A Short Sojourn in the Countryside
As he beheld the field of sparkling yellow Daffodils
And poured out his spontaneity in immortal words;Or as Tennyson might have dreamed of
When he effortlessly slipped into a trance
And furiously penned down 'Kubla Khan'.
Yet so little time to accomplish all I wanted to!
So, I made the most of what little time there remained
And took off with my little daughter, her young friend and a cousin in-tow;
We needed to hurry for in the countryside winter
Dusk falls all too rapidly, even though we be in the tropics!
The sights were worth the short trek that we took
As trees, fields, shrubs, plants and grass
All seemed bathed in the verdant green
So typical of the place which had given me my roots
And every step that I took,
Every breath that escaped my lungs,
Seemed to say that it is here that Heaven and Earth merge
It is here that the true, pure beauty of selfless Mother Nature exists...
Here, where children run about between fields of lush green
Where the air is rent with cries of countless birds and fowl
Where the earthy scent of approaching monsoons
Send the simple-minded scurrying for cover
Scared by the dark, low hanging clouds
And intermittent sparks of lightning
And where the very soul of man can be found
Longing to let go and touch the clouds!
Feasting our eyes and ears on the sights and sounds,
Seeing things we normally would not,
Hearing sweet melodies that we never knew existed,
And smelling the delicious scents of fragrant grass and colorful flowers
That made Alice's Wonderland pale in comparison,
Yet maybe, 'twas something akin to Peter Pan's Neverland,
A place where age did not wither away any living soul,
Nor time defile anything that sang or swam or flew,
They remain like Keats says
Things of beauty that are a joy forever...
Lazily, hesitantly, not wanting to leave,
But the light was fading away
And soon it would get too dark to see'
The young ones started getting restless
From hunger, thirst or maybe plain fear
Of unseen, unknown dangers that
To a child's eye seem to lurk within dark shadows.
We too were alert to anything human
That might pose a greater danger,
For man, as we know, is more to be feared
Than any creature Mother Nature made,
Those only creep and crawl and move on the ground,
Trying their best to get away from any movement
But 'tis man, and man only who preys on the helpless
Who tears apart the weak and forsaken
In the most cruel and needless way possible!
Soon we reached the comforts of our homes,
My daughter's friend and our cousin
Going to their houses on either side of our own
Mother and father awaited us inside,
Calm not worried, but waiting all the same
We went inside our homes
Tired from our walk and feeling hungry too
But refreshed and peaceful all the same
Our hearts and minds full of all that we had seen and heard
And longed to taste like the delicious tamarind
Of which we had partaken a little after reaching home.
The walk in the countryside had lifted my spirit
And excited my nerves;
And for days afterwards, the scenes played out
In mind's eye of all that my camera had captured
And some that it had not.
After all 'tis in the mind that events and scenes
Get imprinted the best,
The film therein can never be exposed;
It stays forever etched in memory.
And though the number of images might get reduced in time
The vividness and freshness of the colors and scents
And the sanctity of the feelings that they aroused within
Will, I hope, never be dimmed,
But rather stay on and color the imagination,
For years to come...
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