“I have the grand key, yay, hmm, now I just need to collect the other 99.” [Source – Pixabay]
There is a key ring because there is a key, there is a key because there is a cupboard, there is a cupboard because I have things to keep, and I have things to keep because I think I need them…I think I need them because I think so…I have a mountain of material things just because of the way I think.
I keep adding my possessions to this mountain, mostly trying to show off its grandeur, forgetting that I am the one who is carrying it.
These possessions are shiny and majestic in a strange way, but every time I try to talk to them, they just stare at me ambiguously, neither do they move nor do they accept that they are dead…my not-so-dead possessions don’t talk to me.
Am I complaining? I thought I’ll take umbrage at the point that my possessions are not enough and stop. I took a step further and bought another cupboard and worshiped the zillion gods online; it took days multiplied by nights subtracted by three quality thoughts and finally, I got success…a new key ring, for my new cupboard’s new key…all the shiny things beaming shamelessly at me.
Gradually, the three quality thoughts multiplied and I started feeling the weight of the mountain.
The quality thoughts then converged and I was left with only myself; it was calm and quiet then. I felt light just like a feather and I was happy. I woke up and faced the reality.
I don’t have the keys to most of my cupboards, I lost them, dropped them…it would be nice to think that I did that intentionally.
Your eyes are sweetly closed, you are smiling peacefully, and you are meditating…but how? How do you do it?
I am listening to my breath and the music my heart plays. My eyes are closed yet I see all the colours ever so vividly. I feel so light as if I am flying and thus I smile. I am meditating, I am living in the moment, in the second. I can feel the spirit inside me. You are asking me how to do it…but the answer lies within you.
Search for it, not once or twice or thrice, do it all the time, ceaselessly, until you find no further need to explore. When time and space vanish and you are present everywhere.
Is this the ultimate search? Will this solve everything?
When you start looking for something, it becomes the first step. And if you look clearly, the first step turns into the last step. This is only possible if you ask the correct question.
I am painting you in different colours…you somehow are choosing the colours for yourself. I don’t know how you are doing it but then it is only making the painting more alive. I don’t want to part yet I’ll have to; you’ll look good in the big palace, not in this old hut. You are almost complete now….
If you believe, truly, that I should stay here with you, you will see me here even if I leave.
*
*
The painter after finishing the painting of the Buddha, sent it to its owner for which he was awarded a good sum of money. He stayed gloomy as he wanted to have the talking Buddha to himself.
He thought about the last words of the Buddha for a long time…days passed and then months.
Sitting quietly and pondering upon those words he felt calm and just then he realised that the mud wall of his hut had an impression on it that looked exactly like the painting of the Buddha… he was entranced!
All the walls of his hut had turned into the painting of the Buddha and slowly the roof and the floor as well.
The painter smiled and closed his eyes, feeling serene and unaware of the fact that his own body was turning into the painting ofthe Buddha.
Sitting in a theatre hall, watching a film, in light and darkness, in the noisy quietness, I realised how fast everything is moving and how static I am, busy running in my mind, alone.
The image of the yellow flower, growing peacefully in the sunlight is still fresh and I too can feel the warmth. I am running madly and my friends are running behind me, we are happy, and finishing the game means everything to us. There is a rush to catch and not to get caught.
After school hours, it wasn’t a routine to play on the way home, it was us, we were simply playing. I was fast but so were the others, with school bags on our back, we didn’t care of the world around us, we bumped into it passionately and made it alive. The lost adults often said, ‘You kids!’ and we replied with a ‘Sorry Uncle’ and a pure laugh.
The image fades away and suddenly I am walking all alone in the park. It is a rose garden but everywhere I see, the roses are pruned, they look like humans who know how to grow better, but not how to live. Wild roses are happier.
The protagonist is running wildly, furiously, shouting to express his anger…. When did I last run like him, wildly, shouting to express my anger, my happiness? Just before I was pruned, I guess.
Soon I’ll be forced out of this strange meditation class, soon the film will get over. The lights in the theatre hall will make me blind. But before that happens, let me take one last plunge, in that same memory that doesn’t leave me, of that yellow flower.
I walk passed it and then came back, I sat next to it and observed it. My friends were not around and the nature was talking and I was listening.
Why was that little yellow flower getting the entire attention there; the sun rays were perfectly falling on it and the trees were providing it enough shade, the earth was softly wet and the pebbles were guarding it in a funny way. I looked at it for some time and then one of my friends called out for me. I wasn’t startled; the spell broke but I was charmed and the feeling survived. It’s still living.
The film is going to end; there is a wave of calmness and acceptance in the air. People will clap and the ‘hypnotised all’ will come back in the normal world.
And I…I am not sure about myself, I like being in light and darkness.
“Civilization begins with distillation said William Faulkner….”
The way he wrote it on the blackboard, I first felt as if I am in a management class and I should note it down, word to word… later, I did note it down but the feeling wasn’t the same. The white chalk on the blackboard and the handwriting suddenly changed and I felt I had heard a secret that William Faulkner said long back. It happens a lot and though it’s strange, I enjoy these secrets… no I don’t understand the secrets, all of them, immediately, no, I just absorb them quietly.
I generally don’t remember all of them, especially on the occasions when there is a need to quote them but nonetheless a beautiful, warm and sweet feeling stays, the secret stays, forever.
The ink on my paper also talks to me but I rarely pay attention. And when I do, the ink has nothing to say. When it has something to say and when I also listen to it, a tear falls and erases it. Yes, tears can erase and paint beautifully.
I don’t know why, but I use the word beautiful a lot. There are so many other words like charming, pretty, gorgeous, lovely, graceful, even heavenly… how does it matter anyway, every word is beautiful. I scribbled some lines on the last page, it goes – ‘how beautiful the scene was but when I tried to capture it…it died.’ On that page then, I couldn’t write anything, not a word, I just doodled.
The flowers, the creepers, the sky, the moon and the sun close to each other along with the stars circling them, a small boat and a butterfly all danced their way towards what I wrote and then stopped. I darkened the moon, till it looked very deep and I have plans to colour the butterfly.
‘What page is it?’, ‘I don’t know!’, ‘Forget the topic, tell the page number.’ [Source – Pixabay]
*
What is he saying? What are we talking about? Have I missed something important? I flip the pages and peep at someone else’s book. To confirm! Ha! It is the same page, nothing has changed, he has been talking and talking; I felt for a moment that ages have passed, time rushed some centuries back and forth for me, swinging in different worlds I almost always forget to live in the present.
Everything is so cold for some never ending seconds, then why will I not want the warmth of the other worlds? The last page…and I float again.
Oops! The duster fell from his hand and we all smiled. I shared my smile with a guy sitting next to me. How stupid is that? Laughing without any reason…though I generally do that a lot.
I have a story in mind… it’s an image that has stayed with me for a time I can’t recall.
An old man, he is tall but thin, his wrinkled hands and tattered clothes tell me something different from what his wrinkled face expresses – a smile.
He is always smiling or is it because the wrinkles have taken such a shape… or is it just my imagination. We are on the same bus and I never think about the bus fare because I just don’t, but the old man with a wrinkled smile fixed on his face seems to be thinking about it a lot. For two-three minutes, he requests the conductor to allow him to travel without the bus fare and then from his invisible pocket of his torn coat, he takes out some coins and gives it to the conductor.
I can’t hear the exclamations of the conductor, I am too engrossed to see the old man with a wrinkled smile fixed on his face.
‘What are you reading?’, ‘Page 144’, ‘Oh, you’re still the same.’ [Source – Pixabay]
*
The pages are turning, millions have written in it, the ink is dry and still alive… a lot has been said and there is still a lot to say… the blank page looks exciting and it says the most and aloud. I am listening. Are you listening?
‘Are you listening?’ Yes, I nod! He has written something else on the board, but I didn’t see him writing again.
“All truths wait in all things – Walt Whitman.”
Wait… for there is some truth waiting to get revealed in everything.
I wrote this on the blank page, there I also drew a time machine, then the whole universe danced its way towards what I wrote and then stopped. I plan to colour it with light.
Granny’s smile has lots of secrets and lots of memories in it. She is always smiling, beaming; we can also count her wrinkles rising from her cheeks to her closed eyes; eyes shining with childlike brightness, watery eyes speaking the language of love.
It is early morning and everyone in the house is running hither and thither. Mummy is cooking food and packing the tiffin-boxes. The children are late once again and Daddy is going to give them a lift to the school. But Daddy himself cannot find his tie and the green file and somehow Mummy is managing everything right from the kitchen.
In this daily drama we see Granny sitting in the balcony, she is combing her grand-daughter’s plaits; Granny talks about her late grandmother who use to tie her plaits, to which her little granddaughter giggles up and says, ‘Granny you also had a Granny?’
Mummy shouts from the kitchen as the clock declares it is 8. Everyone is late!
In this relay race, this cute family is asked to stop and pose for a photograph. Daddy says no but the children agree and Mummy is caught between them; while everyone else hesitates only to agree in the end, the granddaughter brings Granny inside and both of them settle comfortably on the sofa for the photograph.
Say Cheese! Click!
Daddy is awkwardly smiling with a bad tie-shirt combination making him look funny; Mummy is smiling nicely and is hiding her apron behind her; the children are looking full of life and sleepy at the same time; the granddaughter is hugging her Granny and saying cheese loudly; Granny is smiling peacefully.
Daddy, Mummy and the children wish Granny a good-bye, she waves back at them from the balcony. They leave in their car and get mixed with the ‘bhroom-honk-honk-bhroom’ crowd on the road.
When Granny is asked about the brightness in her eyes and the secret behind her smile, she laughs musically and says, ‘thank you very much’.
Enjoying the scene from her gallery she seems to be waiting for somebody. She walks slowly to the kitchen like there is no need to hurry, this is how blessed she is, maybe this the reason behind her smile.
When we are about to leave the house, she calls us and asks us to meet her friend. Back in the gallery, Granny is feeding a stale roti to a crow with extreme joy in her eyes.
She indicates us to take her photograph with the crow. She is already saying cheese. Click!
The mountains are so grand; I realised it that day when I climbed one. The green velvety zigzag stretch left me overwhelmed.
A thought caught my attention and told me how beautiful and majestic the mountains were, how incredibly small I was, how peacefully colourful the surroundings were and how sublime the music played by the wind was.
I saw the clouds and they saw me; I blushed quietly. With my feet in the wet green grass, I stood there enjoying the drizzle. I sat on a calm rock calmly and opened the notebook. I couldn’t write for some reason, so I drew the scene instead.
Have you ever felt the same? Like when you feel something you cannot describe in words or otherwise? When the smell of an old book takes you back in a different century?
As if the leaf that fell near you was meant to fall there so that you could pick it up and observe it? And that the glamorous city lights were talking to each other and the moon was talking to you?
What about the smiley face drawn by a passer-by on a dusty car that reminds you of the one you had drawn? Have you ever felt the still mind?
The drawing that I made took the shape of the yin-yang without my knowledge. Opposites complement each other. I sat near the window and thought about it; the sun passed by and the moon came with white light very quickly and in the shadow, I saw the light and immediately, I agreed.
I again looked at that drawing, in gratitude but the drawing was no longer the same… there were dark green mountains and blue sky, white clouds and green grass and me, sitting on the calm rock calmly. And I looked through the window…
I can see mountains from the window, I’ll take this window along.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Summer holidays and not so hot day, lying under the tree I peeped endlessly to see the sky. There were no clouds but now and then few birds crossed my vision. As the sun made me close my eyes, I tried to concentrate on the green leaves of the tree but instead I fell asleep. I dreamt happy and bizarre dreams, Alice like dreams. My dreams were colourful, the child’s world.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Sitting on the study table and with the dull words stubbornly standing in front of me, my mind’s eye tricked each word and I soon reached the future. My future was always perfect – my clothes, my career, my life – everything just smooth and beautiful; boundless time to have fun with friends, family and a special someone. But when my mind’s eye met the alarm clock on the table, I quickly re-entered the tedious world of the textbooks, giving in and apologising, only to trick this world once again.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
It is raining and I am standing near the window, watching droplets join each other and run away. My mind is full of umpteenth things but I am lost, lost as I look at someone walking with an umbrella, fighting the rain and the mud on the road and I think about this unknown person. Though the unknown person has left but the thought remains. I take a sigh and decide to get back to work but I keep standing there.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Living far away from my loved ones, I feel empty. Before tears fall, my mother calls and I say hello with a smile.
A funny incident that happened in college and how it became the topic of every discussion in my friend circle makes my eyes wide and I joyfully jump back in time.
Also, when I think about the moment when I said ‘Ciao’ to others and their comments and walked on my path, doodling something on the notebook and then closing it feeling my ears getting hot. At this moment someone definitely calls, someone definitely comes and talks and talks and I forget. I simply forget! But it comes to me every time I am alone and every time I just move forward.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
I am joy running free/
freely flying, fluttering, soaring in a valley/
Of joy am running free.
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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