First Day On A Brand New Planet

When I am trailing along alone in the vast quietness of a forest, on a 5 minute break from the dust, dirt and disgruntled thorns, I realise apart from a few creases, life has dealt me a good hand. No doubt, money situation is getting exceedingly tight, but I tend to worry about it only when I'm back in the civilisation. I am not a recluse. I love people. Meeting people, talking to people is an exciting experience, but equally exciting is to stop by once in a while and see what those thousand different you's inside are trying to convey. And certain settees help, like an ocean-facing sand mound or a brooding dark green canopy above. Interestingly, the situations which would be dealth with very passionately and sometimes foolishly when surrounded by crowds, are analysed and dealt with in an admirably detached manner. The happiness, sadness, light, darkness, clarity, confusions of the usual life are the last thing on my mind, and I trail along wherever the path takes me.

When I am in there, cut off from the world, my senses are flooded with what nature has to offer. The seering sun has scorched every bit of exposed skin and turned it darker, but the heart is lighter. The thorny undergrowth has been puncturing my skin and feeding on blood from the moment I stepped in...and sometimes even the face carries the brutal crisscrosses, but you learn to look at it dispassionately. I swore so much the first few days, but then I remembered that these are not as painful as the wasp stings that I bore almost deliriously for last 5 years. You get used to it.

And for every such incident, there are outright rapturous moments. For example, the day i discovered a stream in the middle of a completely scorched, sunburnt landscape. I was lying down on the forest floor, exhausted after the day's work and as so happens every time you become quiet, the forest came alive. I could hear very faint tinkling in the distance...it turned out to be a steady water stream flowing almost noiselessly into the ravine besides the forest. The water cooled my feet till it was time to leave the forest.

Or the time when a whole flight of common crow butterflies decided to block the sun overhead. Every time I moved, they pranced around like little ballerinas covered in black. Finally getting tired of my continuous cues, the whole flight settled with careless abandon. Seeing life so manifold, up so close, with such abandon makes me treasure every living existence including my own.

Then the one night I decided to spend on the desolate beach along a private property. It was cold (!)...unimaginably so. I took refuge in a casuarina plantation nearby. It was no warmer inside the plantation, but man, have I been in a more musical blanket or what! The wind turned into a bow and struck the stings of the casuarina leaves, creating sounds similar to the melody emanating from the depths of a cello...the continuous hammering of the waves against the shore, acting as percussion...the moonlight streaming live through the casuarina top, creating light and shade effects witnessed till date only on screen in Ye Raat Ye Chaandni Phir Kahaan...

The song playing at the back of my mind is - First day on a brand new planet...