Unwritten

February 7, 2014
| 818 Comments
| Center of Development, Life in India, Reflections

SI can hear voices in a strange tongue that is familiar to me. After a few moments I realize that all the voices are of women and I am in the midst of a women’s sanctuary: the kitchen. The fire from the ancient stove gleefully spits out flames as the aroma of the hot spices play with the scents of cardamom and cinnamon, painting my blood red with their intensity.

The women’s voices are like birds searching for seeds in the field on a sunny day, unhurried and without much direction. There is a feeling of freedom here in this space, where the women are able to relax their rigid backs, leaning into any free corner, for a moment unencumbered by the expectations of the society outside the door. Their laughter fills the air like invisible stars, illuminating the room and bathing everything with its light. I too join in their laughter as I duck out into the open air.

I walk cautiously over the slick stones, covered in a moss so dark it appears more black than green. It makes me ponder about the antiquity of this place, this quaint stone house with two small orchards on either side. The walls bear the mark of the rainy seasons and the monsoons that had passed by like uninvited guests. The earth is a hundred shades of brown manifesting an artistic beauty in its chaos as though it were the tiles of nature. I feel the drifting dust painting my skin with its colors. I pensively look to the sky for many different answers, but all I see is a blue so deep it must have come from the very depths of the ocean where the secrets of Poseidon remain undiscovered. The color spills from the sky into my eyes filling my head with dreams of living without limits. Suddenly, in the span of a sigh, the sky turns dark and ominous.

As I laugh at her capricious Nature, I think to myself that we humans are truly like our Mother. The notes of my laugh remain suspended in the sky and mix with the cacophony of the sounds of nature, creating a musical masterpiece. I marvel at the extraordinary concentration that the Director of this orchestra must have had in order to create something so beautiful. The chirps of the crickets perfectly complement the soft lowing of the sleeping cows that dream of greener pastures. The wind forces the leaves of the coconut trees to protect their precious cargo like the arms of a mother cradling her child and the monkeys animatedly discuss which one will fall first. The ghostly fingers of smoke from a wood fire flies upon the wind like a kite taking advantage of the playful mood of a mischievous breeze and smells like a marriage of the earth and sky. Everything follows an unwritten script, fulfilling its roles with no stage directions or cues. I watch hypnotized.

Suddenly a creature with my face appears, with only subtle differences. I am surprised and wary as I observe this unexpected addition to the scene. He has hair the color of the sky during the darkest hours of the night and eyes like the wet, rich earth after a thunderstorm. But his face is full of light and he emanates tranquility in a way that is only possible for children. His father appears and when he sees his son he lets out a great belly laugh and swoops him up, tossing him into the air, the laughter of both cementing a most elemental foundation in the world: the relationship between father and son. I sense a true love, born of a desire to protect and make another’s life just a little more beautiful and easy. The moment is moving, complete, like a crossword puzzle filled out in pen. This child is one of the children of our community, curious, energetic, and bursting with a love of life. His father is also a member of this community, one of the men proud of where he comes from and looking into the future with hope and vision.

I watch the exchange with fascination and think that with just the slightest twist of fate I could have been this child being cradled on a hilly road somewhere in India. But even when I was in my mother’s womb I could hear the Fates bickering about my future. My destiny separated me from the country where my spirit was born and on man-made wings it transplanted me in another country where I emerged from the enigmatic darkness to another beautiful existence. Twenty two years later I cross paths again with my country of origin and we are like old friends who have lived a lifetime apart only to be reunited and tell old stories well into the night to the light of a flickering candle and in the process, creating new ones which will one day too, become the stuff of late-night legends.