The Hills Beckon Again – 11: Another night, another song…

And then it was dusk again, and I was sitting once more in my balcony and then, when I got really cold, inside the house near the large window in my bedroom. The mountains stood spread out around the valley which faced the bedroom, making concentric circles around the lake, protecting it, as it were. The sky was a canopy of clouds, grey, ashen, dark, black, thick Nimbus clouds. An occasional streak of lightening split the sky, searing its breast, lighting up the landscape, the mountains, the valleys, the forests, the trees, the lake…..and then disappearing as soon as it came, in a flash….transient, ephemeral….even like life is.

And the thunder followed the lightening after a discreet, respectful pause, as if meticulously keeping its distance, not willing to intrude into the private space of the mighty flash from the heavens. Sometimes a low growl, sometimes an ear-splitting crash….it reverberated in the valley, echoing back from the mountains, shaking the windows…

I sat on my couch in front of the window and watched the heavenly game of light and darkness, silence and sound……and then the dance of the rain…..the drops of water came, tentatively at first, and then with more force, more speed, more conviction….a constant drumming of the drops, and the thunder of the clouds in tandem, synchronous as if under directions of a divine conductor, performing a heavenly orchestra…and yet the children slept…and Vaishali slept….tucked neatly inside the sheets…..peaceful, safe, comfortable…..sometimes snoring softly, sometimes completely at peace….maybe dreaming, maybe not……and I just sat there watching them, and the heavenly drama being played outside….and I wondered……

I wondered at the way of things, at the scheme of destiny, at the way the hand of god works, and the way mortals perceive, and understand and explain and gossip frivolously about the grand scheme of things…and I realised how unimportant we are, how small, how insignificant in the larger scheme of things, in the universal roulette of life….how insignificant, and temporary, and transient, and yet so full of our own importance that we fail to appreciate godliness all around us……

I know not when I fell asleep, and dreamt of the mountains, and the bolt from the skies, and the thunder, and the valley with the pool of dark green water sustaining millions of flora and fauna, and how we fit in this universal prapanch, this universal game, this act on a stage, this play which nature is playing with us…….

And the mountains whispered in my ear….softly, not letting others eavesdrop on our conversation. They whispered the eternal truth, they revealed what one cannot see with open eyes, what one can only perceive in dreams…..they sang softly, in a voice sweet, and soft, and they told me what I needed to know…..and I knew that they had accepted me as their own….as one of them…..one among the ancients…..a part of the universal whole, the universal entity that the ancients have known as brahma….the singular consciousness that has spawned the world, animate and inanimate…….it is this consciousness that speaks through the mountains, through the clouds, through the forests, through the lake, through the birds that wake me, through the drops of water which fall to the ground and say ‘splat’, through the lion which roars, through the wood which creaks, through the gravel which crunches…..it is all the same, the same brahma…the mountains told me so, and I believed them!

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