THE LIFE WE SEEK

The Life We Seek ~ 443 ~ satisfaction from it. However successful atheists may be, there come times in their lives when they are forced to reflect that there is more to life than they have ever been able to discover. In 1935, twelve years before India’s independence, Jawaharlal Nehru completed his autobiography while in prison. In the concluding chapter he wrote: “I have a feeling that a chapter of my life is over and another chapter will begin. What this is going to be I cannot clearly guess. The leaves of the book of life are closed.”2 When the pages of the book of Nehru’s life were reopened, it was his destiny to become the Prime Minister of the third largest country in the world. For nearly twenty years, he exercised power over a sixth of the world’s population. But this accomplishment did not bring him satisfaction. At the very pinnacle of his career, he still felt that there were some pages of his life which were yet to be opened. The very questions that are rooted in the human intellect when one first comes into the world were still revolving in Nehru’s mind when his life’s story was nearing its close. In January 1964 a