I was at the Marina Beach this evening with Naisha - my eldest daughter, watching the reflections of life through the prism of time! How do I illustrate the visual?I saw families, some of them new, gauged from the distance they stood, and others, families since long, from the indifference I felt! The new, standing with their fingers intertwined, hands that later stretched to be held around each others’ waist, looking at the tides and seeing nothing but its beauty, hearing not the roar of the waves but the orchestra played by the angels of love, feeling in them the beauty of their life ahead, and love. They knew of no crowd surrounding them or the horse-rider passing in front of them! The old, they were silent too.
There were friends, whose conversations that had the familiarity of sharing and the desire for caring. Perhaps in them were a few whose conversations were of the friend whom they lost, result of a broken pledge, a shifted priority, a transformed vision. Some of them may be friends in the making, or perhaps preventing one from breaking.
There were children of different ages; some of them chasing tides, neither willing to realize that the foam of tide they are attempting to hold in their palm would change its shape when detached from the tide, nor do they know its power of destruction; it’s a game, as long as it is a game. There were children flying kites, kites flying low in spite of the height they are meant to reach! They blame the wind, not realizing it’s in their hands the control and discipline to direct the kite and let it reach the height.
Sitting a little away from her parents, there was a young girl, with her legs folded, hands holding them tight to her chest, with her chin resting on the folded knees, looking at the high tides perhaps not rising enough to match the height of her life’s expectations! In the white foam of waves that washed the shore erasing the writings on the floor, what she must have been seeing that her parents or I can’t see?
Could the parrot in the cage pick one from the deck of cards spread on the torn mat with the astrologer sitting nearby struggling to even keep his lantern lit, provide an answer to the questions that I saw shining in her eyes, that she’s searching in the pearls of tides splashing on her thoughts?
Shahir
17 Oct 2010
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