Timelessness

A Fruit Called Galaxy

Short Story

**Behold!**
[Image by Iris,Helen,silvy from Pixabay]

As if anger – throbbing and tight-, burning hatred and cold fear filled this person’s veins and arteries so that there was no need of the warmth of the blood, red wasn’t red anymore, it was all too dark.

Jassi clung to the darkness, crumpled into it, eyes wide-open that almost attacked every direction mercilessly, the glances were like arrows, everything in darkness, not allowing a ray of light or laughter or love to enter. Jassi was blind, it happened in an accident.

True! Colours were colourful before, but not anymore.

Jassi hated to ask for help, hated the space around, bumping into things now and then, and most of all hated the breeze, why did it try to play, sing, sway or say anything, thought Jassi when nothing moved or flowed within? No, not even the thoughts moved, Jassi killed them, the memories – good/bad – in the very first year after the fatal accident.

Some years passed and an opportunity knocked. A new technology, a new expert, a new experiment could bring back Jassi’s eyesight. To everyone’s surprise, Jassi agreed to undergo another surgery, everyone hugged and cried for Jassi was still alive somewhere inside that stern piece of shell that reciprocated nothing all this while.

Pushing every loved on aside, Jassi spoke – I want to see the galaxy and only the galaxy first!

That was Jassi’s condition, it was accepted, and with some difficulties arrangements were made. Days passed by, it rained, the sun too came out and a rainbow beamed, but did Jassi hear all this? Nothing!

Like never before, Jassi refused to go out of the house or even the finite room. Jassi’s steady un-moving eyes tried to pull, it seemed, the movement of time towards Jassi, not to fight a battle, but to bring it to a stand-still. Jassi had changed and no one knew what fruit this change would bear.

Jassi’s steady, un-moving eyes’ pull worked, so felt the others as the day of the surgery came and passed only too quickly. The doctor said it was a success, but Jassi’s firm and unwavering voice made the doctor sweat and slightly doubt himself. All this for a couple of minutes because Jassi refused to remove the bandages and no one touched the new black goggles; everyone knew how much Jassi abhorred them.

And soon, very soon, so soon that no one remembered what day or time it was when they left for the astronomical observatory, and when they reached the place.

After climbing down into the dark abyss, Jassi got up to climb the stairs to reach the galaxy.

Jassi couldn’t hear anything but felt extremely cold, especially on touching the telescope. Jassi reacted like a little curious child, whispered the others.

The guide guided and made adjustments, but only Jassi’s shell listened, Jassi followed not the guide, but an energy and removed the bandages from the cold eyes, that were shut not so tightly this time. Jassi took a breath and touched the telescope again, feeling the round eyepiece shape through which one could swallow the galaxy.

Jassi gently, almost with love looked through the telescope, one eye open, one closed, then opened both. Jassi looked, looked and looked…

…see for yourself… the galaxy’s arms reaching out, holding Jassi now, breaking the shell with love, showing the dance of colours and light, caressing, bursting with joy, filling the one who witnesses with timelessness and bliss…

Jassi fell on the floor unconscious after so gracefully looking through the telescope that too for so long that the others were by then seated on benches to rest. Jassi woke up in the hospital next, with a high-grade fever and a big grin that turned into laughter.

Tears came out of Jassi’s eyes but the laughter didn’t stop. Jassi’s wet eyes glistened, the eyes looked like jewels, the eyes looked beautiful.

But the doctor couldn’t see it, the doctor was worried, he had failed. Jassi couldn’t see anything from one eye and the other eye tried to see through haziness. There was another way out, doctor promised and sighed that Jassi should not have travelled right after surgery.

Jassi left the hospital the same day and went to eat in a restaurant with the loved ones who were confused, also happy, but unsure.

Jassi has stopped explaining anything to anyone now and has started living. A friend’s friend gave Jassi a simple job that promises nothing grand, yet Jassi loves working there. Jassi walks to the workplace using the stick and a new furry friend, Milo.

Every mirror shows that Jassi is doing good. Walking briskly, so lightly, breathing calmly, Jassi looks like a flight-less bird.

Often hurt, Jassi keeps bumping into things at home and office as if every morning chairs, tables, utensils and pens move on their own to trick Jassi.

Jassi gets up every time, not shying from taking any help from the others.

Milo loves Jassi and Jassi finds Milo to be a funny, happy-go-lucky dog.

What do you want for your birthday, Jassi?

Birthday, hmm, nothing much, will be meeting friends, that’s it. And Milo will be there. Well, we may go stargazing.

**It has all come true!**
[Image by Nicole Rose from Pixabay]

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Singing The River Song But Now…

Posted on June 23, 2024 by Jagriti Rumi Circles Eternal Song Fool Gargantuan Movement Harmoniously Life Ocean Plastic Trash Poem Riverine Rivers Round Boat The River Song Timelessness Unmeasurable

Poem

**Getting the oar…**
[Image by Ashok SP from tramptraveller.com]

On a round little boat

Rowing

I make circles on the river

Going

Catching nothing but matching the twinkling

Sound

That the river makes, singing

Aloud

The eternal song – fresh and fragrant –

Ever

And forever – the twirling dancing roar of the

River

Meets mountains, clouds, the slant sunlight and the gazy night

Alike,

Exploding in joy, splashing timelessness in the air and

Life

In every drop.

**Rapturously it unfolds…**
[Image by Alejandro Piñero Amerio from Pixabay]

On a round little boat

Rowing

I make circles on the river

Going

Watching rocks, trees, the playful wind and the dancing

Shadows

That fall on the river silently, attuned to its

Flow

Rapturously it unfolds, turning, twisting, shaping its

Way

Melody-like, harmoniously, day by

Day

By day, and this gargantuan movement appears

Unmoving

To those who fetch the tools to measure the

Unmeasurable

And pin it to the wall.

**Trash meets the ocean.**
[Image by Szabolcs Molnar from Pixabay]

The round little boat is NOW facing the riverine plastic trash monster

That has devoured the oar I used to beat it

Foolishly… like a fool fooling no one

And the river goes on to meet the ocean.

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Shakespeare’s Sonnet 107 and Timelessness

Posted on November 25, 2021 by Jagriti Rumi Absolute Creative Splendour Cyclic Drama Finite Forever Free Infinite Journey Life Mortal Moon Sonnet Stories Timelessness William Shakespeare

Coverage

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rime,
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

The idea of timelessness, eternity, immortality must be true as we wish, look and aim for it in some way or the other. Imagining living continuously, building and creating happy ways of life, chiselling and shaping the continuous source of happiness, we forgetfully live with the idea of forever.

The decisive time gone by, the melting present and the secret future, though definite, knows the indefinite. And one is lured, naturally, to know and identify with the indefinite. Why? For the indefinite is the absolute. So? The absolute appears to be complete, eternal, beyond the cyclic drama and free. Then? We may be a part of it or we too may want to be complete. And so? I don’t know, I am living forgetfully with the idea of forever, remember.

Shakespeare, the greatest and most famous playwright ever, via his works, attained immortality and this is what he celebrated in Sonnet 107. Full of creative splendour, he announced his lead on rusty cenotaphs and statues of the rulers.

***The Battle at Gavelines and Elizabeth I at Tilbury (Pastiche)***.
The painting presents a stylized account of the battle of *Gravelines* between the Spanish Armada and the English fleet, including the beacons, Elizabeth’s address at Tilbury, and the battle itself in a single montage on three jointed pieces of fine tabby-weave linen.
**[Source – Wikimedia Commons]**

“The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured”

That the grand, rock-hard, grave and lovely moon too continues its finite journey, eroding gradually, black red white, suggests that the moon knows well the infinite’s will. Or else why will it so humbly accept its role? This long journey, then, is no less than a quiet meditation. The deep circular craters are the timekeepers and the moon knows it.

One of William Shakespeare’s renowned 154 Sonnets, Sonnet 107 is often linked with the contemporary events of the time: the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), Queen Elizabeth’s death (in 1603), the Long Turkish War (1593-1606); the Armada charged in a crescent formation, Queen Elizabeth was also called Cynthia (name of the Greek moon goddess), the Ottoman Empire’s flag boasted the crescent moon symbol.

**Elizabeth I of England.**
**The portrait was made to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada (depicted in the background).**
**[Source – Wikipedia]**

In times so precarious, one would want to hold on to a secure thought or remember the limits of mortality, mocking unabashedly the warmongers and peace-lovers alike, or even hope to create something timeless.

Read the wonderfully crisp commentary on Sonnet 107, here.

First image from Pixabay

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