Grounded

I like to imagine my feet taking root in the ground. On a wet land, my feet getting stuck at a particular position. Maybe I’ll remove my shoes off so that the process can take speed. The loose earth in between my toes will soon be filled with moss. Oh boy! Leaves will grow from my fingers. 

I will probably make a good tree. On some May day like this one, people would stop by to take a breather under my shade. I would prefer old couples. Naughty in their hearts and careful in their touch. To get their glands secret some adrenalin, I would let my leaves fall over them. But what I’ll need is some cool breeze.

Summers are bad with cool things. They don’t really get along. Summers make me really thirsty. And when I’ll grow into a tree I will need some water more than usual. If nobody would water me, I don’t think it will be a crime to go down on my knees and lick the grass.

SERENDIPITY

They say the earth laughs in flowers. And sometimes even the earthlings get to share it. 

On a not so very special evening you’re waiting for the red light to turn green. Those 120 seconds of your life make your heart run away wearing your blue reebok shoes with a wide smile. It is like it can’t stay at its position anymore. 

Right after you use the brakes and the wheels of your car stop spinning, your inklings begin to process. And you don’t realize the window is half opened; until the process of your thoughts gets interrupted by a voice. A voice of a boy who in his adolescence is clothed in poverty. He smiles at you with a broken tooth. You give him I-don’t-want-any-nonsense look and he smiles hard in his tattered clothes. 

Even before you roll your window up, he drops a red carnation flower inside. You don’t want it, you say.  He says please and his eyes grow bright. You nod in reassurance. He compliments saying ‘it’s looking so beautiful here, please take it. I don’t want money for it’. You’re silent and he goes on. You are confused and you involuntarily accept it. The next moment he winks at you and goes behind the auto rickshaw standing next to your car. Leaving you feel awkward.  You realize the auto driver is observing everything. He seems perplexed too.  

You take the red carnation flower in your hand, give it a baffled look and pan your eyes to the side mirror. And for the next ten seconds your eyes are stuck to it because the boy peeks from behind and hides back. He is playful and you can’t stop yourself from calling him back with a grin. A huge one. You feel the different shades of a usual day and then you present it to me before I learn the sweet fragranced tale hidden in its wilted petals. And it’s only afterwards I realise how it tickled the chime of laughter inside me just because of a flower. And what it confirms is that the universe is always speaking to us. Sending us little messages, treating us with reasons to smile and causing serendipities to make us stop, look around and believe in it.