A Stony Bench-

How many times have we felt simple? Sounds absurd? Another way to say it would be how many times have we felt without any burden or weight on us…light? How many times do we get lost in a thought, scene or a moment?

Recently, I had been with my builder for getting our house registered some 6 miles from my room. On our way back after registration, builder ventured to show his farms to me to which I readily agreed. It was always a delight to see the rural folk and life of the fresh air taming the noise under the skull infusing some purity, serenity. Three bikes soon screeched to a halt at the end of a typical rural path of mud, dung and slush of summer. Means is more important than the end, it is said and known. But here the end of the road (means) was as fascinating rather, more fascinating than the means itself. Later I was to realize that this end in itself was a means to yet another apparent end.

At first look, the scenic beauty of the over-stretching green fields, as described by many, stood indescribable. Statement ‘It is left for one to experience’, sounded convincing. There are two ways of looking at the feelings that were to come my way. Everything in this world is available to all. One chooses to accept that which appeals to ones own self at that particular moment. Another perspective says Nature is the best teacher. It chooses to teach one self at a particular moment that it decides. Without any clue as to which stood applicable that day, I knew what was coming was more of a fact than a bitter lesson we are used to.

As the gaze fell all around, everything seemed still including the heart beat. Calmness of the evening increased the wildness within to stay there for ever. Practically, impractical though. The portrait before the eyes went beyond the boundaries of the fields to be bordered only by the mountains, some having a tapering head still in a hope to not just reach the sky but pierce into it. There was something more in that ambience than just the brown and green colors being stimulated by the predominant cons or the sweetness of the fresh sugarcane from the fields that the gullet readily accepted that day after satisfying the ever hungry taste-buds.

Sitting on a stony bench at a seemingly one corner of the field, the open field asked to whisper silence into the vociferous ears that they had become. The language was unknown, yet understood by something again unknown. Mind stood still. Was it a moment or an hour of a moment? Time too chose to be quiet without notice. The pouch containing my cell phone too seemed to respond and lightened its identity.

Soon we were on the bikes with some sugarcane sticks as a token of love given by the fields, the nature that nature was used to – giving and giving. A thought of keeping this moment within me for ever surfaced. Next thought gushed in; a part of me was already taken from me even without my knowledge. I was living in that thought, in that field. It is not the sofa in the veranda that I am sitting on but the same stony bench in the field that I was seeing now again, this time not through the eyes but through the ink of my pen…

'"Atleast once a day be a child, my children" said the happy Master

"Stop kidding!" thought disciples'