Resonance of Silence

Come out of the door. After a day’s work, when you return home, do not stay inside.  Take the road next to your dwellings. Keep walking till you reach the small tea shop. Look at the dim light of lamppost and the dragon flies that surround it. Take a sip, move a little further away from the main road into the by-lanes where lights don’t blind you. Gaze at the stars, try harder until you see the farthest one. Wave your hands to the moon, smell the breeze and fill yourself with the fragrance of street. If you are a bachelor move alone, if married go with your spouse. If you are lucky you will have friends accompany you. If you are blessed you will have your parents holding your hand.

Contd..

“Pain however intense, subsides and dissipates in the environment like scattered leaves in the month of autumn”.

In the diary, left two pages blank. Pages to fill with lines from a poem, still incomplete. The poem is titled “Gehre Rang Ki Pankhudi” or dark coloured petal.It was a full moon evening. As I clumsily strolled back home after office, I noticed the Moon. A dark yellow moon.Years have passed since when a frail little boy drew pictures on a small paper. I still remember the colour of my drawing paper. The boy sitting next to me always had bright clear sheets. I wondered if my rough drawing owed much to the pale colour of the paper I had. For me paper was of much importance then. My colours always went dry and I had a brush with minimum of hair. And I drew and I painted the bad drawings.

I see the colour of the Moon and the sky that surrounds it, I wish I had that pale white paper to draw the yellow moon and the dark sky. A dark moon can make your evening bright and beautiful. Just look in the sky and keep your paper and colours ready.

© Rajesh Srivastava

Prologue to a Moment

A moment we live is an appreciation of the moment gone, perhaps spent by us. We live this moment to appreciate the previous one and to criticize sometimes.

At times we control tears. Though I feel most of the time we are controlled by them. I tried to console myself when I was supposed to console her.

The day she died I was there, standing on the ghats, trying to find the horizon on the other side of the river bank. The horizon was not there.

Trying to weave moments we shared together. Moments of happiness, sorrow, lullaby, tears. My last moments with her, lost forever in the horizon that was not there.

Near the pyre, the death bed, everything evaporated. Touched her hand for the last time.  Breath diminishes by moments, fragments of a moment. Counted the flowers in the rose plant. Trying to count left moments. Moments of life, we never know how many, still we try to count. I waited there, silent and still and had those moments count me.

I slowly turn the pages as if trying to read it for a longer time. Every piece of paper has one that follows it. I have reached the last page. Somewhere someone is reading from the beginning. She asked me if I will write about her death. No, I will not.

I lied to her to make those moments true.

This is a prologue to the next moment, a moment to live and to die for.