After a long, hard and wearisome journey, the parrot realised it was no longer possible for him to fly anymore. The sunset was imminent and along with the great fire ball, his willpower was ready to surrender and call it a day. His wings tired, his temper losing its balance, and his beautiful colours mired in the hard journey’s perspiration--although it was winter--the parrot landed on a branch.
It broke his heart, this inability
to continue on his march to meet the lowest-set milestone for the day. But then
it had been a very tough, cold and stormy day. There was no sunlight during the
day. And when at last the sun prevailed over the frosty chaos, it was the time
to call off its duty, pack its bag of brightness and light the other part of
the world.
The winter was at its peak. And
anxious, drooping, panting was his beak. With every precious moment left of the
day, the saffron slanting rays were melting into the misty bay. More
emboldened, the cold was creeping up. Its pinch was becoming bold to take everything
in its hold.
With sad eyes the parrot looked at
the setting sun. His run had been too long and taxing. He had long forgotten
the flight’s fun. Where was that fleeting, winged pun? With each breath and
laboured purr, restlessness crept further into his perturbed fur. Each moment
passed, pinching him with the realisation of loss and failure. With each mile,
the journey had become a drag. The vigour and energy, which had lifted him with
brag, were now dumped in a deep pit, from where it was not possible for him to
retrieve even a bit.
Then even the last ounce of strength
was hit. He was fighting to save himself from a fall. After all, he had so many
miles to go. The height of his flight was becoming continuously low. Finally,
he bowed before the eventuality and anchored his feathery weight on a branch’s
restful bait. Halting, but, didn’t bring the relief it should after a long
march because he still had far, far to go.
“Merciless, frost-fanged will be the
night!” he thought to his misery’s delight.
As the warmth vapoured off his body,
shudder crept over with incremental ease. Anxiously, he ruffled his feathers as
if to loosen the cold night’s siege.
“Where to spend the cold night?” he
pondered from dejection’s highest height.
Everything appeared alien,
uninviting and antagonistic in this freezing twilight. The night moved closer
with a scary chuckle across the gray shades of the dreary dusk. The night was so
near! It again put him on his toes. He realised the importance and utility of
the remaining traces of the day.
He looked around. The forest was
lost in an eerie silence. The day’s last vestiges bade goodbye like the feeble
truth emanating from a sad couplet. For miles and miles everything appeared
surrendered to the gloomy pal of a freezing, imminent night. All the woods around
looked solid, unwelcoming and creviceless; without that hole which can become a
bird’s hall. His despair and agony touched another peak.
His sad reverie was broken. He heard
a muffled, breaking-free, old, juvenile chuckle. It was an old sparrow. The
greyish patches in his fur long put under time’s harrow. The oldie was flapping
its feathers in a water puddle. So old and bathing in such freezing winter’s
hold! The young parrot’s senses went into a chilly huddle, while staring at the
scene in the puddle.
Even to a tired body, dejected mind
and subdued soul, advice comes very easily.
“Hey such a cold night is waiting!
Take care, it doesn’t become death’s baiting! Old fellow, you must take care
and should not extend your dare to the limit of catching cold, fall sick and
lie on death bed!” the warning came with ease from his beaten, sulking self.
The old bather, the fun freak,
stopped in the middle of an ecstatic shriek. But within an instant his seasoned
enthusiasm regained its footing. Again the old punster squeaked, chirped and
tweeted to match the huge heaves of happiness sashaying across his old turf.
“My old coat has enough room for the
water to turn to warm vapours and shun and beat the death’s creepers. Each
moment has to be lived like a full day before I fall asleep forever. Before
that I have to live fully and fear nothing, worry about nothing, and get
everything which can be drawn from each and every moment. I have to milk the
time’s udder totally dry bro!” he tweeted, whistled and made a frenzied display
of dancing in the muddled waters.
The old sparrow had raised a storm:
a riot of happiness; a cascade of mirth. In between, he paused and pantingly
opened his beak to fill his old lungs for more life, more vigour and more
strength. Everything falls short in old age. The young, beaten, subdued and
defeated parrot looked on from the branch. It appeared silly and illogical to
him.
“What could have happened to make
this oldie so happy?” he wondered.
With his saggy, drenched feathering,
the sparrow heaved his old bones to fly up to him for a hearing. The moment he
landed on the branch, he brought exciting, adventurous jolt of mirthfulness.
The branch shook with the force of his liveliness. The young parrot tightened
his claws and ruffled his feathers to maintain his perch. He was hardly done
with it when a vigorous pat landed on his tired left wing. The old sparrow’s
right wing landed with a casual, supportive and friendly force. Again the force
of the old bones jolted the tired young bones.
“Tired!” the oldie asked.
“Yaa,” the parrot could manage a
weak squeak.
“Well, most often we get more tired
in the mind than the body,” the oldie puffed up his chest, ruffled his
feathers, and twitched his tail to rearrange his gear.
There was a little shower on the
parrot. He shook with a sense of cold and moved away a bit. The distance
between them was too short for two strangers.
“New to the place, humn,” the
seasoned native of the land asked the visitor.
The branch was still swaying with
the inertia of the vital last drops of life in the old sparrow’s body. The
newcomer insecurely, apprehensively, worryingly gripped the wood. A cold night
and darkness was all playing in his mind.
“Where are you flying to?” the oldie
asked softly, suppressing his enthusiasm, feeling the parrot’s discomfort.
“I have to go far. Shouldn’t have
stopped at all. But then my wings gave in,” the parrot sighed, traces of defeat
and loss all strewn over his green.
The sparrow gave an assuring,
comforting smile. “During the day, do your best. Night is just and just for the
rest. No flight can last forever. Rest is not stopping. It’s just the beginning
of another league in the journey,” there was mystic calmness in his old, dim
eyes.
The parrot looked at him and sighed.
He wanted to say so much about his trials, tribulations, unmet goals, crushed
dreams and scattered ambitions. Too much was striking inside to pour out. He
preferred to keep quiet.
“Why sit here and ponder over the
path which you can’t even see in this impending dark? Dear, I have no family
and live in my palatial hole in the trunk of a banyan. Come with me, my place
is at your service!” the sparrow spoke with the grace of an old patron.
There was almost no choice for the
parrot. In the hot pursuit of another mile, he had missed many a nice shelters
on the way during the evening. Little did he realise that one has to stop.
Stopping isn’t a defeat. It’s biding time for the victory. And when his body
and the day’s last rays both gave in, stopping was enforced. He had to stop and
now take the option which presented itself. He thus followed the old sparrow to
his wood-hole. The latter whistled all the way, chirped songs and tweeted notes
of strange happiness.
“What makes him so happy?” the
parrot following the sparrow again wondered.
They sneaked into the cosy, warm
confines of the sparrow’s wood-hole. It ran deep and appeared perfect for the
best sleep. There was a nice bed of softest sinews. The sparrow’s raw, bursting
enthusiasm had turned to a palpable silence, contentment and restfulness which
pervaded the wooden abode.
Outside, the weather turned as bad
as possible in a single night. A horribly chilly, stormy night. No light for
miles in sight. A furious rainstorm lashed the tree as if to uproot the earthy
shackles and set it free to fall. But the tree was strong. After all, it was
the choice of such a seasoned player, the master who knew the strength and
fragilities of the woods. The banyan withstood the deathly throng.
“I live here all alone, but in
constant company of my peace, rest and happiness,” the old host spoke with
half-closed eyes, resting his slightly crooked back against the wood.
“What makes him look so happy, no
longer in pursuit of anything?” the guest again wondered.
“Though the memories and
reminiscences sometimes sneak in through my door to moan over my beautiful,
active, youthful past. Darted when I fast. Wooed damsel sparrows with
mischievous finesse. Raised families, driven by my instinct’s pull,” there was
a loud thunderclap outside and the narrator stopped.
Lightening struck somewhere. It
shook the earth. A sinister flash of lightening sneaked into the shelter. The
parrot shook with fear. The sparrow laughed and assured him of safety. He had
seen many such storms.
“The storms aren’t there to kill.
They support life, even though it may not appear on the surface. I have seen
it. Most of our fears are phantoms,” he chuckled.
The parrot listened. He again made
himself comfortable.
“Well, coming back to my past that
sometimes sneaks in to disturb like this lightening did to you now. Age then
caught with me. Most of the beauties lie at a distance, teasing you to run
after. My eyes but no longer see them. Feeble eyes you know! When I completely
shut them off, my eyes, they even sense the death’s blood-thirsty hound. So I
open them and just be myself. Me with my weak eyes. I just see the small,
dimmed world sprawled in close proximity to me,” the old host paused and pecked
his saggy feathering with his blunted beak.
“So his happiness is a compromise
with his disability and old age,” the guest thought.
“You know what,” the host broke the
parrot’s chain of thoughts regarding the compromise resulting in an enforced
happiness. “To justify a well-lived life, when the force of youth is on your
side to propel you towards your goals, the conclusion, the slowdown also has to
be well-managed, well-paced, voluntary, not an accident. Ending is as important
as beginning. With an accidental, aggrieved ending the essence of the beginning
and build-up gets lost,” the sparrow’s slow-paced words again dispelled the
parrot’s just derived theory of enforced happiness born of old age and
weakness.
The parrot’s body was aching and he
would have fallen dead asleep, if not for the question which was puzzling him
to the extent of forgetting the pains of his fatigued self.
“So I live happily as the tail-end
of a great life lived. The force of beginning, starting, acceleration! And the
path of letting it go, losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The
deceleration. Slowing down with effortless
muse. To stop finally. It can give as much excitement as the force of starting.
And then the final rest. During the slowing down phase, the time becomes slow,
the world is a small puddle around your feet. You live like in a dream. A
slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like
months, and months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, one
can live a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode,” the old sparrow coughed a
bit, and then with a smile, telling his guest that all was well, took a pause.
Some swift sleepy grip would have
drawn the parrot into a deep slumber, but then he heard the words again. He
driven and lynched by the starter’s force; the other one leading the rickety
carriage to its stopping shelter. A journey completed by two characters. A life
lived by two protagonists, separately, but summary being just one life. A
beginning and an end. The latter part was so comforting that it appeared to
seep into the turbulent phase of his own first leg of the beginner’s journey.
“Enjoyed I the choices which the fate
sieved for me. Just thankfully took my share. Now I pick up and play among the coarse,
discarded chaff which remains unwanted above as the fine particles, much in
demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, I tell you. In youth, we just think
that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. However, life can be equally
enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains,
specks and twigs. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was
once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age.
Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I
enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone,” said the old host, away from
the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth
touched his old fur before moving into the cold darkness.
The majestic slow down, as important
and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning. The source, the
beginning, and the slowdown. And the end. A cycle.
“And try even to get bold against
this winter’s hold,” the oldie chuckled, patting his faded fur with the end of
his wing.
“Has he achieved all he wanted in
life to make him so happy?” the parrot wondered.
“During youth, I flew majestically
high to beat the cold with my blood’s warmth. Now wisdom swarms. I don’t go out
in the storms. I just go along the gentle breeze’s pace. So I find ways to
brightly light my days with these feeble rays. In this cosy wood-hole of mine,
drunk I’m with my age’s vintage wine. I know that I may not go out of this hole
to ride softly on time’s back at some new dawn. When death will pick up the
pawn, leaving this old fur and feathering engraved in this wooden hole. But it
doesn’t make me sick. That time hasn’t yet come. And I have the leisure of
stretching moments till then to the capacity of my old bones. Also, that sleep
doesn’t appear different from the ones I enjoy now,” a gripping calmness
emanated from the each word he spoke.
Outside, the storm was tossing with
a self-ravaging fury, consuming itself, jolting everything around, breaking,
snapping wood. The banyan was but sturdier beyond any storm’s destructive lust.
It stood firm as if the calmness from the old sparrow’s restful soul was
seeping into the wood, giving it strength.
The parrot had been in the hot
pursuit of the orchards beyond the forests, deserts and ocean, where the fruits
of unheard sweetness lay more abundantly than the grass below, where the sweet
cooing female parrots, of unparalleled colours and beauty, seduced youth to the
pleasure’s farthest end. His happiness lay too far. How could he be happy till
he got all that he desired?
“The pitcher of desires no longer
exists. I dropped it long time back, realising its weight. If you have it, the
desire to get it full can be a real pain, I tell you. Even if you kill yourself
to fill it, and suppose you succeed, still there is no escape from the torment.
Then the fear of losing it strikes. So where is the rest? I have been having
beakfuls of fun. No storage, nothing. It has all been a majestic flow and
marvellous fluidity. Like the unforced march of a trickle of water down the
slope, moving with the gradient, with acceptance and surrender,” the old host
closed his eyes, feeling the soothing touch of that flow with life’s natural
pace.
“But I’m happy. It won’t be possible
if I hadn’t been happier earlier. To die happy, to happily slow down, one
should have been happier earlier during the blasting stage,” the old sparrow
tweeted and whistled as if recalling the happier times.
“This old fart must have hit gold
during his youth, and now he is just rolling in happiness as a pensioner,
munching the leftovers,” the parrot thought.
“The sinews holding life to my body
have become weak and almost bloodless. These will not feel the pain of the
final cleavage. It will be just like an autumn leaf being painlessly windblown
into the oblivion. In this tepid existence of mine, between hot and cold, amid warmth
and coolness, a misty torpor pervades my old bones. Beyond the extremes of pain
and pleasure, I spend my time in some pleasant, vague proportions of reality. Happiness
and sadness seem to have lost their specifications. Neither both exist, nor
they are dead altogether,” with a deep look of serenity, the old sparrow looked
at the guest.
The parrot appeared restless even in
this cosiest of a safe hideout. How could he be restful? A bigger storm of
unhappiness was raging inside.
“How come you look so subdued and
sad?” the sparrow asked. “Have the conditions been so bad to rob all the real
charm and leave the colour on the feathers and soul so dull and poor?”
The pain inside broke all check-dams
of restraint and the parrot spoke out.
“Though I’m young but the spirit
seems to have sung the last song of life. Too much has been the pain and
strife. My courage appears to have run dry now, although the colour on my
feathering holds somehow,” the parrot spoke dispiritedly and sighed.
Outside, the storm touched a newer
peak. The wind screeched. Rain lashed. Lightening struck. Some tree nearby fell
with a huge snapping, cracking sound. The parrot shivered with fear. The
sparrow calmed him down. Taming his emotions a bit, the parrot spoke again.
“When just a hatchling, father was
gone. Grew I up hearing mother’s moan. The paternal sun thus never shone.
However, the biggest consolation was the mother’s caressing, preening, feeding
beak. Ate I fruits at love’s supreme-most peak. As the sole nestling, I was
fattened on her love’s labour daylong. And then went to sleep hearing her
lullaby and song. Aha! Sweetest dreams came with a throng! My whole existence
was tethered to her maternal pole. Me, the brightest attractive-most star
sole!” there were tears in the parrot’s eyes.
The young visitor was lost in his
mother’s memories. The old host looked on sympathetically.
“Under her great grooming, colours
on me came bright. Lavishly my green and red flashed as I fluttered and flapped
for my first flight. Unbelievable was the pride and compassion as her souring
soul’s maternal shades touched the brightest delight. In her eyes I saw a new
light. How marvellous was the sight!” the parrot smiled and then stopped as if
some painful recalling stabbed the smile.
“Alas, her incorruptible love of
yore was arrowed by the fatality’s shot. Again the cupid’s arrow came hot. I
became a past, ignorable and with rot. She was now in another spring of love.
Incipient love for the future in her womb, I was the past buried in a tomb. I
thus became an orphan although both my parents lived. After many cries and
anguished, aimless flights bereaved, life’s burden with my soft feathers I
heaved. Young and handsome, I flew with the
time’s oblivion and balm. Intoxicating is the youth’s charm,” the parrot paused
with some shine in his eyes.
There was a smile. The sparrow
nodded knowingly.
“Inevitably I fell in love.
Heartfully I cooed with my beautiful lady. Those love-drenched days when the
heart was ever ready to sing an ecstatic ditty! Such abundance and happiness
was in my kitty. So sweet, silent, mirthful and undaunting were those
acceptances of the nuptial responsibilities. Those watchful, eager searches for
the hollows in the tree trunks for our nest! Tirelessly we looked around for
the best,” the aroma of sweet memories raised the pal of gloom from the
parrot’s face.
The sparrow beamed as if dabbing his
old beak in the sea of happiness.
“Guided by the love’s brace, we
found our place. In that comfortable, safe hole, nothing else but we had all
the muse and role. Our identities melted into each other’s. How proud was I
when I became a father!” the memory suffused the parrot with a fresh gust of
energy.
The parrot stood, flapped his wings
and preened the fur with his luscious red beak. The sparrow too got onto its
old claws and stretched his wings to unstiffen his old body.
The parrot’s voice had a strained
note now. “I will not become like my parents, I thought. I will not be ensnared
like they were caught.”
Some traces of that determination
still seemed to raise his spirits for a moment.
“So I clung to my possessions with
youthful pride. Alas, the inevitability arrived with chide. In full bloom of
youth and colours, all of my brood flew away. My lady-bird came to be
infatuated under someone’s cooing sway. It was another fine day when she bade
adieu and flew away,” sorrows ran through the parrot’s fatigued, sleepless
body.
The old sparrow sighed, stretched
his wings and patted the visitor on his shoulder.
“I embodied all forlornness. The
loss was glaring in my face. Monstrously unremedied! So I decided to leave that
place. And my sulking wings did brace to take up the longest possible flight
from the place, where such pains and unfaithfulness abound. So flew I as if
pursued by the fearsome-most hound. For many days I have been flying, my soul
aching and wings crying. I won’t stop till I reach the place where happiness is
not checkmated by such tragedies,” the parrot looked outside through the
opening.
“Why should we enter into a
relationship and love somebody so completely, if it is bound to go into the gutters?
Aren’t all such temporary dives into the life’s stream futile and vain? Aren’t
we just mere cogs in the hands of those inevitable, unstoppable machines of
fate which make us cheat on each other, abandon the once loved ones and more?”
the parrot had burning questions coming out of his aggrieved self.
The old sparrow, full of wisdom, the
undisputed king of his life’s small kingdom, looked with solace and
simplification of age. Perched safely where youth’s dilemmas and puzzles no
longer haunt with their pinch and rage, the sparrow said:
“It’s like a flower ruing and
ruminating over other blossoms because its beauty will not last forever and
will go to the glooms. Dear, it’s not we who are the ends, rather the beautiful
phenomena like love, marriage, procreation which decide the trends. We are just
means to these beautiful ends and destinations. So become an uncomplaining tool,
tilling earth without any expectations. It isn’t that love exists because we do love someone. Love is the primordial
sea without any limits of space, time and individualities. It’s we who sweeten
a few moments of life with it till the full stops arrive with a stopping hit.
“Do we procreate to cling to
procreation throughout life? No, we are made to procreate to become the unselfish
means for the propagation, for handing over our batons, to perpetuate these
beautiful phenomena of love and relationships. We do not leave behind an offspring,
but a possible instrument which may come in handy for the sustenance and
survival of those very precious moments which got us the taste of love,
happiness and friendship at their best. If we recognise it, our spirit gets a
solacing rest. If not, we get caught in an acrimonious net.
“We cry and put up a bet that I
completely loved her and became the cause of young lives. It was I who caused
that buzzing in those hives. But such limitations would have been meaningful
had our survival been unlimited, or say the course of our life was uninhibited
and unrestricted. But our journeys are to be ended. So just cherish those
moments which you tended. If you cling to the stream of these phenomena as if they
are your inheritance forever, they then become a drag around your neck, making
you a prisoner behind the bars.”
The sparrow stopped and shook his
fur as if trying to find some last trace of such bondage.
“Liberate fella, liberate yourself!
Just be a journeyman who understands that young flowers on a plant or adolescent
leaves on a branch do not lessen themselves or the spring in not ruing over
their wispy autumnal fall. They inculcate phenomena. They help perpetuate
nature. They sustain the amazing natural gifts of love, beauty and bloom. They
also served in a similar way, made some new ray, very feeble though, to defeat a
bit of gloom under the shadows,” the oldie’s dull, watery eyes sparkled with
hope and satisfaction, as lightening flashed and reflected in them.
The parrot was at long last feeling
the vibes of happiness and rest which comes with the acceptance of simply doing
the duty and completing the task with full heart.
“So the only way to remain happy is
just to be happy, no matter what the circumstances are?” the parrot had
his doubts.
The old host chuckled, tweeted and
cleared his throat. The visitor was near the point, although still with his
doubts, which was natural.
“Yaa just be happy, no water what!”
the sparrow lowered his voice as if in cadence with a divine mantra. “It’s basically we who repel happiness away
from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set
it as a goal too far down the lane in future. Some house, some grains, some
accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the
preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the
years, and set up a wall between us and happiness. And happiness keeps on
getting more and more distant from us. I will set up a home and then be happy.
Happiness delayed. And then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a
goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between
happiness and us. Like frustrated human log-movers, whom I see in the forest,
we just push on. Happiness stays thus a distant goal. Never to be achieved. We
make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the
destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we
die. Huge immortals they are. The goals and destinations! In pushing for them,
we die; separated from happiness which could have been the greatest gift of
life, had we not pushed it away from us.”
The long fabric of the stormy night
was slowly melting over the banyan. Outside, the stormy chilliness was fleeting
before a promising twilight. Chances were there for a day bright. Clouds parted
for the sky’s delight. The parrot’s spirits appeared to cut through the shadows
after turmoil and inner fight.
Holding onto the visitor’s traces of
hope, the old host tweeted, “The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the
far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like I do store
some grains for the harsh winters, near me, in the safest part of my house. It
has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with
the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting
some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Just being and living for a
day. Separate being from becoming. You can be happy if you
set your happiness free from the chains of your lifelong dreams.”
The parrot smiled. It was the dawn
of truth.
The wise oldie continued, “You
should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody
who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never
come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily,
separated from the natural state of happiness which could have pumped our life
with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free from
the chains of goal-setting and placed it unchained from those unreachable spots
in the future.”
The parrot stood erect like a
disciple in front of his master.
The sparrow raised his voice as if
carrying his old furred body over to the peak of realisation. “Let happiness be
a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Do everything
as a happy person; instead of doing the deeds to become a happy person.
Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of
some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it
in the condition we are in, or it just eludes us. Keep it with you while you
fly. It will boost your determination to go far and high.”
The sparrow was beaming with such
rest and repose, as can be provided by being happy unconditionally.
The peaceful oldie looked out with
hope. “The day today will be warm and sunny. The dawn promises sweetest honey.
Youngman, I’m in hurry to go out of my hole, and play my chirpy role on the
great stage set around. My feeble soufflés and dim light in the eyes are still enough
for the spirits abound. I still see my own sun in the down-hilly twilight.”
The parrot looked on happily, deeply
drinking the sips of solace and comfort pervading the wood-hole.
“You go high because the forenoons
are there for you with their multiple hues. Go, so that you don’t rue over the
day aimlessly lost. Do justice to the old spirit of your host. Take some
lessons from my soft feebleness. It will boost your courage. Take clues from
the manner in which I make a day out of my night! And top of all, decide to be
happy before you take flight!”
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