I’m in my balcony every morning, early, when the birds and chipmunks are at their talkative best; the Koel has begun her riyaaz and cool breezes make you forget you’re in the middle of a North Indian summer. It’s a great place to pray, to meditate, because nature’s morning raga brings so much of serenity despite the cheeps and chirps and twitters.
My mind was at peace as I gazed over the tree-tops into a beautiful clear sky, when swirling and twirling a feather came into view...and then another and another. They were in different sizes but all looked the same; like quills writing letters in the wind!
I leaned over the wall and looked up. I couldn’t see from where they came, but guessed the wind had flicked them out of some pigeon’s little nook. They were caught in a current, erect like quills, turning on their own axis, moving on invisible paper as if an unseen hand was writing in the wind, and I wanted those letters to be mine!
Though they spun wildly, they remained vertical and floated slowly to the ground, buffeted gently by the breeze they swayed to the whims of the wind and bobbed up and down. They were happy quills, busy quills!
I thought of my camera, then decided against it. I would have missed that beautiful sight and eventually not caught anything on film or video. It was one of those brief moments of exquisite, sweet, pain that tugs at your heartstrings with a yearning for something inexplicable, yet perfectly understood by the soul.
The sharp intake of breath at the first sight, the joy, the smile that involuntarily played on my lips, the words that came as a whisper: What do you write with such joyous strain? No camera could have captured that moment the way my mind did.
The little joys of life are so great.
Glossary:
Riyaaz..........to practice. Usually used when refferring to the training or exercise of classical singers, dancers.
Koel.............It is a bird which sings beautifully
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