Painted Skies

Bewitching shades of light, dancing merrily, on the never-ending horizons of a rain washed sky, supported by the musical splendour of tiny little birds, bathed in euphoria; created a divine audio-visual rendezvous, making the rapidly falling dusk, increasingly romantic. The fresh breeze of air carrying the sweet smell of soil bathed in rain, made that evening, all the more alluring. Time stood still. It was sheer bliss.

She was, for a moment completely unloaded of the burden of responsibilities, she wishfully and adamantly wished to carry along eternally.
Mystified by the beauty, filled with awe, unaware, or more appropriately, unbothered by the queer looks, snorts, spiteful remarks, she continued to walk. Each step she took was genuinely soul lifting and healing.
The street she walked, the street that was witness to this nature's splendour, was no Shaolin temple street. It was as raw, as crude, as normal or sorry, as socially normalised, a street with its normalised crowd can be. Filled with ailing souls, spending the fag end of their lives, healing with nature; kids in glory; old couples standing as a symbol of strong roots of bond; lively young lovebirds lost in their tiny little gossip; vendors on watch for livelihood; trouble makers on watch for opportunities; pranksters; pseudopious judgementalists and moralists; audacious pseudo liberals; dogs big and small, bothered only about being stoned or their luck with tit bits; that evening was a Kaleidoscope of life on raw display. With a smile, she saw it all and continued to walk, never bothered to either, create an opinion about herself or to have an opinion about anything she witnessed or anybody she saw.This was her walk. This was her meditation. This was her way of healing and this was her way to salubrious living.

Odd, eccentric, loner, arrogant, withdrawn, bore, were few of the many names she had. She wasn't any. She perceived world in a very sensitive , intense way, which was foreign even for imagination, for most of the crowd. She was compassionate beyond boundaries of blood, language, religion, country or species. She was self styled, self driven and self monitored. Strength and positivity were not the only things that filled her cup. Things, small and benign could trip her masterly composure. She had her blues, anxieties in things she did. She had a pile of things undone and another huge pile of things that she wanted to do. She had a world within her that represented the world she lived in, replete with emotions; both positive and negative. Just like the kaleidoscope she saw, she had a kaleidoscope within. The way she smiled at the crowd, she did smile at her internal blues and observed them all, without judgement, without attachment, not enacting on any, without evaluating the necessity of the same. Different emotions , positive and negative; played beautifully on the horizon of the sky, she provided mentally. None was greedy enough to stay for long. They played their part and left her alone, not to pester her tranquility. She was not any of her emotions.

With the different hues painting the visible sky, and different emotions painting the invisible psychic sky, both of them blending perfectly and resonating in unison, she walked and walked and walked. The journey never seemed to end. Not an iota of physical exhaustion creeped, as long as she walked in synchrony with nature. Nobody could ever understand, how magical a walk can be, with just you and your soul resonating with the soul of nature. And yes, there was no need for anybody to understand that either. This was her expertise. This was what she chose to lift her spirits. This was enough of a healing to put her straight on the path she wished to travel.

It is indeed the masterly joke of nature, that events towards, peace, bliss and emancipation occur unknowingly, at unexpected places in unanticipated ways and end abruptly, as though they never happened, but bountiful enough to leave a lasting effect and a faithful promise of recurring again.
This beautiful sojourn of internal and external correlation and spiritualisation; in par with the ways of nature; was suddenly gate crashed by the slap of thunder and washed by the rains, that followed. Now all that was left, was very primitive hunger pangs and very human ability to find ways to address the same. After all, a human, is also an animal born with instincts of self preservation, albeit fancy, sophisticated, polished abilities to meet the same.

Thus, the painted skies ultimately got painted black for the rest of the day and resigned to sleep, with a promise to come back and play it's part, the next day and all the coming days.