Trouble, strife and sorrow come to them as they do to all, but there is a buoyancy and flexibility to the life celebrant, which enables her to deal with the pain without necessarily being submerged by it.

Living life as lila makes us aware of how important it is to include the concept of play in our lives. Life is not meant to be a grim plodding round of duties. It is meant to be joyous, exuberant, in the moment, says Suma Varughese

Life is lila…. As the festive season unfurls across the land, all of India stretches itself free of the monsoon somnolence and gleefully plunges into celebration. In a beautiful, dramatic flourish, the merry mood arches from Raksha-bandhan to Janmashtami to Ganesh Chaturthi and Durga Puja, before climaxing with Diwali. Lots of fun and games are had by everyone and I am sure you will come by your fair share; but what I shall address in this column is how we can annexe the festive mood into our system for keeps so that life itself becomes a celebration.

Living with vim and vigour: All of us know people who have embraced vibrance. They brim over with a joie de vivre. No matter what the circumstance or task ahead, they welcome it zestfully and pour themselves into it with so much enthusiasm, that they can make even cleaning a toilet seem like the best fun on earth (this would be particularly true of a Gandhian bon vivant - Gandhi was big on cleaning toilets.) Nor are they daunted when the dark times strike. Trouble, strife and sorrow come to them as they do to all, but there is a buoyancy and flexibility to the life celebrant, which enables her to deal with the pain without necessarily being submerged by it.

Taking life sportingly: Life as lila. How does that sound? And how does that change things? For one thing, it stops us from taking life too seriously. Creation is the lord's play in action, and, therefore, there is nothing so deadly serious about living. We don't need to take ourselves seriously, nor our travails and problems either. Seeing life as lila helps you to hold it lightly, not in a desperate life or death way.

If we can truly see the whole flow of life and all the circumstances that assail us as sport, then our attitude towards life will be very different. When troubles strike, we do not quiver and shiver. We take them sportingly, as an opportunity to improve our skills and resources. A job loss? Okay, here's a chance to really and truly experience insecurity and shortage of money and cope with both. A relationship gone sour? Now, there's an opportunity to introspect into your own behavioural patterns that came in the way of resolving the relationship. An illness? Life is giving you a corrective. When life is seen as a game, there's a grace and acceptance that clothes us, because we no longer identify with the outcome. Everything becomes fun, because everything has the potential to teach us something.

Suma Varughese, a regular Verve contributor, is the managing editor of Life Positive magazine. Readers, with a spiritual bent, may write in to soul@verveonline.com.

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