The Wind and the Silk

The forest was quiet. It was silent enough for one to believe that there was no life around. But there was life. Nature was there. And nature was alive. It lived in the trees, plants and each and every animal in that forest. But it lived quietly. Nature didn’t believe in shouting to let the world know that it lived. The world knew that it was alive. Because the living were a part of nature.

In the quiet forest, the wind blew softly. But it was noisy. It rustled the leaves of the trees as it passed. It shook the unsteady boughs of a few trees. But it was soft. It was soft enough to carry a delicate silk cloth through the trees and in between the branches. It held the cloth carefully in its grasp so that it wouldn’t be torn. It held the silk cloth like it was its child, a soft, delicate child. A child that was pink.

It was night in the forest. Some gentle moonbeams passed through the canopy to light the ground in patches. The beams formed patterns on the ground. Patterns of nature. Patterns of beauty. Some starlight also filtered through and criss-crossed with the moonbeams to create a war of light in mid air that could only be seen from the right place and at the right angle.

The war of the light in the forest was like life. You can only see and understand life if you look at it from the right place and at the right angle. Some people find the place and the angle early on in life. Some people find it later in life. And some people never find it because they gave up or because they just didn’t want to. And those are the people who never feel complete. Because they don’t even understand the meaning of their lives. Hence, they just roam around their entire lives without any purpose. They live life waiting for death without any idea how death is going to be.

And some stumble on the meaning of life. They are those who gave up or didn’t want to, but just caught a glimpse of it and then searched for it. But that is rare. That only happens when you see a soul. That happens when you glance into the eyes of nature’s spies. That happens when the wind carries a pink silk cloth and delivers it to your feet.

Amongst the battles of the moonbeams and the starlight at one point in the vast forest was a young boy. He was barely eight years old. He was a child, with a child’s mind. He was lying on a small patch of ground where there were no trees. Above his eyes was a battle of light. It was surreal. It was like nature was fighting itself just to please that one child. But that child was asleep. Nature’s show was wasted, but only to the material world. Beyond the material world the battle of light had more meaning. It had the meaning of life.

The child’s skin was rough. It had faced a harsh world. A world that was beyond smiles and laughter. For smiles didn’t leave scars. Laughter didn’t produce memories of pain and hatred. The child’s cheeks, which should have been pick, were red. They were red because of scars. Blood had bled both internally and externally. Both from the body and from the soul.

The wind lifted the short hair of the child gently and held it in its grasp for fleeting moments. It was as if the wind wanted to wake the child up to see the battle of the light, or even just the world, but didn’t want to deal any pain. The wind was not evil. It had a heart and a soul just like the rest of nature and it knew how pain felt. It knew how it felt to feel pain, although only at the soul. The wind had no body it just had a mind.

The child remained asleep. He stayed in his solitary slumber away from the world that hurt him when he was awake. It was the only place that he could feel safe. Compared to his life, even his nightmares seemed like dreams. His nightmares only scared him. They didn’t hurt him. The monsters came and went. They didn’t leave their marks and scars on his body or mind. They would be forgotten with time. But each scar would be remembered for as long as he lived.

The wind continued to carry the pink silk cloth around the forest carefully. It dodged each leaf, each branch and each twig that was in its path to destroy the delicate silk. It flew with the wind, almost part of the wind. It looked alive and as if it had a soul. As if it could feel. As if it could breathe. As if it could live.

The wind carried the silk over to the boy. It held the silk in the air for a moment. It waited, for nature’s cue. And then it let go. The silk fell slowly to the boy. It fell inch by inch, foot by foot, on its way to the ground. It approached the child cautiously, but with care. The silk cared.

The silk fell to the ground and on the child’s head. The child didn’t wake up. He remained in his slumber … his eternal slumber. Death had come too early. The soul had gone and left the body behind. The meaning of life remained a mystery.

Life is like being in a hollow cube-shaped room. The room may seem to be a cube from the inside, but could be a sphere on the outside. Whatever meaning of life you deduce while alive will be shaped by who you are. You can only understand life outside it. The meaning would lie in death. The meaning would never be known, because death is not life. There is no life then. It is the end.