When The Two Meet

Today I came across a beautiful couplet. I’m sure many of my friends who know Hindi might not have read it before. I don’t know who wrote it, but its meaning is superb that caught my attention. The couplet is:

चार मिले चौंसठ खिले
बीस रहे कर जोड़!
प्रेमी सज्जन दो मिले
खिल गए सात करोड़!!

Its literal translation is,
“When two loving persons meet, four meet and sixty four blossom, twenty of palms add and seven crore get blossomed.”

Let me explain the terms one by one.

*four meet* means all the four eyes of both persons meet one another.

*sixty-four blossom* means  thirty-two teeth each of both (total sixty four) start smiling.

*twenty of palms add* means the palms together with ten fingers each of both persons are pressed together to do namaste, slightly bowing to each other.

As regards *seven crore get blossomed*, though it’s impossible to count the pores in the body, a rough estimate says that there are three and a half crore pores in a body. So the poet says that every pore of seven crore pores of both persons starts oozing happiness.

So the meaning of the couplet can be summarised as under:
“When two loving persons meet each other, their four eyes meet, and their sixty-four teeth smile at each other. While their palms with ten fingers each are pressed together slightly bowing to each other in the ‘Namaste’ posture, every pore of their seven crore pores starts oozing happiness.”

If there is no intimacy, there will be no four, no sixty-four,  no twenty and no seven crore, when the two persons will meet.

There are many such couplets, through which our elders used to sow the seeds of Sanskar, to inculcate a sense of gratitude, responsibility, togetherness and happiness.

Now people across the world celebrate various days of happiness. For example, this week (19 to 25 September) is being celebrated as International Week of Happiness at Work to raise awareness on the value of happiness at work and its impact on a person’s well-being.

We may go on celebrating such days and weeks to seek happiness at work, at home, at school, in matrimony, in relationships, in neighbourhood and so on, but these will simply remain rituals. A Musk Deer remains in search of its own scent, while one day a clever man comes and removes the musk from its preputial gland.

We know where the happiness lie, but we conveniently overlook. Happiness lies in simplicity, it lies in small things, in sharing and caring, more so in giving. The three keys to happiness are love, empathy and sympathy. And one mantra is that nobody can make you happy until you’re happy with yourself first.

–Kaushal Kishore