Feeble footprints of little moments on a mundane day

 It’s either a mature millipede or a baby centipede. It’s crawling in the verandah. Centipedes aren’t cool to have around. But squashing them on the floor with a chappal strike should be avoided. It’s a form of life having a meaning of its own. Why become the cause of its untimely demise unless completely unavoidable. I take a big guava leaf and put it in its path. And there it goes over the garden wall to become a part of the larger game in the open. Dear friends, practicing kindness at such small levels, at the level of ounces in quantity, may douse the seed of hate in us, lying predatorily to get sustenance from small acts of cruelty and flare sometime as a monstrous fire.

Practicing kindness, however small quantitatively, still sweetens the soul because each work of charity and kindness carries the same divine quality of love irrespective of the small or big nature of the task. Enlightened will doesn’t pour down upon us from the heaven. We have to work for it, gently pry away layer after layer of our rigidities and reach the stream of fluidities. And the littlest acts and thoughts of kindness and charity are the scalpels in our hands to accomplish the task.

The babblers are making a nest on the small parijat tree. Given their querulous ways, they are usually successful in raising their brood; just like the doves are generally unsuccessful in completing a successful nesting due to their docile ways. The doves then cry amidst groundswell of sorrows for a couple of days. Who would feel a dove’s suave sensitivity? It’s a tough world. All those who take advantage of the doves’ coyness get on the backfoot while tempering with the babblers’ nest. Squirrels, crows, shikra, cats and even snakes get forewarned. Not many of them have the lungpower to bear up with their high-pitched verbal resistance. Their war songs are exhaustively lavish. The garden would lose its calm though because the babblers keep shouting imprecations at all and sundry throughout the day. Is this world fit for angry, shouting people only?

But there is scent in the air that overpowers noisy babbler notes. It’s a big joint family in the neighborhood. A happy and full of life group of people. There are a few young and adolescent boys and girls. Youth has its own special, seamless, musical versatility. If you are receptive to others’ joy, you can also warm your old bones, sitting elderly by the bonfires of youth around you. They are going to Manali for summer vacations. I was acquainted with this fact about the trip. But this morning, the entire locality got heavily clouded with Deo fragrance as the youngsters sprayed the entire bottles on them. We have lost most of the flowers, and also the sweetness in our souls, so even artificial smell will do. But isn’t it too heady and heavy? It’s like you just need a cube of simple sugar but you get saccharine. A case of overdose.

Nothing beats the sublimity and tantalizingly exotic touch of the petals on your olfactory senses. The blinding blizzard let out by Deo bottles is almost like an irresponsible adventurism. But even Deo smell will do in a creeping climate of hate, phobias and drain stench. In any case I wish them a happy journey.