A Rendezvous

Saturday, 5:30pm……I found myself moving towards the tracks leading to the foothills of the Baner ranges….just next to my place…my small crumpled apartment. These ranges may be identified as a small reminiscent offshoot of the Sahyadri mountain ranges in Maharashtra, separating Konkan from the rest of the state. This locality where I live in and where my office , my second home is situated at, is known as Baner….as you all might have already guessed… has been named after the hill ranges.

I took the beaten track to start my ascend…. instead of the stone stairs built at the foothills to assist a lesser energetic soul to reach up to some height . I climbed on stone after stone, sinuating the feeble tracks, following the faint signatures which might have been left by an eager and enthusiastic foot earlier. Slowly, the road got low, quiet, soother, faint and calm. I kept moving, till I reached my first landing on the hill top….the one with the Devi temple.

I felt steady……neither tired nor breathless……probably months of workout in the office gymnasium had proved useful after all. I could see the tranquility, hear the silence, smell the absence of smoke and an array of possible exhaust fumes emanating from the vehicles and factories on the road below….far below….left behind. I felt the breeze blowing softly carousing my hair, gently lifting the locks which lay astray on my face, penetrating my skin, cleansing my mind of all troubled thoughts…….. an immense sense of calm took over me…..a great relief from all the worries and problems of a lesser world. I could taste freedom and flight of another world…a natural world.

Nature, I believe is a wonder in itself,…an amusement….an enigma…may be even to the creator… ……….as a painter adores his best piece of work and a poet appreciates his best poetry. It’s lovely when the senses take over…… you see things in brighter colors, hear sounds in sweeter tones, smell in better fragrances, feel in better soothing sensations and taste in delicious flavors. …………THOUGHTFUL.

I kept promenading,.....as the evening passed, the sky was decorated in a beautiful blend of colors, mixing, layering, creating patterns in violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The hills…..some brown because of the deep basalt soil on the deccan plateau, some blue-grey due to the presence of stones and gravel, some green due to the lush presence of fully grown trees , some yellow cause of the deciduous trees with fallen leaves, some black due to the barren hearts of earth stripped of its vegetative covering. The colors and patterns and hues creating the most artistic and interesting sketch on the canvas of mother nature……….BEAUTIFUL.

Then came the sounds,….the wind blowing, the temple bells ringing with the sway of the wind like little wind chimes, the trees whispering, the dry grasses and fallen deciduous leaves crumbling underneath my shoes,….the songs of a cuckoo, the calls of the sparrows, the buzzing insects, the whizzing fireflies…..generating the most synchronized musical orchestra one can listen to. I kept listening to them….trying to make out one from the other, identifying an overtone and its next undertone…..frequencies mixing in a world class ballad played by none other than mother nature…….WONDERFUL.

Once the sun dipped into horizon, night came and along came the city lights. I could make out the Mumbai-Pune express highway, the Balewadi stadium, the Pashan lake, the Pan Card Club resort…through the maze of tubes and bulbs illuminating the night city. It looked like a mirrored architecture….sorry to use the term, but years in software has bestowed me with some of its jargon and lingo. The world below and the world above……the former lit by electrical lights and neon gas lamps devised and manufactured by the brilliant species called MAN and the latter sprinkled with tiny dots like speckles or showers created by bursting crackers on a new moon night, lit by the heavens designed by GOD…………..SPLENDORFUL.

Pointer to self:
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you...
while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

Me

Friday, 10 pm......end of another day, another week,..day was hectic, but now that’s usual. I have a tough schedule next week, with lots of meeting, discussions, actions, plans and what not, but well that can wait,....that is project "Next Week" as I like to call it. I have a tougher problem at hand to focus on and that is project….... WEEKEND.

Like hundreds of other software engineers...belonging to the so very well known elite community of IT professionals, work, money, opportunism, and greed to succeed has landed me into an alien city Pune,..away from my family,..alone in a small crumpled apartment which I don’t like to call my home but a resting place where I am forced to spend two full days of the week, Saturdays and Sundays.....ALONE.

I have always been an active person,..studies, classes, lectures, tuitions, games, dance classes, homework, projects, assignments,….I have done them all,....honestly and sincerely,..bunking classes never really suited me somehow . Life was governed by the time tables of all these agenda items that I had prioritized for myself…....I rushed and rushed through each of them...justifying the adjective I accredited to myself at the start of this paragraph.....ACTIVE.

I can remember the plentiful number of occasions when I wanted to stop, pause, take a breath, chat with my mother, help her in the kitchen, discuss sciences with father, aid him fix the tube light, help my younger sister to complete her assignment, take her out for a movie and on and on……...the list goes on. I won’t say that I never allowed myself these pleasures..these little moments to be treasured, cherished and appreciated; it’s just that I made myself these allowances a little too less,..a little too infrequently, a little too sparingly. But well that is life...no complaints. Just a little .....REGRET.

A matter to observe is...when I had my dear ones close by, I could not find time for them.....and now when I have time, I cannot find the ones I wish to spend it with………….that so called irony of fate! However no cribbing...only learning something I dint know before……..APPRECIATION.

Pointer to self: Appreciate the things you have when you can,...they may not stay with you forever.

Armed with lesson number ONE, I resolve to appreciate the weekend project with a determination…….. to extract from it all the possible opportunities it might have to offer ……to steal the little possible happiness and humor it might have been hiding away…. to make may not be the most, but surely something of it :)