The short walk Home
Two Asian Pied Starlings sit huddled together on a dangling bamboo stalk. The light breeze soars above the motley canopy of trees in my backyard, carrying a bit of the calm violet of this evening sky. It shakes the Palm leaves and the sparse nests of weaver birds beneath. They’ve only recently ended their abrupt exile and started relocating to their home, or so it seems. I remember craning my neck for hours without complain, my childhood flowing through old corners of my brain, inundating them with sparks of intrigue, at the intricacies of home construction by their strange, wonderful birds. It would be a decade into the future that I would attempt to remember their names. A pair of birds had perhaps perched themselves back then as precariously as they have now. I had failed to look hard enough.
A slippery mat of moss breaks through the mud here and there. Bunches of hardy grass peek out at the hint of a late night shower. They smell the winds and the whispers they carry from their kin far off into the fields. Tiny frogs hop with the simmering energy of newfound life, making the most out of every shard of brown and green. Their tiny imprints disappear into the deeper designs of a landscape sculpted by rain. And here my giant feet fall heavy like an untimely asteroid impact, annihilating this patch of Earth. I choose to save my skin and walk away. Promptly joined by a group of Munias, I tracing the patchwork of sky peeping through the canopy, craning my neck like I used to a decade ago. Only this time, some of my bones plead me to count the years on their worn out ridges. And the ages will pass faster, they tell me in whispered tones. But the warm gold pours in like a watershed, and time stops in its tracks. This moment, the fields on my starboard are green with golden tips, groups of Mynahs skimming their tops and perching on the fench that runs through it. Their shades overlook the hopping frogs, their tracks forever hidden in plain sight. The Munias fly in and break formations, scouting flowers in bushes and rows of shrubs on either side of the road. I try to let some of this molten gold seep into my bones. Right now, I belong to that distant set of Islands in the sky, my sails fully ready to intercept every gust of wind, every burst of light. For this tiny moment, I straddle the decade long bridge between today and yesterday.
I can see the honeycombs catch a lighter shade at their edges, as they hang in balance between the Earth and Sky. The water tower stands like an old sage, breathing in the last light, his cup of life full, and yet never overflowing with vitality. The grass beneath its weathered pillars holds the roots of trees and plants beyond my parlance. Maybe a decade or two from now, I’ll be looking them up in some dusty book, trying to trace my footprints through some mossy road back Home. One can only hope the bridge holds steady till then.
For now, the waters flow soft and sweet under my feet, through the maze of roots and the mesh of Fungal networks spinning symphonies far more intricate than any composer, any artist, any convoluted yarn of metalanguage that our minds can comprehend. The walk holds imprints in these fleeting packets of memory, or does my memory holds packets of fleeting imprints in these tiny, random walks? Are they indeed as random as they seem?
Perhaps the couple of birds perched on that dangling stalk of bamboo knows. A decade from now, they’ll return home and maybe whisper the answer in my ears. Will I be listening as intently then, as I do now?