The Potted Plant..


Me staring outside...


I stood still placed on the ledge. It was a bright sunny afternoon and I was reminded of my more youthful days, which had slid away silently. Looking back the sky always seemed to change colours, bright blue to a dark black and sometimes flirting with blushing shades of pink. I’ve seen grey skies and golden ones too and also the white skies extending into nothingness. The blood red sky and the green sky punctuated with lightening never failed to awe me. Why did looking at the sky form such a major part of my life? Well from what I knew of it, the sky was always there and everywhere. The sky was the God that brought out the sun and then hid it back again. It was also the God who littered around with stars and moon. The sky has always been so beautiful and complete. But today the sun’s rays were not the same; they had become harsher and at times burned out my leaves. Also there was no wind today; no wind, no breeze nothing at all. The stillness made me feel claustrophobic, it made me feel helpless and deprived and there was no way to overcome this feeling.

But whenever I feel caught my escape is to remembers the wonders that I have been part of; the changing shape of moon every night, the fascinating drops of dew on my leaves. The stories that birds and butterflies would tell me; the moist wind and the dry soil with their own apocryphal tales, these would speak to me long after the stories had gone quiet. It was funny how my soul talked to my own self at times, questioning me and guiding me, like my life itself was a perpetual story, that would go on with no apparent end but just a continuous stream of days flowing together.

Anyways I knew my time had come. My leaves were turning to yellow, old and shrivelled and I felt their weight tug at my spine. It was not an easy task managing them but how could I let go off them. They were a part of me and so I had decided to sink with them into the quagmire where death meets life. What’s surprising is that it never pained me when people broke my leaves to be served to the Gods as offering. The pain was soothed by the morphine of love and appreciation. I felt special.

Not surprisingly I have never been a big advocate of movement. We see it everywhere around us, even as an immobile plant I was made to change locations and that did not go down well with me. I am a believer of stillness, of looking within oneself to find everything that one needs to see. Have you ever thought how huge our thoughts are; that we are able to imagine the vastness of the universe. The very fact that we are able to do so makes our thoughts bigger than the universe. Are there any limitations on thoughts: no, they cannot be controlled, and they can roam the inside outside of the universe. But here we were as always trying to experience new things not realizing that the key to these experiences is from inside of us and not from something outside. May be you would argue, what does the point of an old shrivelled up plant matter? It really doesn’t but despite all of the tremendous evolution human beings still live like they used to live in prehistoric times. Sure they look refined (or so they would like to believe) but is life still not the same, life was dangerous and uncomfortable then, well I see life equally unpredictable today. The agents have changed, new diseases, accidents have taken place of old causes of death, physical comfort has increased but so has emotional turbulence. I am all for evolution but I would much rather it happens in the right direction and not just change of circumstances.

But let me not get too involved in that debate, it is when you want to be right, that you start becoming wrong. I have abided by this truth and I choose to be at peace, right or otherwise. The sun is setting in and I can see shadows of birds returning home, to their loved ones, maybe tonight I’ll be going home too.

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