Saturday, March 14, 2009

Room with a view

The flamboyant season of the colorfully splashy holi finally got over after much fanfare , here in Jampot. Holi is one festival which is played in this part of our country with much pluck.
But as I sat for my meditation yesterday, I realised that Holi - the man- made annual festival- was sure over (without doubt ) but in Nature's repertoire , Holi is eternal ; for there lies a wide spectrum of colours in its canister that will never replenish , nor lessen in vibrancy .
My meditation chamber which faces the east, has a wide glass window which is lined with a row of potted plants on the external buttress.
No sooner was I preparing to start my morning session of prayers than I saw a jet plane flying at a very far distance. The plane was scarcely visible. What was however visible, was the trail of silvery white smoke , resembling bold double - strokes, against the backdrop of the bluish, hoary sky. I sat glued to my floor-mat and began to relish the awesomeness of this simple yet delightful sight.
As the seconds ticked by, the straight bold smoke-line got dissipated, became broader and meandered into crooked, undulating fragments like long stretches of a cloud. Scarcely did I close my eyes in an attempt to click the moment in a niche of my memory , as a beautiful souvenir, when suddenly two more planes shot through the sky, leaving again the same trail of silvery white smoke. The broken serpentine smoke was now closely followed by four parallel straight pathways of smoke-lines.

It was 6:15 by the clock. A yellowish aura had begun to fill the eastern heaven with its glow and colour. All of a sudden as if from nowhere a flight of distant birds flew along the trail. The vision was purely enchanting. Pristine . Unfathomable.
AND I WASN'T DREAMING !
The background : the vast stretch of unhindered bluish grey sky ; An yellowish halo in the furthermost horizon ; the bulging orange-like flame of the rising sun .

The foreground : silvery white rows of smoke on smoke in straight and not-so-straight lines; a pod of birds following the trail in the formation of a perfect isosceles triangle .

And all this beauty viewed from the blessed enclosure of my chamber ! "If this was not a beatific, blissful sight , then what was ?" I questioned myself.
I would fondly love to call this morning experience : " Prelude to the perfect prayer".