The Sahyadris have always held mystique for me. An unknown beckoning that calls me every time my happy feet decide to journey. This time, however, I was a most unwilling traveller along that path. Goa, Shiroda, Amboli, Kashid, Karwar, Tandeli - lots of places along the coast. I really thought I wanted to go to the beach. But of course, you don't journey to the Sahyadris, they bring you to their feet - that curious mixture of beauty, peace and thrill that forebodes adventure.
Sometimes you just have to let life lead you blindfolded, sometimes life's mysteries reveal themselves when you have your eyes closed and your imagination is doing the thinking. I think therefore I am, isn't always what defines us when we're using our imagination.
When we're young, it rains because angels are crying, flowers bloom because God is painting and butterflies carry secrets but when we grow older, there's no God, nature lives in picture books and butterflies wings often look beautiful when they're drawn crooked in our childrens' drawing books and life of course is mostly unfair. Going back to the Sahyadris reminds me that I'm on the same side as life depending on where I'm looking from. Walking in the clouds doesn't remain a myth and rolling, undulating plains between the foothills are places that kiss my bare feet. Each valley looks exactly like the other or maybe has a particular tree that's shaped like a rabbit, depending on where I'm looking at it from. Those streams, rivulets and waterfalls that I dreamt of when I dreamt of childhood picnics were coming alive and springing at my feet. Off the beaten path I went, into caves that were a thousand years old, walking through grass that the wind trimmed every once in a while. When I'm in my city, I think that the Sahyadris are home to the famed King Cobra but when I'm in that grass, I step gingerly to not hurt anyone's home. That awe and fear turns to respect for someone's space and concern for its well-being. They're suddenly not feared creatures but fellow beings that I dare not dismiss lightly. How that colour green can evoke so much happiness in my heart I wonder but breathing its shades and cleansing my soul with its notes seems like second nature when I'm rolling in it's beauty.
The colours of the Earth begin painting my soul and I wonder how I didn't fall in love before. I didn't have to look too far inside to find myself. My innermost seemed at my beck and call. How often do you feel free from judgment? Like no one in the world could hurt you or play with your exposed soul? Sometimes I think back to the moment, and I feel like I was in a giant bubble of earth with an invisible force protecting me from myself and everyone else. The sheer happiness of just being.
"Love is not that which alters when alteration finds", said Shakespeare. It is and shall remain that part of my soul which fire cannot burn, water cannot douse, nor can any and all of the viciousness in the world cleave. It is pure and shall remain so. It is more than a memory; it is a locked picture of immeasurable depth that I shall probably never find again.
I make the world as I saw it then sound like a goddess whose silhouette overshadowed the rest of my logical senses, it also did as I must add change the parameters of my world. It must have been the stone walls, the moment, the most unlikeliness of it all, the force of the water or the sheer overwhelming power of nature that overcame us. The colour red bore more significance than just the boldest colour in the palette of the world. It replaced all the other more virgin colours of my mind and changed my thinking and my life forever. Would it be that the wind would never know how it changed the face of the earth as it blew or the storm the colours of the sea or the monsoon unbeknownst fertilizing the earth, planting forever the seed of its fleeting presence? It rained that day, hard and long and unendingly. A whirlwind of colours and conflicting lights, a kaleidoscope minus a complete insight. Indicative of how a flick of a wrist changes a life.
I'm here now. Someone else altogether. No one would believe I was that barefooted girl on the grass or that the pictures were at all mine. I carry only with me a testament to all the moments in my heart. No one shall ever know, because I live with sense and sensibility now. The stone walls gave birth that day and held my secret with them, God knows how many secrets it held, how many quiet footsteps through there had passed. The romance of the moment shall never pass like the weather. What happened that morning shall remain with me forever. Maybe you're the man, you're wont to forget. But it's as clear in my mind as a moment I'm hardly likely to ever forget.
That grass, the stone, the ancient civilizations, they all know me now as they knew all those great footsteps that trespassed that land so many centuries ago. And I have my little piece of history, somewhere in a lost corner of the Sahyadris.
Sometimes you just have to let life lead you blindfolded, sometimes life's mysteries reveal themselves when you have your eyes closed and your imagination is doing the thinking. I think therefore I am, isn't always what defines us when we're using our imagination.
When we're young, it rains because angels are crying, flowers bloom because God is painting and butterflies carry secrets but when we grow older, there's no God, nature lives in picture books and butterflies wings often look beautiful when they're drawn crooked in our childrens' drawing books and life of course is mostly unfair. Going back to the Sahyadris reminds me that I'm on the same side as life depending on where I'm looking from. Walking in the clouds doesn't remain a myth and rolling, undulating plains between the foothills are places that kiss my bare feet. Each valley looks exactly like the other or maybe has a particular tree that's shaped like a rabbit, depending on where I'm looking at it from. Those streams, rivulets and waterfalls that I dreamt of when I dreamt of childhood picnics were coming alive and springing at my feet. Off the beaten path I went, into caves that were a thousand years old, walking through grass that the wind trimmed every once in a while. When I'm in my city, I think that the Sahyadris are home to the famed King Cobra but when I'm in that grass, I step gingerly to not hurt anyone's home. That awe and fear turns to respect for someone's space and concern for its well-being. They're suddenly not feared creatures but fellow beings that I dare not dismiss lightly. How that colour green can evoke so much happiness in my heart I wonder but breathing its shades and cleansing my soul with its notes seems like second nature when I'm rolling in it's beauty.
The colours of the Earth begin painting my soul and I wonder how I didn't fall in love before. I didn't have to look too far inside to find myself. My innermost seemed at my beck and call. How often do you feel free from judgment? Like no one in the world could hurt you or play with your exposed soul? Sometimes I think back to the moment, and I feel like I was in a giant bubble of earth with an invisible force protecting me from myself and everyone else. The sheer happiness of just being.
"Love is not that which alters when alteration finds", said Shakespeare. It is and shall remain that part of my soul which fire cannot burn, water cannot douse, nor can any and all of the viciousness in the world cleave. It is pure and shall remain so. It is more than a memory; it is a locked picture of immeasurable depth that I shall probably never find again.
I make the world as I saw it then sound like a goddess whose silhouette overshadowed the rest of my logical senses, it also did as I must add change the parameters of my world. It must have been the stone walls, the moment, the most unlikeliness of it all, the force of the water or the sheer overwhelming power of nature that overcame us. The colour red bore more significance than just the boldest colour in the palette of the world. It replaced all the other more virgin colours of my mind and changed my thinking and my life forever. Would it be that the wind would never know how it changed the face of the earth as it blew or the storm the colours of the sea or the monsoon unbeknownst fertilizing the earth, planting forever the seed of its fleeting presence? It rained that day, hard and long and unendingly. A whirlwind of colours and conflicting lights, a kaleidoscope minus a complete insight. Indicative of how a flick of a wrist changes a life.
I'm here now. Someone else altogether. No one would believe I was that barefooted girl on the grass or that the pictures were at all mine. I carry only with me a testament to all the moments in my heart. No one shall ever know, because I live with sense and sensibility now. The stone walls gave birth that day and held my secret with them, God knows how many secrets it held, how many quiet footsteps through there had passed. The romance of the moment shall never pass like the weather. What happened that morning shall remain with me forever. Maybe you're the man, you're wont to forget. But it's as clear in my mind as a moment I'm hardly likely to ever forget.
That grass, the stone, the ancient civilizations, they all know me now as they knew all those great footsteps that trespassed that land so many centuries ago. And I have my little piece of history, somewhere in a lost corner of the Sahyadris.
