Garden of Life

Quote:         Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall.
                          Count your life with smiles and not the tears that roll.
Author:       Unknown
Photographer: Amarjeet Kaur Virdi

Before I start with today's post, I wanted to point out yesterday's comments. It seems as if I have found a college mate of mine via blogging. Separated by two years during college and 1000s of miles now during PG, its incredible how we bump into each other. Waiting for a chance to rag this guy :-)

Thanks Amarjeet for this snap shot near Renukaji resorts (I hope I got the spelling right) Remember her previous snap? It was the one on Marital Bliss.

Folks, I have a scoop for you - an exclusive write up. The author is a familiar face to most of us, well known for her crisp, sharp writings. Churning out heart wrenching and emotional "stories" using the simplest of words, its a refreshing read. Guess who?

Yep its Meera. For the minority who still havent discovered her creations, head straight to Lapsus Linguae Her blog speaks for itself especially the archives. (atleast much better than all the superlatives which my mind can churn out at this unearthly hour)

Meera's Corner:
Now, here, when the world is slowly getting used to the indolence the weekend brings with it, I find myself making linear patterns, across the corridor of thoughts, the confluence of all rooms in the apartment. Ideas are born, in this small passage, in much the same way streaks of light pour in from the sly gaps in the curtained windows from the rooms opening into its length. It is a distance shaped by the sole purpose of connection and empty of everything besides the energy of my strides back and forth. My eyes gently take in sights around me, so languidly, that each becomes an entity of its own, one stretch of discrete consciousness where the underlying pattern of events take a backseat and the actors walk to the forefront, sometimes in glaring colors and noisy idiosyncrasies, sometimes in silent choreography in mute acceptance to the decrees of fate. In one moment stretched in time when beginning and end are forgotten, I watch life through the windows of the apartment.

The huge window in the bedroom opens into the play park, with its mazes and sliding boards providing routes of escape in the side. Swings made of worn tires, now repainted to look new, are surrounded by little children, some with pigtails in merry printed frocks and divided skirts, some with summer crew-cuts in shorts and sneakers, all with missing teeth, a sign of growth, of life in its ascent, of fierce energy, rising in defiance. I move on in my journey onward from the bedroom to the kitchen, where the window reveals the stone path around the play park. There are low benches surrounded by cool shrubs, where I see a bunch of teenagers talking. Suddenly they break into a song. Some more songs follow. They are probably indulging in a game of Antakshari. From where I stand, I can see the immediate gleam of washed stainless steel utensils fading into the background to give way to the careless children and the sound of their hum. I guess the lyrics from the tune. Any glaring mistake, any lack of uniformity is muted by the time the sound waves reach my ears.
I move on to the hall, the window of which faces the window of an apartment in the building opposite. A man, very old, probably in his eighties' walks slowly, his walking stick keeping him company with its dull thud, a pillar of support. He is searching for something. He looks unsure of himself. As he bends down, he holds his hips in gentle support and peers at the lower racks of the book shelves. He calls out to someone in the inner room. She walks in. She is older too. In her hand, she holds a tray with two cups of coffee. She walks slowly into the room, shrugs and finds the book her husband, presumably, had been looking for. They sit at the table near the window and sip the coffee. During the comfortable silence that ensues, there is communication beyond words, one that is possible only among fellow travelers through life, who have spoken enough to have graduated to this realm of companionable silence. I am captivated by the silence that encapsulates me. She looks out, in a continuous gaze, from her husband. Our eyes meet. A smile, a nod, a flash of recognition of parallel lives being led, suddenly meeting by a strange interplay of facial muscles, having its origin in some hidden corner of the mind, a snapshot of an instant, that does not stop but instead magnifies the cycle, the inevitability of movement, the path onward.

I continue my pace back and forth, across rooms, across seasons, across the kaleidoscope of sight and sound that dance in front of me, across people. Like Time, it leads me from fall to spring and back.

- Meera

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Compiled by Dheepak Ra
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Isnt this like the politicians cutting the ribbon after the engineers and labourers have toiled hard to build a beautiful structure? ;-)