Sunday, March 20, 2016
MY KIND OF PILGRIMAGE
I normally suffer from hyperopia, or the inability to sight anything at a distance; but I don't have any trouble sighting drongos or parakeets in flight; the silhouette of a hornbill or a shikra perched atop dead wood; or even a speck of a kingfisher or a paddy bird hidden behind bushes and branches... My eyes, you see, are selectively blind sighted by laptop screens and city lights...
Once out in the vast open expanses under the sun, they're sensitive to the slightest movements yards away; to variations in shades; and to all the pied beauty of the Creator in general.
I often carry a mental image of myself as a wild, demented woman stomping through swamps and forest land, dry twigs and leaves sticking out of an untidy nest of hair, a wide silly grin plastered all over my face, reaching up to sharp eyes that scan the landscape to drink it all in... Occasionally humming and blabbering to myself, tears frequently streaming down rough and dusty cheeks—pushed out by an overflowing heart buckling under the dual weight of contentment and happiness...
For I find my God in the silence of a lonely forest path, in the rustle of leaves on a great tree, the rush of wind through my wild hair, in the flight of a bird that perches nearby, in the nod of tall grass that parts to reveal the gentle kohl-lined eyes of a beautiful chital, in the call of a whistling thrush or a lapwing from a faraway field, in the snap of dead branches beneath the hooves of a nilgai pair—and in the dance of light and shade on a glorious stripped golden coat walking majestically among tall elephant grass... Here is where my pilgrimage lies. Here is where my God resides among the splendor of His/Her own creation—here is where I find an answering Divine heartbeat deep within... Here is where my God finds my Soul...
Bharatpur
13th December 2015
