Turning around

It’s funny how sometimes we unknowingly conspire against ourselves and devise a meticulous plan to achieve the exact opposite of what we may have had in mind.

This morning I woke up a little uneasy and reluctant to get into the groove. I realised it was probably an outcome of being over-stimulated over the last few days. It is very easy to get to that place with all the distractions we carefully arrange around ourselves – you know, the friends we all have – social media, OTT, books, conversations, conversations about conversations and so on.

So, I decided to go for a walk to withdraw from all the stimulation and feel restored. And, a good long walk always does the job.

As an added incentive, the last few days in Bangalore have been blessed with beautiful weather, particularly the mornings. It’s wonderful to lose yourself in the conversation that the early winter sun holds with the little nip in the air; to feel the warmth of the sun on one cheek and the winter’s nip on the other.

Fifteen minutes into the walk, I felt a tug to turn back.

That’s a familiar feeling. There is always (well, almost) a point in your walk where you feel called to return home. It’s not always the place where the road ends or your feet are tired, but a place where you feel the reason you stepped out for has found resolution – like reaching a destination when you didn’t really have one in mind. It’s the place where the story has done telling itself.

Sometimes, you miss that point completely and walk on. Other times, you notice it and choose to continue.

Today, I turned back.

As I turned back, I noticed that the morning mist was disappearing and the sun, now on my left and in front of me was claiming its place in the sky. I only had to lift my eyes a bit to the level of tree line to notice the kind of reclamation that was happening. At this point, I could see a whole stretch of the road lit up by sunbeams that were trickling through the foliage of the trees. It was something - golden rays of light emerging from a green canopy splitting the world into a play of light and shadows.

I continued walking back, of course stepping from light into shadow and then back into light again. Eventually, I reached another place where I could no longer continue.

This was also a familiar place. One where you forget why you started walking as you surrender to a greater ambush. Today, this place was in front of the closed shutter of a carwash. I stood there, allowing myself to be washed by the sunbeams.

Before I knew it, a poem was taking shape and I was scribbling frantically on the notepad of my phone…

Sunbeams. You’ve got to love them.

They show you what it’s like to carry light in every part of their golden paths, feeling the warmth of a cold winter morning as you step from this pool of light into that patch of shadows. You walk along making conversation with trees about what it’s like for them, their sinewy, twisted branches with just awakened supine leaves stretching their green tongues competing with each other to intercept a sunbeam and be seen.

Meanwhile, another bunch of leaves hangs limp in the shadows of its illumined brothers and sisters.

Yet, they all tell the same story of what it means to be kissed by the day, to stand in the path of a glorious sunbeam.

If you wait for a bit, you might hear them invite a scurrying world to notice how they can just stand there and shape the light.

So that, our eyes can shine in their gleaming presence

and we, perhaps a little bedazzled now can say, “Sunbeams. You’ve got love them.”

I felt as though this was the reason I was tugged at the fifteen-minute mark, where I felt I had to turn back. If I hadn’t, I may not have noticed the sunbeams, which were already dissipating with the changing place of the sun in the sky. My story was not done—another one was waiting to unfold, somewhere between the sunbeams and the trees that shaped them.

So, while I set out to withdraw my senses and quieten my overstimulated mind, I might have actually done the opposite. I came back more stimulated than I was when I stepped out!

But then, I would choose to be stimulated by the sunbeams any day.

In fact, who would not?