That was just another afternoon I was spending sitting on a marble ledge erected at the end of our little balcony at home. Uncanny is this favorite place of mine since childhood, a ledge perfectly 'grounded' to meet the dusty floor existing there, being made to fall from the grace to overhang in the air, adding much to the wild fantasies of the ground trodden down our feet. The ledge with the wind which sweeps by, has been the house of reveries of the reticent girl who once inhabited this somber home. I call it 'My Periphery of Happiness'. She arrived without notice as I was gazing lazily at the city around glistening in the shimmering white spread by yellow sunlight. Sitting there always I have one recurring thought encircling my mind, that the entire world can come within my reach just by stretching my hand out through the grilled windows which created the separation. Undoubtedly a sense of freedom comes running behind it. Though the Led Zeppelin lingering in the air around is not one in my mother's list of golden classics, she chose to sit beside her pensive daughter, taking in whatever the breeze had to offer. It was not the best day of my life for sure ans she indeed had a lot of catching up to do. She started with the obvious question, whether I was thinking about him or not.That to her I was quite a predictable entity goes without question, so the tit-bit of successful mind-reading hardly surprised me. And why would not I think about him? All those years of moving together through thick and thin,clutching each other's hands, mean more than my life and my present. To love a person who is what love is all about..... the feeling can penetrate through heights even death cannot reach in its crooked journey through dark descending alleys. I feel him every moment I spend there, on the ledge, as the wind kisses my face in its motion. Life becomes sedentary at those by-lanes which have become dead with Dada's demise, but I don't mind. My mother knew about the season which I find here at the periphery, as I call it, the season which have the radiance of spring through the remnant colors of Holi played every year, the Sepia of autumn through the dusty memories and the poignancy of life coming through blazing summers as well as cold winters..... Only my mother would know.
Of all those people whom I thought I knew, only few remain till the end. Life to me was all about soaring high, levitating the entity high above towards such a shimmering height that bliss and pain both remain far down, sighing as they witness the unreachable. But gravity has always had its evil attraction. The people did leave me, some bruising my heart in the effort. I told that to her, how friends forgot to think twice before raising the dagger. Just the one who loves me stays still now. She gave the smile of wisdom as I realized my last sentence...."Just the one who loves me stays still now"..... Only a mother would know how to bring that out from within you.
She started inquiring about academics and what it would lead me to, tomorrow of course, not that I had much confidence in it. Yet I did babble about the dreams I have planted on foreign shores, oceans apart. To study, to grow and to see a lot around me yet to be unravelled. She started making a plait with my hair like she always did in good old days, when I was little. The nostalgia was getting into her too. I told her about the NY life I would want to live one day, fancy thoughts nevertheless alluring and before I could realize myself, I saw that gravity has released its shackle. I was flying again..... Only a mother would know how to make it happen. I did not pay much heed and went along, building castles in the air... my dearest game since time immemorial. I told her how I would miss her culinary delights staying there along with the Durga Puja, how I will make new friends and talk with them about literature and Beatles. I grew perked up thinking about tomorrow, it grew brilliant again. Then my mother said about the wooden closet which would always provide me shelter when gravity would interfere the flight again. I knew I was secure as I was told about it.... Only a mother would know when to remind that.
I am young now like she once was, beautiful and vivacious, gentle and loving, caring and hospitable. I have the magnanimity inside to embrace strangers, play with kids and chat with elders, that I wish to be the sea, taking it all, providing everything to make the world a little more elegant. That I make no foes and forgive those who have chose to injure the tender being inside. Grudges are fat heavy things which can only burden us and "tomorrow is a long time" as Dylan says. Too long to carry them with us. I knew I had it all, things which she has taught me over the years. Above all she gave me a courage to enlarge vistas, break the territory and extend it to heaven. Things only she would know to teach....
