“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

Friday, May 23, 2014

Thoughts from under a tree


As I sit here on a bench near the lake, a strong wind blows from the east. It shakes the trees in its path until it reaches me and I am enveloped in its cool embrace. The trees sway and the leaves shiver as they hang from the branch. I shiver a little too. It is cold here. The wind makes many sounds, the gentle whisper, the louder rustle and even the sad moan. It is such a delightful element of nature, pleasing at most times. It can blow the young woman's carefully tucked hair and make wisps of it fall all over her face and such messy imperfection is many a times more beautiful than perfection.

Which person doesn't feel a sense of calm and assurance when the whimsical wind blows against them. I could spend hours here listening to the many tunes of the wind, sometimes exhilarating me to a state of happiness and sometimes to a melancholy but enchanting loneliness, because it brings with it the courage and the hope to go on.

I try to study the human race with little experiments of my own. And among all the people who are close to me and have shared their lives and dreams with me, I have observed that however happy and successful we each may be, we all have our own moments of quiet regret and longing. Like waves lapping on the sandy shores of the beach, these memories lap on the shore of our present and linger for a moment reminding us of ourselves and our past. We try to ignore them and we are successful most of the times, but sometimes, in lonely hours, under a twinkling night sky or near an open window, while watching the sunset or when listening to the wind, we see that distant past foaming up, until it again quietly recedes back into the ocean of life.

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