Thoughts were stirring profligate never to give a pause. Before I could pleat some time to think about one, another one came stalking. The uninvited guests left without saying a word, leaving the traces of silence. Looking at them I tried to collect those traces to read them again. They were adroit to take that one missing link, leaving me baffled. The deadlines for the presentations were hanging in my sticky notes. If one yellowish scribbling were completed, there were half a dozen waiting for the week to be completed.
In the beginning, everything looked so flashy and being on a roll to be ostentatious. The tawdriness slowly left my cubicle and grandiose became hackneyed. Every day began with a tomorrow in mind. Each day was made to be forgotten thinking of tomorrow’s schedule. It made me walk through many doors within me. Never did I realise I had opened so many doors unable to close any. If I closed one door many windows were opened asking me to open other doors too. Patience was staying a little longer than I had expected him to be. He promised to stay longer even when the night was glaring at me. I convinced him, the day has arrived to make a change. Time was making a move at his own pace, never to be bothered about the people around. I was running behind the time to complete the sticky notes. Days were looking long, waiting for the night to give solace. I was looking at the night as if they had never existed, only to have arrived recently.
The day wasn’t enough to complete the workload, they were pushing me to take my time at home. Leaving the cubicle from the office premises, emails were bouncing to be answered on the mobile. I was wedged in the long traffic as always in the evening hours. City life is piecemeal without waiting for long hours thronged in the traffic. I never realised many hours have flown just sitting in the cab waiting for the traffic to be cleared for years. The sound was soaring to help the decibels. Our ears have become immune to the crescendo that we hardly feel any different now. Reaching home after a long tiresome day of work, the body wasn’t as tired as the mind. The laptop was flooded with emails and so was the mobile ringing from the Manager. He was all smiling to get another prey working for him and making us feel more robotic. He was squeezed and he was injecting the same blood in us. How long can we compromise to become a prey? Our decibels have become insensitive. The night was becoming a day and the day was frozen in the cubicle.
I carried a smile to make others believe. They did the same to me and made others follow. Am I going the same way? Am I making a gaffe? So many conundrums were shuffling like never before. When going gets difficult, it becomes easy for us to understand that we are on the right track where our patience is tested. It is difficult to walk through but it had a beauty as we started the journey. The choice in today’s world does not exist, we want everything at our doorstep, we never want to move, we never want to talk, and we never want to smile. Our smiles are long forgotten when we moved to the city. Those smiles live to make others believe. I was making myself believe that I was making others believe. The thought of knowing where I existed and what I should be doing kept pondering. Why do we live? Are we living in a life away from us? A life to live is what we need than to live for life.
It was a tough decision to take a call to be away from the routine and start afresh. I have decided to switch off the light at night, not to see the night but to dream about her. When we create a dream, they become our reality one day. The dream was a fairy-tale for a nerd like me. It might sound so eerie to dream such things. But we are thirsty for a simple life, away from the routine. I realised air has a smell if we feel her presence, not always can we have attar to tranquilise our mind. She gives you so much to make you believe she exists for you and we live because of her. Getting closer to nature, you start to see yourself like never before. You look at the way you walk seeing the nature smile at you. The trees are welcoming and looking at us showering the breeze around. Nature is sprinkling the first drop of love with the dust, giving you the fragrance of nature in petrichor. Never can you create a petrichor, it is the first love that nature teaches you. The right and the wrong have flown away from the lane. The path looks so lucid to enjoy the journey. I was exhausted in the routine, never had the time to look within me.
Moving away from the city, spending the rest of my life in a serene place that I never thought was a life I will be living. I never thought of thinking about how I am going to stay away from the crowd. I lived in a crowded commune, listening to silence was preparing for a time travel. Life has changed for a better, to be away from the crowd, away from a fast-paced lifestyle. Being with nature I am smelling her whispers and seeing the smile. Never had I spend time with her. Nature made me realise that I was missing a beautiful part of life away from her.
I see a beautiful canvas in the morning with droplets staying in between the petals and sepals. Caught in between the creations, she moves in a path designed by her, hearing the morning raga, splashing her gleams when kissed by the auburn. Flora is painted in the background to make the fauna dance around her melody. The melodious fauna makes me close my eyes to be flown with her symphony. Many join the musical symphony to form a jugalbandi in silence. The cacophony is silenced by the symphony by nature. My journey with nature has begun away from crescendo to listen to the silence in her lap.
