There are lots of pretty things in the world. It was during class one day, it must have been the fifth or the sixth standard, and I was looking out the window and waiting for it to rain. I have always found to be rain the cheeriest thing in the world. Growing up in Bandra, the rains were perhaps the most celebratory portions of the experience. That at Christmas. The kind of Christmas that you celebrated in the little tucked away corners of Khar Danda and Pali Naka and Bandstand. There was a tiny little lane called Wit's End. It's still there. You found the cheeriest most different types of Christmas lights - in the shapes of wedges of cakes and sausages. You still do. The Christmas ornamentation is so different and unique.
Forme, rains are the Christmas equivalent of the season.
So, fifth or sixth standard.
I was looking out the window. Had finished up with the lessons by then.I was quick and sharp like that. My teacher left me alone because I was not particularly talkative. There was a huge mango tree with lots of small, green mangoes hung almost equidistant among its branches- as if someone had placed them there carefully. The skies were grey and suddenly it started drizzling and then the rains got wilder. The tree was strong, drenched, and mighty in joy. Do you know what I mean? When joy - pure joy of being showered with such love can make you strong and invincible? That tree looked like that. And slowly, every smooth, plush expanse of a leaf looked as if it were holding a river. All that water was trickling down the veins of the trees and mixing with the rain and then all that was mixing with the mud.
It was the most beautiful class that day. I don't remember anything else about what I learned. But I think of that day when I think of what love, success, and freedom mean to me. It is to be so unencumbered in the moment that you drift. You drift to the point that something holds you. And you allow yourself to held in that magic and stupor until you see You see until you become invisible. And you become invisible with the mightiness of whatever joy builds up in you and you become invisible with the mightiness of whatever joy is gushing into you from the outside. And with all that happy, blissful invisibility, you spill, splash, and become a happy puddle.
A puddle that reflects the grey sky that started it all. And also the mango tree that finished it up.
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