Shades of the Color of Soul..

As the battery of the Lap-Top threatened to die down, I switched off the music and turned down the lid, the power was gone for long and the evening was getting darker. In the lonely silence of the purposeless evening I lay on the cool floor as the rains and winds gathered outside my window. The leaves swayed and their dark shadows swung by my window, repeatedly sending the room into momentary grayness before restoring the diminishing twilight illumination. The enslaving lethargy curled me on the floor and I peeped underneath the bed, into the fathoms of the darker shade of gray. While the black concentrated, I rolled into a story.

The hills patched with the shadows of the long pine trees, the shady, healthy deodar and the needles spread through the silence of the slope. The bright sun filters through the vegetation and the hill resembles a messy chess board. The two talk loud and there echoes fill the valley, the brook on the foot of the valley shines and the late afternoon sun falls steadily. The green handbag in her hand creates a shimmering illusion on the road as the sun filters through it, and then they go quite. On the next turn is a temple, a small structure right over the hill lock, facing the west, the sun illuminates its unimposing modest entrance, the interiors are darker and the shiv-ling is serene and cold as ever.

In the easing silence, one speak to the other, not knowing what is being said and then the words “I hear more when the words go out” silence again. clouds, bright and expensive float over the blue sky and the stately sun. The winds go cooler and the sun more gold as the mountain on the other end turn darker, an army of determined cumulus clouds move from the Mediterranean, the temperature will drop, next few days shall be cold. As the clouds took control of the sky the sun    appears through the crevices. “Its getting darker” he said. “Ya, It certainly is, and we have a long way to walk.” So they walk again, a rucksack at the back and carrying the handbag.

“The sun feels like a silver disk, behind the clouds. It looks cold and see its enjoying itself.” The sudden drop in the temperature envelopes the road along the hill in a still silence, sporadic vehicles honk and grunt as they drive past, otherwise the silence is as pervasive as the fog that is slowly settling into the bottom of the valley. “When we are silent, we speak a lot more”, she suggests for the second time in the hour. And he replies, “So does the sun shiver, when there are clouds all around ? ” Another smile and the lights come down by another level, though it remains comfortably bright. “I have been thinking of these shades”, he says while pointing at the rock grey and black on the roadside, “I look around and its all bright or dark in varying measures”.  “Its all black and white in varying measures, no other color, no other shade exists.”   She replies, rather abruptly and conclusively, like a well rehearsed line of an act from the stage. And as she pulls her hairs back, the crumbling hairs reflect the slant rays of the evening sun, they were black, dark and glowing.

In  the room the twilight had already faded, the shadows had disappeared and all that stood pretended to be a shadow of itself, I am lazy enough to have got up and searched for some illumination, the power was still off. In a particularly silent evening, the winds sounded like conch shell placed on the ear.

The evening winds on the mountain road has settled and the dark clouds continue marching in, finding space for themselves in the dotted sky as the blue black of they sky is being slowly overtaken by the grayish gloom of the evening. It would rain tomorrow, he thinks. “And may even snow” she says, drawing a string from an unsaid communication, “So, where are we going?”

“I am not very certain, we may have to wait in a lodge for the night”

“Do you expect a lodge anywhere nearby?”

The moon appears and disappears, far from being the poetic silver it is more golden yellow, like a dying flame. The evening darkens and they look for a shelter, the night promises to be cold. “I told you its all black or white, look at the mountains, the trees and the houses, and look at these clouds and look at the moon that goes white every minute, with the sun gone the self consciousness is gone too and here you see the true colors”

“You may be right, we need a place to stay” and he shows her toward a mercury bulb glowing like a distant fire about a kilometer away.

I rolled my hands over the five o'clock shadow and thought of the shades of the countenance, I sensed as if revisiting that old question once again, “are these colors, or are they just a deceit?, these shades playing around me” The rains had subsided, winds continued the howling and I imagined myself on the roof top. Looking at the houses around, the occasional dogs barking, and the voices of the insects, on a night when we walked a lot and had to take an unplanned break, I sat contemplating “So was it a good day or a failure”

“Does it always have to be a good day or a bad one, or even a day with varying shades of good and bad? Is there anything midway good and bad?”

“I don't know, or may be I don't have to. Though there are things further from them, absolutely good and absolutely bad ”

 They sit down on the roof top, looking into the setting moon, the clouds cover the east and the day is just beginning, the shades of dark and bright are giving way to the green, blue, red and gold and they look at each other, he walks down the stairs pulls his rucksack, she picks the green handbag and her baggage, the green does not shine for now its not bright, the sun may not come out. The clouds will color the blue sky with their shades, and she will ask “how does this transition happen, from bright to somber and somber to bright” “and, what do you like the bright afternoon sun or the somber looking cool clouds of the midday”.

As I stepped out of my room the evening had turned dark blue, winds had blown away the clouds, while some scattered around the horizon and I looked into one of them. 

They step out of the overnight shelter, she points towards the east “Look there, look at that bunch of clouds, they are red like ember.” And did she listen him say “wait for the lights to take over it would be a white crystal."

Posted in: Colors,Good and Bad,Hills,Memories,nature,Shades,thoughts