The heaven in my hand

Raghuram.R

Some beliefs are to be kept safe from others so that they do not get tampered by others.

Some thoughts are to be kept in the abyss of heart so that they won’t get shattered by others.

And some lives are to be kept silent just because they like to be silent.

The First Day

Everything starts here. Everything starts today. Monotony will let him rest. Ram was happy. He was happy because he enjoys life when he was here. He could say that he will live for the coming seven days.

It was obvious why Ram knew that his life was like a cycle. He had nothing to do other than his routine life. Life had to be like a rotten egg that is cursed to be the same for eternity. He had no friends to roam with or any interest in anything that would make him happy. From his childhood itself he wanted to be someone who is admired by others. Loved and taken care of. And as always in life the opposite happened. He became the one to take care of others; he became the one to solve the problems.

Problems he couldn’t understand at all. He lived in a metropolis where everyone was in a magical spell enchanted to not to be aware others life. They all did something. Something so that they never would realise that they were bound to act like that. Ram always had the instinct to think about what he or others were doing. He knew he too was part of the play. He thought one day he will regenerate and be a new person who knows why he is living, why he is learning, why he is working like a clock.

Why there is the cycle of life?

An excess of yellow

The water was green and warm. It reached up to his knee. But it was a great experience. Free from the tangled noises he usually heard in his crammed bathroom. The unconditional humming of his neighbours which stole the very bit optimism that once he will be free for ever from the drizzling bathroom of 12b.He was alone and the evening was yellow. A strong wind swept out of the yellow sky as if it was a breeze from the mouth of a yellow cloud. He wasn’t thinking. That thought itself made him think why he wasn’t .He knew the answer .A heaven he thought he had lost when he was young, a place where he could spend 7 days of his 365 days of the year without thinking. Without moving, unaware of the others. Without blaming the life he was having. That is the reason he wasn’t thinking.

As he was standing in the pool in which he used to swim until his eyes turned red as of a rabbit’s in his childhood, he could see the change that monotony had brought in him. He smiled faintly. He found that too hard. He was most happy for the time at which he was there. A yellow evening. As he always wished. There was an excess of yellow. He was always fascinated with the colours of the world. He found most of the things on the road of any metropolis had yellow in it. The banners, the yellow neon lights, the auto rickshaws, even number plates. It was then, he termed it as an excess of yellow.

Ram couldn’t help the tear that rolled of his dark unlevelled cheek. It seemed to be a shining pearl sliding down the coal. I think the tears left ripples in the green pond as he left.

The Night of Rain

He sat on the cold floor that was once black as the night and now has faded with dirty wet footprints. He sat there shaking his legs too vigorously. He was happy as the wind carried the smell of a rare night flower. He was happy to get rid of the rotting smell of everything that was dumped in front of his flat.

Suddenly as that he heard the drummer coming. Swift as a memory, the rain drifted upon his old bungalow. The mist of water sprayed over his face. He could do nothing else than to sigh. An impotent sigh he thought. The sigh couldn’t father a cry nor be the mother of happiness. It tended to be simply a sigh. Yet it seemed to him great sitting there watching over the droplets falling as if it were his child. Loving each drop as he had loved none. Those droplets for which he would do anything. He didn’t understand why he loved the night rains the most. He knew he just did.

He laid down there and closed his eyes and started humming an old song.......

“Rathri mayzha......chumate keeyunnu......ratrimazhayodu njan parayatte....... ninte shokardramam sangeetham ariyunnu njan....” The song went on..... to compare the life of the night rain which cries through out the night and by morning smiles for others......He was astonished when he realised the meaning of the lyrics......The old song that he was singing while he was laying down in the dark floor which now shined with droplets of rain was about him......know he knew why he loved the night rain.

Rising from Heart

It was early morning. Ram as if he was waiting for the first beam of light of his precious 3^rd day out of the seven. He wished the 3^rd never came. He couldn’t bare the idea of going back to the enchanted world. He liked what it is here. He always wanted to be here. Where he could smoke all alone for the whole night without wondering the next days schedule over and over. Wait for the first ray of light. Do any absurdity without intending to do it. Where the magic of the city never worked. Where he could think why he wasn’t thinking. He could love unconditionally a raindrop. Where the fumes he inhaled came back as if it was from his heart. Rising in the shape of his ugly face. Reflecting him in the moonlit night.

He thought the fumes are his pains that rise from his heart. His heart that is filled with anger, fear, love, happiness. Those grey fumes rising as if his heart was steaming for a long period of time. Like a volcano being ready to erupt. Suddenly as that in the open horizon he could see that. The light. The red light as if some one’s blood had been smeared over the sky. A cold breeze had made the fumes drift away from him. He felt relaxed. Some how the volcano died even though he knew it was for a short period. He threw away the cigarette walked towards the sun. And opened his arms wide as if he was crucified. Somewhere near the fumes hadn’t ceased to rise in the shape of his ugly face.

The rhythm

The mood was set. The noon was hot. The rhythm was in the air. He could feel the pressure of rhythm of the 22 chenda vibrating some where around his chest and his ear drums. The drummer was enjoying the activity of flexing his hands to make the rhythm flow easily. Even though Ram grew up to this rhythm for his childhood he didn’t understand the rhythm, he never enjoyed it to the maximum. He was mere there. Watching the drummer sweat and still nodding his head as he enjoys the rhythm.

The idea of living life to the full, to the extreme, was a one that ram always adored of. He never could do anything to the extreme. He couldn’t love, he couldn’t hate, nor could he bear the extremes. He fancied the drummer; he could enjoy without any limit the rhythm. He could create it, manipulate it, enjoy it in its fullness. Enter a trance where nothing else lived. The drummer and his rhythm. Suddenly the rhythm began to tighten itself; more sweat flowed down the long neck of the rhythm maker. The vibrations echoed the whole of the house. The rhythm was at its zenith. Then as in love it all ceased, ceased to exist. The rhythm was gone, gone from him for the whole of next year.

The sweating drummers went off to have sizzling sodas and cold buttermilk. Ram went near to the resting chenda and took the drumstick as if it was weapon for him to fire the rhythm. He adjusted the chenda on his shoulder and began to beat it. It produced sounds. Unfamiliar sounds. That was not the rhythm. It was then he suddenly remembered, he was not meant for it.

Stolen glances

Her hand, fragile, wet, so thin. She never wore any bangles nor any ornament. She was beautiful even without any. He remembered how for the whole of a night he held her hand so tight as if he feared he will loose her after some time. They didn’t talk much to each other but yet through silence they conveyed a lot. All this happened a year before. When both ram and the thin girl of his dream, had said she loved him. And he too thought that was it. He experienced love as he never had before. But she, the thin girl who was brought up in a land which he disliked didn’t know the value of true love. She was playing games with him. For her that was a hobby.

A year had passed. She was there as the same little thin girl with her beautiful smile. He still loved her. He didn’t tell her that. He didn’t think that was necessary. She still had an aura around her. He couldn’t resist looking at her. Or rather glancing at her.

Standing in the dark watching the sky with glimmering lights of the fire work, he glanced at her every time while the lights shattered into tiny bits of sparkle. In that orange and red light of the sparkles his were the only eyes that were glancing her. He thought that her beauty was stealing him. Stealing his glances away from the fireworks. Even though he knew that she had tricked him, played a game with him, he was still thinking of her. Thinking of the stolen glances.

The Last Day

Everything ends here. Everything ends today. Monotony will dance without pause for the next year. Ram was happy. He was happy because he enjoyed life when he was here. He could say that he lived for the past seven days.

Out of all the madness of the enchanted cities, the spellbound world, he was at a place were magic ceased without reason. Where tears left ripples in the green pond, where night rains remind him of life, where fumes reflect his face in the moonlight, where drummers sweat and where his glances were stolen by a beautiful girl. He thought, on the last day he had every reason to be happy.

As Ram closed his eyes before the deity of the temple he was not praying, he was understanding that there only one thing that he had done to the extreme and that was living life there. He understood that to fulfil ones thirst for knowledge he must break the chain of usual thinking. He must enter a trance where only the person and his passion exist. Like that of him and his absurdities. One must live with the zest for living, with a little craze. He opened his eyes and thanked everything that was there. It was for him to experience this, there was the cycle of life. It was monotony who gave way to his new learning’s.

He was relived.

He was leaving. Walking with a pace, out of what he called his heaven. He felt like these seven days here is the hope for him to live the whole next year. He was happy to know that this is not the last day. In the memory of these seven days he is going to live the next year and again the seven days are going to come. Filled with absurdities and anarchy of a soul. Of his soul.