Song of the Saint

“Did you hear that voice?”, Anjana asked him.

“What voice?”, he asked, paying more attention to the direction in which she was directing to.

“That soft raga, flowing out of somewhere…As if, as if It is coming just to tell me something...the way the sound flew from… As if its saying to go and meet the originator of the sound…” She replied with a soft exultation on her voice.

“You have gone crazy!”, he pulled out of the room in anger and shut the door close. 

She was still listening to the voice, flowing through the window, reaching her ears. And she almost stood there for about half an hour…

The place, is where she was brought up; where she had ended up all his childhood and his teenage dreams. Place where she had confronted her first love. The place where she played Sitolia (Seven stones) with her childhood friends; The place around the pond where she and her friends used to sit for hours on end chatting and gossiping about the latest TV serials happened to see the night before. She still remembered clearly how she and her friends used to pluck the tender lotuses from the pond, going knee deep inside it. The Song of the old saint flowed out of the old banyan tree in the evenings, when Ma used to lit the Vilakku (lamp) near the Thulasi Thara (Sacred platform where you put in a Basil plant in an Indian house). She loved the song so much that she used to hear it with her eyes closed, enchanted with the old voice…The Evenings were happening when all the people, young or old, gather around the Banyan tree, and discuss about their daily chores and affairs... She still remember how she used to run around the banyan tree and her father told her to be careful about the roots of the tree coming out of the land...The banyan tree acknowledged the children playing and the jovial time people had by shooking the leaves of its trunk with the passing breeze...

Time had flew past all these. She is a married woman now, put up far far away from this magical world of hers. She got a chance to visit this part of her world by means of one of his Maternal uncle. The uncle wished to die in the very home where he also had been brought up. So everyone from her family went to the place to say a final good bye to the old man. Rajesh was at first hesitant of the idea, but her vigor for going kept on increasing and finally he bent to her wish. 

The difference now is there is no pond at the place it used to be. There are no lotuses to be plucked now! The Old Saint had passed away long back. People seems to be quite busy with their own affairs and no gatherings happens at the parking area of the banyan tree...The Banyan tree is sighting all these with its own eyes and felt very old, crumbling up on his feet...

The old man died in his sleep after the relatives waited ‘eagerly’ for 2 days. They sighed a relief, and slowly began to depart from the place, which they describe is out of fashion from the city they came from. But Anjana… She was still not ready to leave her abode from that place…Rajesh insisted her to go with him to her home at the city, but something is stopping her to go…The old nostalgic moments she share with the place…The burden of all the memoirs she have with the place loomed large in that small room.

With a heavy heart and the fond memoirs left behind that place, she stepped up on Rajesh's Car... To the big jungle of mankind called as a city, to get lost in it somewhere, burying all her memoirs deeply somewhere...To cherish sometimes in the future again of the beauty of the cold wind gushing to her face, to the place where the song of the Old Saint could be heard again...