My surroundings are progressing
My surroundings are progressing. The brown leaves and the fallen branches are being swept away, and the greener sprouts of leaves are being hurled into maturity. The people, too. The gardener who wipes the sap-laden thick tree trunks like he would wipe the forehead of his child returning from play. The cycling girls keeping their cycles under the tree shade, where the accumulated dust and grime on them try small gusty whirls of their own. The fruit-seller littering scraps from his day’s sale around the tree’s territory, when the black-faced monkeys come out of nowhere, look around to assess if they are being watched, and then take a scrap or two. The lunch of the day. Someone’s scrap. The college student who sits at the nearby bench every weekday in the last few minutes of dusk, for evening may jump in soon, like a shroud over a flame. He calls someone who is overseas — a face in a small phone screen, the voice sounding animated and robotic in the gusto of frantic internet connectivity. It is enough for him. Distance is perceptive.
Then I look at myself — where am I sitting? Sometimes I feel I am at the topmost branch of the highest tree, the branch that is still tender and green in its girth. There is a risk I might fall down. I look around, or down. The progressing entities do not see me, but I see them. Am I progressing? Maybe not. I am sedentary. For a person going farther and farther away from my tree, I appear to be receding backwards — tiptoeing from a face to a blob, then a point, then vanishing. Am I recessing? I might be.
Sometimes I feel I am underground, gripping the roots of grass. Grasses have long roots, the thin sort of roots that grow in a fuzzy bunch and go deep underneath. I grip them, careful not to tear them apart. Above me when creatures move about, the only thing I hear is doom-doom-doom. Drumbeats, maddening or calming — like an orchestra of percussion. Under the soil, I feel stifled. My visibility is muffled, but I am invisible too. Not many would care who is lurking underground when they walk atop. This thought harbors a strange peace.
The best is when I take the shape of air. Then I can roam around with the creatures. The monkeys, the cyclers, the gardener. No one sees me, I remain unseen. I can teleport too. To the den of the monkeys where they nurse their newborns. To the shed where the gardener tends to his potted saplings. Even to the girl who speaks from a faraway land to the boy sitting on the bench. Whoosh. And I am there. When I am so, I do not feel that my surroundings are progressing. I feel I am trespassing, yes, but I generally feel that these creatures are moving in circles. Like boats on a pond, giving off ripples. Not like ships on a river. I smile then. At least they have lives, things to do, errands to run, and objects to look out for. I don’t have those.
Strangely, we had started at the same place. Kept our knees at the same white line at the beginning. They moved on, some scampering, some racing, some just strolling and feeling the air blowing on their sweaty faces. I just turned around the circular track so that I had finished already, without even starting. Now I can see them coming towards me, and not running away from me. My surroundings are indeed progressing. Fluidly and generously. And I am just standing in perpetual waits. Visibly or shrouded.
— tell me what you thought of this xxx —
