Perhaps it is better to know the world after you know yourself completely. When the fog will disappear and the pain will die out, you’ll see what you’ll see. It will be real and true. You can float blissfully only after you have drowned, till the depth pushes you back and alive. It is not the misty wind or the world that shakes me but my ideas. Everyone is quiet outside but the moon is singing white light. Until I say ‘see you later’ to the world and tap my mind twice, my soul will stand separately on the hill.
I touched my shadow and folded it and I have hidden it in the pocket. Don’t panic. Though I am running but I am looking for something…I am looking for a silent room with green grass and a tree to sit under it. I’ll unfold things without judging then.
Pedalling the cycle in a rhythmic motion, Aunty Ji moved ahead towards a destination unknown to me. I saw her through the bus window and I don’t remember her face clearly.
She was wearing a dull purple sari; now was the sari actually light in colour or was it the hand-washing that the sari went through for infinite times that made it dull, I have no idea about it.
Her complexion was rough. Her hands, arms, and neck looked very rough; and rough not because her skin was bad or simply dry, but rough in a sense that reflected how hard she has worked for ages and how hard she will work for ages.
The skin was rough and dry because the sun rays befriended it; the sun rays and the burnt skin smiled together whenever they met.
She also wore a chain. She was married. She was bulky, but not because she was lethargic or slow, it was the birth of her three or four children that left her on a heavy side; and also the fact that she rarely got any time for herself.
However, she did take two minutes in the morning to dress up, apply powder, bindi, and comb her hair, she enjoyed these two minutes every day.
I didn’t know where she was going to or coming from, what was in her mind – capitalism, liberalism or food, what was her religion – Hinduism, Christianity or food, what was her educational qualification – was she a maid, a saleswoman or a sole breadwinner of a family, what did she know about the world – about global warming, the war/peace game and the wastage of food, and that whether being a human being was she even aware of her life’s higher purpose, was she following a godly Saint or a reasonable atheist, a complex God or a straightforward Holy Text?
I am not sure about anything and nor am I interested to be. Because she was cycling in rhythm and I connected with her as did the wind.
She was nothing extraordinary and almost obscurely invisible. She camouflaged with the out-of-city-region-before-entering-the-proper-country-area perfectly.
Yet she was the most alive person there – the Skylark of the sky and the Albatross of the ocean. She was the solution to the puzzle; she was the answer to the riddle.
Amusingly, she carried the answer and the solution in her bun- the lively, fresh orange flowers. There were two or three orange flowers, beautifully and so neatly pinned to the bun that even the speed breakers were unable to disturb the setting.
The orange flowers – what was the type I don’t remember – were fresh and sweetly orange in colour. The orange flowers hummed a soothing tune. Oh! It was melodious, it was magical, I can’t explain in words…it was a feeling.
A strong, but a fleeting one. And after all, I had just seen a glimpse of Aunty Ji.
I was inside the bus and we passed her and many other bicycle riders.
Everyone moving towards an end, busy garnering their life without truly perceiving it.
She possibly was ignorant, out-dated and wronged, still she had found a way that was orange in colour and alive and quiet and true.
Fresh and sweetly orange in colour. Image by M W from Pixabay
I am not dead. I am dying as I am living. I am old and shabby like a living scarecrow. I go unnoticed by the passersby. I have two friends – my wooden stick and my shadow.
With my wooden stick I have crossed many lands. Whose are those lands? I don’t know. It’s the warmth of the earth that I feel unlike the invisible boundaries and so I walk ahead.
I work few hours few days and earn enough to continue. I have a dream I always dream but i can’t remember it when I wake up. This is because of the running crowd I see every time I wake up. I like standing in rows, long ones, standing and waiting with my wooden stick, weird it may sound but I get time to waste.
I am poor, I am uneducated. I always stop to see a leaf fall and a butterfly fly. I can’t understand right and wrong. Once when I was in a city, a man left his dog at me. I ran while my wooden stick scared the dog away. I left the place swearing never to return in the dogs’ land.
I always accept and I never expect. I have heard of the government, it makes me laugh. I don’t know much about the laws but I am fearful to break one. Is there a law about a wooden stick? Someone said that the government is slow still I pray not to get caught. This is how I live.
You must have seen me. Some say I am the real India and some call me the common man. I own nothing. I feel free in this land though I know I am not. Heard a priest once saying something about Karma and reincarnation, I hope I die to become me in the next life. I feel comfortable the way I am. Change is strange for me.
My second friend, my shadow, never leaves me alone. I am alive, I am a common man and you must have seen me.
Haiku
Endless footprints following footprints/
When suddenly a few of them rise/
To bloom like a flower.
Greetings!
A storyteller, following the ancient tradition of cave chroniclers, standing in vrikshasana (the tree pose) on a hill top (it is sunny, but windy), breathing in and out stories (relishing it all, but at times overwhelmed), declares animatedly that she will continue to – tell stories, share rare story gems, and connect with the pacy universe while also keeping the website ad-free.
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Ya-hoy!
Chiming Stories (formerly Home Chimes)
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