Unbounded Reality

Sweltering in the heat of Delhi you revisit your mountain idyllic. The house set among the mountains and meadows. The smell of burning wood. The old man with blazing eyes, his wife of many years and the friend. The potter’s wheel obeying the perfect synapse between your brain and fingers. The pears nodding shyly among the branches not yet ready to be picked. The fresh grass, the dog, the voice of Tom Lehrer; images flashing through your brain.

While in a flat in suburban Bombay the mouse gets ready to gnaw through the mattress, visible due to the hole he has chewed in the bed sheet, and curses his luck. Human folly and grave miscalculations on his part have distorted his idyllic vision. But now that he is here he will make the best of it.

Meanwhile I read about Jane Austen and the tiny table she sat at to write her masterpieces and marvel at ‘the modesty of genius’. As the blue tits on the balcony outside jostle for pecking space on the overcrowded feeder. The high-pitched notes: pee-pee-ti sihihihihihi, pee-pee-ti sihihihihihi fill the air with their silvery trill. While the bee rushes about from the fuchsia to the lavender before settling gentling on the verbena. Even as the wind begins to lead the trees in a dance of ecstasy under the brilliant blue summer sky. Only to be joined in by the shrill sirens of the passing police cars and ambulances. Just then the phone rings. It is my mother. And a moment passes away.

Reality once again refuses to get bound. Time, neither a moment nor eternity appear sufficient. Leaving us with at best a perception. Subjective and inadequate. Just a little short of untrue.