Torrential rainfalls lashed across the decks,claps of thunder following close by with slivers of jagged electricity occasionally hurtling downwards from the heavens,in a silent scraggy path of temporal phosphoresecence.
Of course it is needless to say that watching the rains is playing the waiting game,and anyone who has played rhe waiting game never knows where it will lead him.It is most likely that within no time one will be lost in one of the hidden alleys down the memory lane.
"The rains have something in them...", He said, "like magic.
One rain,just one rain can do what years of automatic sprinklers and arificial fertilizers cannot do...One good rain and you see
that the earth has bloomed,fresh anew and teeming with life ,and all those plants - all because of one rain"
I said,"I'd like to think so too.There is something magical.It's not just the water- - it could not be...there's something more to it.Whenever it rains,somehow it seems that the plants are happy,sometimes even joyous in celebration"
He grew silent as we both watched the liquid inundation ,the celestial fireworks and the grey pallor cast by the moist saturated air that hung like thick curtains.I was concerned if I had said something wrong or offensive for him to retreat deeply inwards and be pensive.
"My daughter..." He trailed off, lost once again in the hidden alleys down the memory lane,"My daughter is a very intuitive girl.What you said reminded me of her...always sensitive for age,even when a child" he said pointing at an empty space and then raising his downturned palm upto his waist showing an approximation of a three of four year old kid.
"It was raining once", he said again pointing at the imaginary child of three of four years old,"and she said Look daddy ! The plants are smiling!...there was beauty and simplicity in her statement , a rare thing for a child of that age to say",he said still pointing at empty space where he had temporarily conjured up a daughter full of metaphysical depth and flesh and blood made of ether.
"This other time she began crying because she couldn't stand the cutting down of trees in the city.
It was heartwrenching to see her sob and heave with the burden of the shared grief of the fallen trees.It was heartwrenching because all of a sudden I felt very inadequate as a parent and a protector, for I could not ease her pain nor soothe her.I was forced to watch her endure ...
Did you know she wrote poetry?"
And it continued to pour outside while inside I waited to be drenched in the memories of unknown pasts and unseen lifetimes.
"-and she reminds me of my eldest daughter." said the other.
"She's a crazy one.One minute she's reading a book" he said pantomiming the action of reading a huge book, perhaps three feet from spine to the edge of the cover "and the next moment..." he paused and stuck his pinkie in my ear canal and said "she's doing this to irritate me.Or when the missus and I are sitting together and quietly reading ,she'll come out of nowhere and keep her head on my lap and her feet on the missus and take a fake nap.
On the outside,she looks very studious,serious and level headed but she's always upto some monkey business or the other.She drives me mad sometimes,but that's the reason I keep missing her.Her antics - they always make it hard to forget"
"Hmmm..." we chorused and sighed.We all retreated into our caves.We were exposed and fragile.Our memories had made us vulnerable.We needed to be alone to recuperate.
There were many downpours that night.The one on the outside had stopped,but the others on the inside raged on,with each man sighing at the plight of being reduced to ressurrect homunculi fleshed out from the essence of the hidden alleys down the memory lane and hoping for a better tomorrow when goodbyes were optional and poor substitutes from the hidden alleys down the memory lane were no longer required.
--
<
good one. and it rained today. how very apt. ^_^
ReplyDelete