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."
