The Lonesome Shadow

 

It’s Holi on March 13 and unusually cold for the season. It feels almost like late winter. It’s not the usual riotous Holi but still there are plenty of drunken shouts and stampedes of fun. In the afternoon he feels extremely weak.

Holi is celebrated to honour the most vibrant colours in our spirit. However, the festival has lost its footing in both letter and spirit. It now seems to bring the worst in us—muck- and mud-slinging, drunk driving, molestation and street fights. Many girls in Delhi have reported the cases of semen-filled balloons hitting them. This unethical, unpardonable sling-shot catapults the beastly mentality against women by several evil notches. Every girl has all the reasons to feel unsafe in Delhi. The semen-filled balloon is a representative of the deeply entrenched sexual frustration in the Indian psyche. It pours out in the goriest of ways and means. The more they pretend to ignore and suppress it, the more diseased they get under the veil. The children hardly get exposed to healthy information about their sexuality. It stays the most secretive and all-important topic. It grows like a creepy parasite in the shadows.

On Holi, the liquor industry awaits gleefully. Drinking alcohol in excess is what we make of our festivals these days. 

He is heavy headed, a consortium of conflicting thoughts lying jumbled up like a pathetically tangled mass of ropes. Uncontrolled thoughts are like a mass of snakes slithering around viciously. There is a strange taste in his mouth. He rolls his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He feels some presence. The thinnest of hair in the mouth leaves him scared. He tries his tongue. He takes it out by scratching the tip of the tongue with a pinch of thumb and index finger. There it is! It’s a very tiny one.

He seems to have cold and bad throat and lies down to listen to Osho’s speech to power up the brain’s processes. Osho’s speeches on YouTube give him an unexplained peace. He can feel the words. It turns out to be a motherly lullaby and he dozes off. It’s a very sound and satisfying sleep. Words and phrases of the Holy Master sound like a dream. He wakes up very fresh. The audio is over. It has been three quarter of an hour. Sleep is a great saviour, without it we will just burn out with our worries.

This Holi completes 7 years since his father left this world. Father loved gardening. Most of the potted plants and roses that he had planted are still there. Sometimes the son feels his father’s presence in a fresh blossom on the rose he had planted. The son thinks his father is still around.

On this Holi, he is holding his 10 months old nephew, his younger sister’s son. The boy is fiddling with the light green fresh leaves of a plant his grandfather had planted in a pot, and which was later transferred to earth in the small flower bed. The child is running his fingers through the leaves. He closes his eyes and feels that the child is playing with his grandfather’s beard. He smiles, and again he feels his presence. Life has too strong imprints for death to wipe them completely. These are the dusty prints from the past. They keep bringing smiles now and then.