Once upon a poem

I once wrote a poem and kept in on the windowsill.  I intended it to be a short poem but somehow I couldn’t complete it. Nothing came to my mind.  I tried wrestling with the words, squeezing them and wringing them and tried all possible means of putting pen to paper but no good came of it. They refused to be put down on paper. So, finally, tired and hungry I went and sat on the grass in the garden.

It was a warm summer day with an ever so slight breeze without the slightest indication that it would be any different from another warm, lazy day.  The sunflowers seemed to be dozing off in the heat and even the ants were nowhere to be seen. 

The butterflies seemed to be the only ones with energy. They were fluttering around gaily and tickling the petals of the daisies one after another and seemed to be in a flirtatious mood. 

Suddenly a strong gust of wind descended from nowhere and rushed by at a breakneck speed.  It took me a few seconds to realize but before I could react and realize that my unfinished poem had run away with the wind. 

I waited the entire day for the words to come back but it was in vain. Finally, late in the evening, when the balimahis had winged their way back home and the dauk had gone to sleep, I got into bed.  A strong wind grew up at night and as I lay in bed the words came back to me. 

The words came back and told me lot of stories.  They told me about the talking heads of the long dead wise men who were conversing by the central park in the city.  They told me about the people who lit candles and offered prayers at the feet of the statues once a year and then forgot about them. They told me about the waters of the Brahmaputra that peel away the land bit by bit like husk from a coconut. They told me about the groups of god-fearing men who killed their fellow men without any fear. And last of all, they told me about my fellow brethren who sleep with smug smiles on their faces waiting for their various gods to deliver them and solve their problems of pollution, corruption and lack of identity. 

balimahi - common wagtail

dauk - white-breasted water hen

Brahmaputra- Second longest river in India in the state of Assam