344 Monday MusingsFreedom for the bird

344 Monday MusingsFreedom for the bird

The birds in the next nest woke her as they were waking her these past few days – and the lake beyond the balcony would gleam in the night moon. Waking up to the whispers of an about-to-be lit sky was joyous. It was not always that she was aware of the changing hues of the early morning sky. In his earlier days she was like most – not even knowing what the early morning looked like, leave aside the sights of the early morning sky, and even on days that she was fortunate to witness the early mornings, she was too engrossed and dumb to experience it.

One must look at the skies change their moods in that short while during the mornings – it’s faster than the human mood swings, only more fascinating and intriguing. The darkness pixilates into the various hues of grey as the sky bares itself, almost disrobing in slow motion. One is not prepared for everything to become clear but it does. It is like we were understanding life – one moment a mystery and then the slow motion of gradually unveiling of the meaning of it all, and then with the snap of a finger, it is all clear. She did not know much about life, but this much she had grudging come to realise – understanding it was the easy part; accepting it was tricky. All of us are prisoners of something or the other, someone or the other, she told herself. She had to put aside such philosophising because she had to deal with the onerous task of getting up and getting ready to fly. Survival is a full time job. There is no independence from it.

Everyone leaves behind something at the nest as she steps out in the morning and having spent the whole day outside, comes back a little more incomplete every evening, she remembered hearing it. It was becoming apparent to her only now, albeit partially. She also remembered older birds mumbling something about their search for completeness. She had never understood them and that search. Daily, and every moment passing away, we are not nearing completeness; we are actually inching away from it, if at all we are moving. A child is complete because she misses nothing. Every adult is incomplete in a peculiar way and because of peculiar circumstances. He might believe that those are unique and one of its kind, but they are not. There is only face of incompleteness– and that it is its incompleteness. Rest all is just there so that the story must move forward. The plot is usually held hostage by the characters in the drama. There is no independence from them.

‘We are withering away daily’ a bird had sung long ago. She was going to need this solace that others in their time had similar experience before but had articulated it better. There is no running away from this fear of time being short. It’s not only those who have a plan suffer from this fear – even those who don’t know their journeys suffer from it, just that they don’t know what torments them. There is nothing more tragic than having wings, having strength in them, even flying, just not knowing where!! The bird knew, that the poet knew, that we are a prisoner of time – of what is left of it. The burden of what is left is only increasing by the moment. There is no independence from it.

She had once been in an iron cage. She had felt miserable in it. Every cage has a peculiar curse, it torments in a certain way. Some owing to lack of space, some not airy enough, some the iron bars, and in some cases there is nothing to see beyond those bars – but above all the worse thing about all cages is, Captivity – that is its own curse. She had fought her way out of that cage and flown away to freedom. She still remembers those moments and trembles at the mere memory of it. In many ways she was still in that cage. There is no independence from the cages we were once into.
She was thinking of all this and much more as she opened her eyes to yet another day. The morning was upon her. She was thinking of all the prisons she was a part of – of those she knew about and those she was not even aware of, even though she could feel the burden of it on her soul. She was jolted by a loud roar which was coming from down below, from a group of human beings – apparently they were wishing each other ‘Happy Independence day’’. She dived below to be a part of the festivities.