जल्वा-ए-तूर
- Aniket Awasthi
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Location: NH1488, Haryana
“तुम में हूरों का कोई चाहने वाला ही नहीं,जल्वा-ए-तूर तो मौजूद है, मूसा ही नहीं।”
In the Qur’ānic narrative, Prophet Musa (Moses) once prayed to God with a profound request: “My Lord, let me see You.” God responded that Musa would not be able to endure such a vision, and instructed him to look at a nearby mountain Toor — if it remained firm, then he would see the Divine. When God’s radiance manifested upon the mountain, it shattered into dust, and Musa fell unconscious. This is what is called “जल्वा-ए-तूर”.
The Nadir
Last Monday, I found myself at a personal nadir. Seated outside Dr. Sharma’s cabin, in the stillness peculiar to clinical corridors, I scrolled through photographs from nearly seven years ago. Those images captured an earlier configuration of self — when enterprise was instinctive, ambition untamed, and endurance assumed rather than negotiated. Business was not strategy alone; it was conviction in motion. Preparation for UPSC was not merely academic; it was a wager against mediocrity.
Today, the metrics of success are tangible. A business built from first principles. Intellectual maturity forged through risk, uncertainty, and execution. Capital created. A corporate path moving steadily toward public markets.
“अकेले चला था, न छाँव की चाह थी न है,लोग जुड़ते गए, कारवाँ बनता गया।”
Yet along this ascent, something fundamental eroded.
I lost the mind. I slipped into anxiety.
“You would have loved that guy.”
I lost the mind that once possessed relentless cognitive stamina, the ability to devour a book in a day, traverse hundreds of pages of history, model abstractions like Black–Scholes or game theory without friction.
I lost the body that embodied endurance and strength — a half-marathon runner, a disciplined swimmer, a power lifter commanding a 200 kg deadlift.
Most critically, I lost alignment with Dokkōdō — the Way of Walking Alone. Not solitude, but independence. Not isolation, but inner sovereignty.
Now, I return to the road. Risen from the ashes.
A sentence formed with unsettling clarity:“You would have loved that guy.” This was not nostalgia. It was confrontation.
In a Nietzschean sense, such moments represent the threshold of self-overcoming — where resentment can either calcify into excuse or be transmuted into renewed authorship of one’s values. In an Islamic register, it resembles tawbah stripped of theatrics: a decisive return to alignment, not through guilt but through responsibility. Ashes, after all, are evidence of prior combustion.
Now I tell ye about that guy
The spirit that resurfaced carried its own vocabulary:
“तेग क्या चीज़ है, हम तोप से लड़ जाते थे।”
“What was a mere sword to us? We would take on even cannons.” As I used to get in physical fights in interhall events.
“हम जो जीते थे तो जंगों की मुसीबत के लिए,और मरते थे तेरे नाम की अज़मत के लिए।”
To live for struggle; to die for transcendence. Existence framed not by comfort, but by meaning. I always lived for “ Roop, Jaya, Yash”
“थी न कुछ तेग-ज़नी अपनी हुकूमत के लिए,सर-ब-कफ़ फिरते थे क्या देहर में दौलत के लिए?”
“Our swordsmanship was never for the sake of rule.Did we roam the world with our lives at stake for wealth?”
“कोई क़ाबिल हो तो हम शान-ए-कई देते हैं,ढूँढने वालों को दुनिया भी नई देते हैं।”
“If one proves worthy, we grant him royal dignity;to those who merely seek, we do not even grant the world.”
“तरबियत आम तो है, जौहर-ए-क़ाबिल ही नहीं,जिस से तामीर हो आदम की, ये वो गिल ही नहीं।”
“Training is common, yet the essence of true capability is absent;this is not the clay from which a true Adam can be
formed.”
“फिर भी हम से ये गिला है के वफ़ादार नहीं,हम वफ़ादार नहीं — तू भी तो दिलदार नहीं।”
Just as the Ram–Bali episode teaches that dharma applies only where righteousness exists, this couplet suggests that wafa can exist only where there is dildari.
जल्वा-ए-तूर तो मौजूद है
I am on the road again — not in retreat, but in deliberate reconstruction. The مقصد is precise: to rebuild the strength of mind, body, and spirit to a level capable of withstanding जल्वा-ए-तूर. The radiance was never absent; it was my capacity that diminished. Now the work is clear — sharpening cognition, restoring physical sovereignty, reinstating inner discipline. Because the illumination is already here. The only remaining task is to become powerful enough to stand before it.
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