SOLEMN SOLITUDE

 

                                                                        By: -

 

                                                                 Vikas Haldar

           

 

Me and the world, I like traveling and from where I write now; am situated on top a hill with an eagles eye view. The town sprawls out. Arms extended on both sides stretch out in an expanse. The clock strikes past lunch in the city square. It definitely may sound very English on the ears it falls on but it all is

here, at home.

                I am here, with a pad and pen in hand thinking of what to write of next. I pick up a diary kept beside me on the grass. This place is apt for thinking, for reflecting. It’s peaceful here, away from the prattles and sights of city life.

                  I cast my glance to the right, see the river run by. On its side a track runs up, a flock of sheep herded along it. Its summer and the sun is bright, the place I choose to sit is on top of the hill and the sun beats down my back with all its might. It’s warm, pleasantly so as the summer been and gone and the solstice is slipping into autumn, soon it will be yuletide, another month or so to go for the festivities to set into the city.  

                I close my eyes; the light around drapes a curtain of red on the closed eyelids. I open my eyes, my head resting on a boulder, my one leg crossed over the other and I muse, its so peaceful here. I wish this time would stretch on. I don’t want to back to a mundane life with all its tensions, bundled up to form one big knot in life, and so it trudges along like a bid burden on my back.

                The river gurgles down from this mountain. In the valley I hear the sheep’s bleat and the shepherd herding away the sheep in flocks its time for shearing wool and the creatures return with their bodies devoid of fur. The weaklings are missing from the time they were taken on a trip lower down from where they all began. The weaklings always loose out, not the physically weak alone but the ones weak from within, weak in resolve. Only if I had a strong resolve! The time when I had to decide, wracking my brains out, I quit; I broke away to spend time with myself, for myself. The essence of nature just helped me that much more.

                It wasn’t easy, taking all those decisions. One had to keep so many things in mind while making a final decision and a sound one at that. It troubled, the ‘it’ were many things, things on my mind.

               First, always me first, I couldn’t make my mind about love. I worked it according to me, to me 

what was ideal I did just that. The other thing going on my mind was – where did I stand in my family? I was just a spectator in a corner stand watching the family farce and the wheel of life with them just move

on, the relations all disagreeable to the next, but we stuck like sore gum.

 

                Sometimes I thought we were a batch of eccentrics. All mad in their own respects. Old age brings on senility, I say, ‘Be born to a family like mine, and you will be a born an eccentric.’ Not in a depriving way, all geniuses under one roof, but somewhere something clicked wrong, one member would be disagreeable to the other and each would sit down with sullen faces.  

 

                Others were deserters and one really thinks, ‘Why desert your own?’

                Now, I know. To desert is better than to be bred amongst a breed of mad men and be the scion of such abnormal beings.

                Madness runs in our blood, from father to son and so on till the whole family branches out. This  

 

mad rush I find echoed in the rivers waters flowing down from these mountains to wash away all human

 

things and preserve nature’s sanctity, to wash away the polluted human touch as much as in the physical

 

touch as in the mind, to purify, to replenish, is the way of the nature.

 

                In the birds chirp I hear sweet voices singing, talking. The voice spewed forth in a fragrant breath

 

and the air is sprinkled with the perfume. The essence I was familiar with once, but now with time has

 

faded out. The wind has carried the cotton from the cotton silk tree onwards to place quite unknown.

 

                   I can see apple trees from up here and the fruit suspended from the tree, not ripe as yet, it needs

 

time, so do I, for as I sit here I don’t chase after things to meet ends meet, as I will have to once I return to

 

where I rightly belong. This respite is a welcome one and now as time slips by my resolve mature on

 

matters, as that fruit on the tree matures with time and in a habitat of its own. For only can something

 

survive or someone survive for its just ends in its own environs.

 

                I take in a breath of air and hold it; the chill is felt down to the foundations of the soul. The air is

 

not polluted as it is down where my home is. I return every time to a similar place where I now sit because

 

the true home is on pastures as these, which run on and on to, meet the sky yonder and the sun shines on

 

this path to guide the greens along. The wind blows gently to create a musical note or two in the receptacles

 

of the mind as accompaniments on this journey of mine.

 

            I understand why everybody comes back to where it all started from, looking yonder, running my

 

gaze in front of me, where mountains on mountains run parallel to each other, some a little short of their

 

goals and some, which reach higher than others, do. This is nature’s way of proclaiming ‘Accept ones

 

destiny in its entirety and if you try to change it and reach for something higher justly you shall be

 

rewarded.’ This I know for even the small ranges reach out and they grow taller by and by, a little at a time,

 

so, too they are rewarded for their efforts.

 

                I don’t want this to continue forever, it will loose its novelty. This refreshing of ones soul is

 

important and if I were to stay on forever I would be destroying its sanctity with myself and my impure

 

thoughts, sights and sounds. I wouldn’t want myself to infest this golden sight with something black.

 

                I got up now as the evening descends. I take my time coming down from he high-rise make my

 

way among the sleepy people of this town and somehow I like the tranquility of this element of sleepiness.

 

For nothing worries them, they live for the moment and we, who are all muddled up keep thinking of future

 

happenings when we are not even done with the present. Or all the time spent is spent on past ventures and

 

assessing its success and failure ratios. Where is the NOW?

 

                I heave a sigh and continue down, reach my destination, at my lodgings, sit down. From my room

 

I command a view of people in the market and sip on tea placed next to me on a table. I look up and notice

 

the sun setting in the horizon, painting it orange, the size bigger from what I would have seen in the city if I

 

got to time to notice it ever. I bathe in its glory and everything around tinged an orange-yellow and soon the

 

sunsets leaving behind twinkling stars in the night sky; thousands of them each one sparkles brighter than

 

the one before it. This is how I would want it in life, one step studded with more success than the previous

 

step, not materially alone but something more besides.

 

                After dinner I go off to bed only to realize tomorrow I’ll be back among the grit and grind of city

 

life and home, is where I belong. These last hours I cherish, as the cold blanket descends soft, not heavy on

 

the heart; to put everything within at rest, to sing a lullaby to put thoughts to sleep for after this unrest

 

among them is sure.

 

                With this final thought I put my solemn solitude, which I enjoyed till it lasted, to an end.