[Source – a Hindi novel’s book cover; image by Jagriti Rumi]
Deep eyes for whom are you waiting? You look like a forgotten painting hanging high on a wall of an old chalet. I wish to talk to you…come alive; the mortal world needs a touch of your beauty. Just for a few minutes or even a second will do…come alive.
A blink of your eyes might melt million hearts; your smile could dance in the darkness and glow. Lost in the hazy splendour, talk to us once or make a gesture.
Hypnotising colours that you are adorned with has the power of bringing serenity. Share some with me; one shade of it in my life and I’ll be seen flying without wings.
Surely you are waiting for someone but what is the pleasure in it? A beloved resides in your mind or… a question?
The elegance in you speaks for you. It says you know the answer and that you are just playing Life.
Are you happy to be a pretty curse? I dreamt you are. Clever!
I am capturing your colours as much as my eyes can discern, your elegance as much as my mind knows and your love as much as my heart can hold.
You have made house in many souls and though you go on living many lives, you know that your wait is not over. You know peace, but you are waiting for it to complete.
Sitting by the window and watching the wind do its customary dance, Kent wrote a line in his diary and stopped. The line said, ‘I failed again.’ Dry leaves and twigs joined the wind hesitatingly…a bit shy but tending. Kent took a sip of his hot coffee. He flailed the pen in his hand and then began to write-
Again. I try and then I fail. I wonder how I have reached so far when all I can do is to fail. I sink low every time and it becomes difficult to make a comeback. The sympathy, the taking my side, the hiding my faults…I hate when people do this to me. It hurts me more. But I am the reason of the burden I am carrying.
After another sip, Kent again checked the rendition. He couldn’t hear it clearly but was sure about the charming song that the wind played. Huge trees rhymed along, they were so great yet so modest; nature knows some marvellous secrets that make it awe-inspiring.
I have nothing to say anymore. I wish I could visit Mrs Graceland’s house, the backyard and the trail that led to the jungle and the brook with leaves and twigs wafting in it.
If only I could sit there for some time alone. My heart would pour itself in the brook and I am positive that I could then breathe without feeling the knots. The jungle, the brook they don’t know that I have failed. They will not demand any answers nor will they console me. I will be with them and they’ll welcome me.
But with time things start eluding and you feel silent, empty and helpless; a mere bystander.
Kent’s sigh sounded heavy and blue. He searched for something in his room and finding it his eyes rested upon it; a wall clock that made him conscious and humble. He lost himself for some time. Coming back he looked at his diary and wrote-
I think I have failed in putting my thoughts in words. I am sorry dear diary. I think I should just stop writing and….
*
A green leaf in autumn. [Image by Jagriti Rumi]
At this moment he found a leaf knocking on his window. He stared for few minutes waiting for it to fly away but it didn’t. He stretched his hand reluctantly and opened the window.
Taking the leaf in his hand Kent watched the scene and without waiting for his permission the wind touched his face and made his hair dance. A smile came on his face naturally.
The power of the wind amazed him, the music enthralled him; he could feel the spirit, the liveliness that was abundant in nature. Peeking through his window Kent stood for long in that position unaware of the clock, the pen, the diary, the leaf and himself.
It was getting dark. He forced himself to shut the window. With nature you don’t know when the time passes and if you happen to know you wish it to go slow.
Sitting back on his chair and before he could finish his diary entry, he examined the leaf in his hand. It was green. It was autumn. It was a message. Life loves to live. Who loves life lives…happily.
Kent finished his diary entry.
I can’t believe myself but I am going to try again, maybe I’ll fail again. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never stop walking because I never know what is there for me on the next turn. I am going to die one day, I don’t want to die before that.
Cheers to the green leaf!
Kent
And now, listen to Vashti Bunyan’s album Just Another Diamond Day, this is one of Kent’s favourite tracks, one that he listened to after finishing his diary entry –
It’s time to go mad, I told myself. The world looks best through the eyes of the mad.
Even history tells us so. But it’s not more about the world than it is about myself. I have seen right into the eyes of the mirror and all that is visible is a question mark.
Now I’ll check it when I am upside down, if nothing, I’ll at least enjoy the inverted me.
I’ll fly from now onwards, at least I’ll fall. I’ll follow the bird and visit its nest. I’ll keep a secret diary and make sure that it leaks.
Secrets are good only until they are not kept otherwise they are dull dead details yawned away by themajority.
I’ll rub the window clean with my hands so that the dirt makes my skin shine in black.
I’ll spin round and round and stop; I’ll shout loudly and then add a whisper to it; I’ll befriend the thorns and love the cuts…. Is it too much?
What is too much? Do you know it? Who knows it? No one!
That’s the real fact we forget. So why not find it out, by ourselves. Yes!
If not now than when…waiting for another life to do all that we dream about? That’s a strange fantasy to believe in.
Because you are not given new wings in the next life, you carry on with what you already own.
This almost endless journey needs a mad soul…mad for the goal.
That’s why I will go mad, I need this energy drink to drive me forward. I’ll hear no one, I’ll not act anymore, I’ll just be present.
I’ll just be present… and also attend Mad Hatter’s tea-party. Image by Clker from Pixabay
Young feet on the wet green ground looked like pink flowers common in spring. But still, something was uncommon about the young feet in the slippers.
The mountains, the trees, the stone huts, the flourishing flags, everything in the valley was enchanted by the young feet. Earth was happy to be the closest one.
Dorjee was running happily through the valley in jet speed. He was all alone but was smiling about something or maybe it was his natural look.
We all had this look, like Dorjee, when we were 10 years old. He was about to reach his house when he met one of his friends and he went with him instead. To play, play and play was all that Dorjee thought of.
Total number*- 105
Dorjee loved whatever his mom cooked. He liked his food hot. Often his mom would say, ‘You’ll burn your tongue Dorjee!’ And he always just smiled.
His cheeks were red like cherries. Eyes were watery. The valley lived in him. He lived in the Tibet valley.
Mysticism took home here once and quickly entered its soul, to stay forever.
Total number*- 109
Dorjee will soon become a monk. He knows it. His family has told him. He is happy about it.
Most of his friends will do the same. In fact, he is excited to be a monk. His mom told him once, ‘Dorjee, it is not as simple as you think.’ He replied again with a kind ‘cheese’ and his eyes were not visible.
Why did Dorjee always smile? Why? Maybe he knew what Percy Bysshe Shelley said the ‘Skylark’ knew. A heavenly secret.
His smile attracted the soothing valley towards him, his smile attracted mystical purity towards him, his smile attracted the one we cannot see yet we feel is.
One day Dorjee was bound to leave. For the designer of Paradise missed his favourite smile, his Dorjee.
Total number*- 112
You left us Dorjee. We have adapted to the ‘burning alive’ but we don’t know how to smile anymore.
Jo loves kite flying and he is flying one right now. His kite is bright red and cheerful. Jo is a very skillful boy and he knows all the tricks needed to fly a kite high.
Dramatizing happily, he tells his friends, ‘Look at my kite…soaring high, up above the sky’. All the boys burst out laughing and Theo animatedly sings ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ while an out-of-tune chorus follows him.
These kids are full of fun at the moment. Life is beautiful for them.
The kite flies high. Wind is also playing with it; taking it high and low, twisting and tickling it.
A kite has a wonderful life. Everyone looks at it with awe when it glides and dances along with the wind and the kid holding the string also feels it. A kite is joyous by nature. It brings smile on the face that looks at it. It has only one purpose in life and that is to fly high in the free sky.
Jo knows nothing but one thing that kite flying on a holiday is his life’s purpose. He didn’t even know how to spell the word purpose correctly, his English dictation test is a non-living proof of this fact, but he knew this feeling very well.
It is something to do with passion and excitement and playing well and concentration. These big words are also a problem for him, especially to remember the spellings. Jo knows the feeling and not the spelling of such words, how silly and smart of him to be so.
Jo shouts, ‘I am flying…see I am flying… o twinkle twinkle little star oye, here I come oye’.
A sound of real, innocent, pure somewhat like the rustling of the leaves, laughter filled that lucky area.
Pleasure is all around here. It is a vanilla cake sweet moment.
Slowly the winds begin to get crazier; Jo understands immediately that now is the time to fight and stay alive. All the kites are ready for the battle. Who is their enemy? Not an outsider, they are against each other. Jo tells his kite, ‘Come on… fight hard… it’s an order!’
The bright red kite gets tangled up with the black one which is Mat’s kite. ‘It’s a knot!’ said a kid (who exactly spoke, we don’t know, anyway something more important is going on up above in the sky).
It’s the nature of the strings to get tangled, form knots and then break away.
Jo warns Mat and Mat challenges him. The mad winds knew it, Jo and Mat knew it, and the kites knew it- one will be defeated and it’ll fall.
That lucky area is now filled with exclamations, some funny, some ridiculous.
And without any final announcement it happened. Jo feels it, the string is now loose in his hand, and he looks at Mat for a millisecond. All of them stare upwards. His bright red kite is gliding away with the winds.
To his surprise, it is not alone as now the black kite is also gliding away.
Jo and Mat, half-glad, scream excitedly. Walking towards each other; their little gang members encircle them. Whatever the two say, the other boys find it entertaining.
The kites are gone, says their experience in kite flying. Like mirror images of each other, Jo and Mat begin the debate.
Possession is powerful, it can make enemies (but in this case, just for a while).
Let us leave the kids alone, they’ll be alright soon.
Life is very funny and very fickle minded. It jumps from one emotion to the other. But then this is how life is by nature. The interesting thing is that kites don’t copy life, kites always remain in one state and that is the happy state.
So look where the bright red kite is going. Colour is beautiful and this is a truth. One will naturally follow the colourful kite.
Oh! The way it matches with the dance winds do, is heavenly. It seems this kite wants to reach a selected place. It is driving for itself. But the trees are near now, will it get to rest on a tree?
No! It lands safely in a garden. Who lives here? Someone is pruning the plants there. It is Mr. James. The kite fell in Mr. James little garden.
Don’t know what will happen now. Mr. James is very old. See he walks with a limp and can’t see properly. Oh, he picked up the kite. He is checking it. Is he trying to read the kite? Maybe he thinks it is a newspaper or something.
Anyway, he’ll know what he is holding when he wears his reading glasses. Surely there is nothing to read in a kite.
He sits on the lawn chair, but without washing his hands? He is a clean freak and there is some dirt on his hands.
What is he trying to find in this kite? Perhaps he likes the material of the kite. He is rubbing his hands against the kite. And now he smells it. The kite must have been prepared using a high quality paper.
Mr. James is caught in a reverie. His eyes are looking bigger. Where ever he is, it is a good and happy place. There is a grin on his face. He suddenly looks peaceful.
A bicycle passes outside his gate and rings the cycle-bell. God knows why the bicycle rider did so, surely not to wake-up Mr. James. But see, he breaks out of his daydream. He looks around and gets up. His expression changed, though it isn’t that clear due to the wrinkles. He looks at the sky and then at the kite.
Moving towards the house leisurely, he bends slowly to keep the kite on the top staircase. Then he returns to work in the garden.
Even the flowers and the bushes and the leaves he was pruning could tell that Mr. James is still pondering about something.
After five or so minutes, Mr. James gets up, fixed on the spot, shares with his garden, ‘I know all the tricks to fly a kite high…up above the sky’.
He is now beaming, now humming something, it is not clear. But then it is the nature of the aged people, they have a smiling face, they answer in a mystical style (unclear to others) and they always chew the songs they enjoyed in their life.
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.
Big thanks to my readers. Stay tuned!
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Ya-hoy!
Chiming Stories (formerly Home Chimes)
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