Those fading shadows of a simple life

Those fading shadows of a simple life

There will be those who will always shine and live by the code of a competitive life. It fuels them, and there are many names to it – some call it a disciplined life, some success, and some power that everyone secretly craves for and never admit to want. I am no one to refute that; in fact, I might have pursued that. But as on date, I am no longer mainstream, and it took years to reach here – from oblivion enforced to reflected glory to now free-will oblivion. This was a long call to reach my ears; my only regret is I kept ignoring it through  blinding city lights and pursuit of happiness (that in themselves were never that). My only regret is that I did not heed or respect it, by hoping it will fade away in this neglect. Every time the splendor of this lone voice stood ignored, it kept silent but never left.

The sea secretly craves for its blind ancestral coacervaetes; the blind sea turtle, all just born, feeble legs still not out of calcium egg shells, hears the primordial call of salty waves and smells the planktons in foamy crests and heads alone to the ocean. It has more courage, willing to disappear into abyss and danger of an unknown world – but the courage it shows, the sand marks it pushes in its hurried bid to rush back are evidence. I lacked that courage for long, but the voice kept travelling with me, like shadows by rail tracks, like sun beams through sugarcane fields. At last, I acknowledge this force, and hope to spend time in its shadows. Oblivion, obliteration – many names given. Thank you so much for that! I appreciate this grace and thank all those who came my way in all manners. Their inclusion weaves the fabric of this brief life and I would have had it no way (though no one controls their destiny).

Edward abbey, Helen and Scott Nearing, Thoreau, Dick Pronecke, Wendell Berry, David Coperthwaite, Harlan Hubbard – All I understand from reading them is that the simpler life is more spaced out and relaxed. That a small boat wafting aimless in the drizzle wind, as free as Beavers building dams, as free as the last rain on the winter mountains, is far better than a glorified life in pursuit of many things. Thoreau wrote that the forest trees are his cathedral, Harlan Hubbard wrote that conscious living is a pursuit of deletions from life, not accumulations.

There is a particular beam of sunlight, at around 7 am each day in winter, that permeates through the upward winding road by the Archery ground at Ranikhet. A large pine tree bathes in its glory next to a church converted to cloth weave center for Army Widows. There is an Oak tree above Rani jheel that awaits the glory of this sunlight reaching it by midday (after the pine tree has let her go). There is a lonely tea stall next to the only Post Office at Kumaon Regiment headquarters at Ranikhet, where, inside the large glass jar, a few Peanut-studded biscuits await my coming. If this Covid situation improves, I would very very very much want to be soaking in them hot thank you so much! Thoreau found it at Walden, sea turtles in ocean, Scott nearing at Maine and Vermont rural farms, - why would I not find that simple life of oblivion now that life is bestowed so freely upon me?