Analysis
The Maze and the Destination
The trees had stood tall, serene, and steadfast like yogis in a trance and the brooks and the breeze murmured the prayers recited since times immemorial by innumerable generations of leaves borne by the innumerable branches. I must have been there for quite sometime as the hermitage like forest and its inhabitants seemed very familiar wherever I went in search of an indescribable satiety that transcended all definitions and an indeterminate destination that defied all frontiers. I must have covered long distances, crossed passes, ascended peaks, savored the heights of mountains and suffered the depths of gorges, swam across the streams, waded through marshes and survived dry stretches but it was difficult for me to assign a particular moment in time when I had embarked on this search of an ever enigmatic destination. It was even all the more difficult to recognize or identify a particular site from where did I enter that dense forest.
The search seemed to be incessant and the journey endless, till we met one day when I had paused at that spot The breeze and the rustling leaves, chirping birds and the murmuring brooks brought to me the pulsating echo of your footfalls and my feet arrested so as to let my steps merge with that all pervading rhythm. It was then that I found myself amidst the thick shoots and stems of a vast banyan tree, my vision held captive by a shaft of light descending through a thick verdant canopy. Did I pause and see you or there was this vision of yours beckoning me and I paused? Did you descend from somewhere piercing the yonder blue in search of a tender banyan shoot struggling to embrace the mother Earth to lose itself in her bosom in an attempt to emerge wherefrom as a stem to bear more branches and more leaves? Were you there to gather their prayers in your breath to carry them to some nebulous realm beyond the bounds of faraway horizon?
Wasn't it you who unveiled a crisscrossing maze of trails, having some faded and some still fresh footprints huddled under a comforting pall of fallen leaves, which had kept my company all the while that I had been wandering. Wasn't it you who made me realize that some travelers must have pioneered their way through the trunks, shoots and creepers in search of that ancient primordial trunk of this banyan tree from which had sprung up this entire vast system all around us. Branches had emerged from that primordial trunk bearing shoots, which grew down to the soil in search of roots to emerge as newer trunks. The ancient one thus relinquished its unique identity, merging it imperceptibly with all that grew around it and from it. But it was always somewhere there and so were you always there around me and with me all through this maze of crisscrossing trails. The new buds opening up to the skies told me about your touch and the fallen leaves narrated the tales of your tender caress. The hymns of the breeze wafted across with your breath and brought to me the strength of that imperceptible primordial stem.
I just needed to pause to be with you to recognize that all the trails began and culminated just at the spot wherever one met you. At that spot even a single moment in your presence had the entire eternity converging in to it. Mother nature herself breathed her entire dynamism in to the movements that seemed to have got halted there. At that spot and that point in time there was no distinction between striking roots in the soil or soaring high into the firmament to transcend the horizon. Only I had to emerge out of myself to enter your luminous presence and lose myself unto you to comprehend the destination hidden in the maze.
27-Apr-2001
More by :
Dr. Vidur Jyoti
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