That I am and that I am not is a seeming. Life is a seeming just like its partner, death.
*
A beautiful sunrise/ sunset… a beautiful seeming. [Source – Pixabay]
Rosaline, sitting on the branch of a huge tree, was collecting the passing clouds. Though friends with the clouds, she didn’t like to see them at night, maybe because she also collected stars.
The day-night cycle confused her. Grandma’s solution “you’ll understand it once you become a big girl” didn’t help Rosaline at all.
And so she started living in different worlds – the-bright-blue-sky-world, the-mischievous-cloudy-world, the-paper-boat-rainy-world, the-sparkling-starry-world, the-moon-pie-world, the-ghostly-pitch-black-world…
Two worlds sometimes merged into one and formed something unique.
Whichever world Rosaline was in, she was always excited to live it fully. Happily, she always announced early in the morning “today I’ll be in the-mischievous-cloudy-world’ or ‘give way to Rosaline, the-moon-pie-world awaits her.”
Lost in her myriad worlds, she lived madly. She even recorded her visits to these wonderful worlds.
She was proud to be the youngest and the oldest member of her family, youngest by age and oldest by the many visits she made to these worlds.
On her 92nd visit to the crunchy-autumn-leaves-world, she died. She fell from a huge tree.
Her last words were, “Grandma, you need to plus 22 more worlds to break my record”.
Just then, when the wheel turned, the rose fell on the grass and I fell along, the music within me found a new rhythm. I quietly listened to it, resisting the magic at first as I was hurt, but then tears always dry in the end. I got up and walked in suspense, unknown to me before. Bathed in the new rhythm, I paced up and ahead. Trying to catch the music in the air, I ran and reached near a green pond. I had a smile on my face by then. Curious! I tried to fathom the quietness that permeated the air. With a queer yet happy faith in things around me, I started to dance, round the pond… hmm… laa-la-laa-laa. The pond somewhere was hiding a piano, the branches a violin and the beetles, drums. It started to drizzle and I stopped dancing. Sitting by the side of the pond, cross legged, playing with a twig unconsciously, my mind went silent or maybe it was thinking something of its own.
*
She met the swans! Don’t remember if I did too. [Source – Pixabay]
Like it happens in life, the image and the music fades away, leaving a consolation named ‘it is just the past’. But luckily, I still relish that experience sometimes. Let the memory play tricks I say. What fades within, stays within forever and often takes you beyond… that’s enough, isn’t it? If you happen to turn the wheel and fall on the ground along with a rose, you’ll know that it is.
Springtime – A Painting by Claude Monet [Source – Wikipedia]
*
How can I be alone when I am always there with myself? Is this illusion stronger, better, more true than the other one we call life?
In fiction, the tides merge with the sea, the sunshine flows warmly through the perforated leaves, the collocations rise with sense and settles smoothly, a fulfilling aftertaste savoured by one and all.
This is my hope, light and everything. This is what I am following, leisurely. Those who call it a crime are shunned automatically.
Myriad ideas know me well and I know them too, at least some of them. We haven’t set a selling price or cost price, we are friends and I am not clever. Ideas follow a different train of thought, though unaware about the details, I understand the emotional part of it.
The high plateau doesn’t rise again. There I walk alone and often stop near a tree to rest. One eye shine with stars in it and the other quietly shed tears. For a moment I knowingly choose one of the two sides, but generally I prefer walking on the border line.
I saw a shooting star and like the last time I wished for the same thing… I don’t remember it now, though I am thankful. Whenever I am thankful, I feel confident and happy. Often the glow makes me glow.
What I remember now is that I have been here before… it was as different as same it looks now.
I closed my eyes and saw the stone cut stairs, broad and homely, stretching from the bottom of the hill to the top, where the age old, beautifully carved and gloriously coloured temple lives. Yes, the temple lives, breathing in prayers and breathing out peace. A magical quietness stops the spinning mind and grants the warmth of love.
Little feet try to reach the bell, failing, but trying, finally adding to the music flowing in the air a happy ‘tan-tan-tan’. Not understanding the images, the big bold eyes, the lion’s roar, its the splash of colours –golden, red, yellow, green- all sparkling gallantly, that enters within to stay. Round and round the temple, the giant smiling peepal tree, flowers in the wind, red threads tied in every direction, the burnt silenced diya, the rich kohl, and faith in miracles, all together makes the earth reverberate.
I am walking in the temple, eating the prasad and savouring the air, the green leaves and the time. Yes, the time, unknowingly I am moving ahead. What seemed eternal has now elapsed in what I thought were years, were just a few funny seconds. Funny because when I opened my eyes, I didn’t see the stone cut stairs or the old temple…
Following the melodies, the colours, the laughs, baffled at every point, blessed now and then, a bit complacent and a bit more naive, I have reached so far. I cannot foresee, but I know now that sometimes, forever and one second is just the same.
What happens in the west doesn’t happen in the east and vice-versa. This is our country and this is our tradition. We love our motherland and we can die for it.
The North is different from the South. And this state, this city, this town, this village and this house is where I belong. I cannot live anywhere else but here.
Lines are drawn and everything is divided beautifully. If not entirely, the plan does work out fruitfully with minor problems here and there.
When these minor problems become big, it is dissected thoroughly and the offender is caught, punished and forgotten. Things turn back to normal; once again it’s a sunny day.
But, there is one story that no one can forget. An ordinary-looking fellow, who lived in the mountains and always painted the oceans in his notebook, once painted the planet earth on a grand rock, it was magnificent, but he was anyway convicted for it.
Maybe he was crazy, that is what most of us believe, otherwise, why will a sane person draw the beautiful earth and then divide it? Yes! That is what he did.
The blue, green planet looked so perfect on that rock as if it was alive, but then, that bloke painted a hand hammering the earth into two, a chasm that spread like the roots of a tree and divided the whole planet.
It was a violent crime, of course. How could he even think so? But then, they say he was crazy.
There’s another story about that painter.
You know that the earth is changing colour, you must have seen the photographs, it’s becoming reddish with each passing day. Some say that this change occurred only after that painter was hanged, which is true, but I don’t know if these events can be related.
She is just ten years old. Talkative and curious by nature, she wishes to know, but only about the magical, the dreamlike and the pleasing.
Her world is of all the shades of pink. With the warmth of an honest, caring canopy overhead, she looks at the stars and floats in the Milky Way.
There is ample clarity in everything she sees and time’s her friend – blistering fast or dragging slow. There is only one melody she is tuned to and it is called life.
*
She is living in her own world, within and without. Image from Pixabay.
She is young and brave. Quietly, she observes the world and the world within her, laughs at her.
Battling the questions and transforming the answers, she moves ahead with every failure and tries to fathom the success.
A mirror walks with her; she has broken it umpteen times but they are still in a relationship. Her cries, her sighs, her laughs, her smiles, her ways and one life… all packed in a rucksack is her pride and joy.
The doubtful star burns with her glare and the rhythm of change trespasses the old.
She is living for others now and has placed herself on the top shelf, in a green trunk, under an old book. Close to many and far from herself, she is standing on the border – this way or that way… her life is slipping away…
She just woke up and whatever was under the old book, in a green trunk, on the top shelf she burned that rusted world to dust.
Walking on ashes, she turns black and grey until the mirror returns. It is not going to be joyous all through, but she doesn’t mind the sound of a burned guitar.
They say she is weak and crouched, that she hears less and that her wrinkles make her a puzzle. A puzzle indeed and a child from within, no one knows what a good time she is having.
Her old eyes shine like a starry night and things magically appear and disappear with her touch. The words cannot express bliss; she is singing, hear this – ‘La-la, li-li, o, la-la, li-li’.
She is extraordinary. She is over there, can you see her? I know you can.
It was blurry… but I remember it clearly. Old hands like my mother’s but she wasn’t my mother, then why do I see her? The place is cold and that is how I feel until I look at her, I feel cold and wet as if I didn’t run away from that day’s hard rain. Everything around was cold and wet that day and so was it in my dream. That day when I was strolling in the park I saw a black sparrow… Francis said he would rather be a black sparrow than fight in the war. I saw the black sparrow, and I left the park.
She is sitting on a wheel chair, she is wearing black. Today, when I picked up the burnt paper, I crushed it without knowing why; my hands can still feel the smooth blackness. But she was surrounded by a harsh blackness, she was in the sun, but everything was crude and dull. I hate myself for crushing the burnt paper, I can feel the crude blackness now.
Francis collected stones all the time, he had strange hobbies. Stones he said are beautiful unless we give them a shape. The old lady, someone’s mother, had an image in her eyes; a dull face as if sculpted, and I agreed with Francis that it looked utterly dead. It scares me every time I see the dream.
I am there to help you old lady. Who is it that you are holding in your eyes? What are you whispering? I can’t hear you? She isn’t looking at me Francis, she is looking somewhere else. Francis I can’t see you. I can’t see the black sparrow. I am tied to the dream. I see her eyes Francis… her eyes… there is fear in her eyes.
Standing on a vague platform, everything except me undergoes a peculiar kind of metamorphosis now and then. Bewildered, I stand in utter confusion, with a dazed expression and remain amusingly voiceless.
Waving madly for the train to halt or at least lazy down a bit, I am increasingly getting ascertained about the fact that either I am powerless or I am being considered as a crazy cheerleader.
Often, no, more than often, I have successfully boarded the train.
What happens then – settled quietly near the window, with a half-read great novel that I have tried to finish since one year, five months and two weeks, looking old and rich in my hands, I get lost in the dream world looking through the barred window; settled quietly near the window, with a notebook in front and a pen in my hand, I write down miraculous lines, tying down the strength to move the humanity and a saleable story together, staying humble myself throughout the reverie; settled quietly near the window, but loathing everyone around me and worshiping softly to reach my destination soon…
“My destination…” I say and I am kicked out of the train, back on that floating platform which dances every second on some idiotic tune and disturbs my balance.
I fall down, cry, raise questions, get answers, plan things and proudly compliment myself, with a touch of modesty of course.
And then what do I do? I go off to sleep. How much can the mind take? “So long, my friend”, says my mind and dozes off. Shut down! Power off!
Click!
Switch on and I am back on that platform. Trains have started passing me. I yawn, a full day of travelling to a gazillion places ahead.
The huge tree under a crimson sky. Image – Pixabay.
Papa said, ‘I am not a negative thinker’. I almost clapped in approval, but then I saw him drinking at 9:45 in the morning. I dared to speak and I did, reminding him of the 80% blockage in one of his arteries. Gulp! ‘No negative thinking’, he advised me.
His red eyes and newly ignited soul went into the garden to work. After a few hours, I checked the fresh hairstyle of the garden, it was almost bald. Papa said, ‘Plants should grow this way’.
Which way you must be thinking? Whichever way Papa wants to grow it, you fool. He replied so, I am just quoting it.
My sense of understanding is weak; I am the wrong person to walk left when the right is right.
I am also stupid if I don’t remind Papa, thrice, that he wanted to drink tea, which invariably loses all its piping hotness and turns dead cold by the time he returns from the garden.
Kindly ask everyone in the street not to stare at me. So what if I look like an outgrown, zigzag tree, my Papa will prune me.
I have the whole life’s agenda, second wise, installed in my brain. I am to wake up early every day and run to the office, work and be good in it and come back home to get recharged for the next day.
Every hour I am to be alert; I am allowed even to worry about security. I again dared and asked Papa, ‘Security from what?’ ‘That thing… that… something…’ he said.
I understood zilch about it. Patience please, I am a slow learner.
Every minute of the hour, I am to relish the complexities of the present. It is to be like the dogs, they are so cute and hold only one feeling at a moment – hunger, aggression, love or anxiety.
I reluctantly told Papa about my opinion. He laughed and then shooed me away like a dog is shooed away.
For your benefit, I am sharing that it is not a wise thing to do. Homo sapiens sapiens can do better. I have read so in a book. Of course, I didn’t say a word about it to Papa. Do you think I am stupid? Ha!
Every second of every minute, I am to remain lost in whatever shit crazy thing I am doing. This will result in an unhealthy body, but a good position and a reasonable flat after a few years travail.
I am a middle-class being, this means to me what nirvana means to that mad ascetic I once met.
Do you know what the ascetic told me? He asked me to sit under a huge tree, pointing in the jungle’s (point decimal of what is left) direction. That’s it!
What am I supposed to do there alone, I shouted behind him and he shouted back, ‘Think’.
Confused, I asked Papa about it one day – a day that showcased crimson clouds from the window. He didn’t say a word.
I looked at the crimson clouds once again. Then I stared at Papa. I didn’t know there were four clocks in his room, one on each wall, until that day. I was sweating when Papa suddenly opened his eyes and asked me to get some water for him. He coughed badly.
He is coughing badly right now. From that day the crimson clouds haven’t left the window. I mostly stay near Papa and only occasionally go to sit under that huge tree.
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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A joy so complete without any rise or fall, so free without any time corners, so real without true being false, false being true.
