love in the dash and even betray a loved one in that dash. The dash in essence is the real meaning we give to our life. The rest two dates are really a recording of the time we spent in that dash’, she stopped at that and left Amit thinking. ‘Was this really so?’ he thought. Were we all truly living in the dash?’
He couldn’t think clearly. He knew Anu was right, but it was something that had never occurred to him all this while. He kept thinking. He was too awe-struck to believe the wisdom imparted by a thing as simple yet as complex as a dash.
