My Tryst with Twilight
After a prolonged spell of turbulence, thunder, lightning, howling winds and dark clouds, it is bright and sunny once again. The rains are over. Singed grass, wilting flowering plants and dust-laden trees are bursting forth with life. New leaves have lent an ethereal verdancy to the entire existence. The invitation to step out to indulge with nature is simply irresistible.
It is late in the day when the Sun is departing, and its last longing look at the sky is making it blush. Some clouds have come from the faraway ocean and are just lazing around. They are the pampered kindred of breeze. They bear an uncanny likeness with boats berthed near the shore and swaying with the waves lapping against them. There is a throbbing all around me. Though muffled yet, it echoes the pounding of waves and rumbling of surf nestling in being. It makes me aware of esoteric notes of a mystical hymn and the steady cadence of the footfalls of a caravan veiled in the quiet and stillness of the sky. The clouds have encircled the Sun, and a bright orange outline has appeared in the bargain, highlighting their contours. Doesn’t it resemble the much-acclaimed rāsa of Vrindāvana? Or, are they trying to make the Sun stay longer on the western horizon? Can they make it happen? Has it ever happened? Irrespective of their colour or contour, the clouds have never been able to hide, stop or hold the Sun. Like an ochre clad monk, this celestial beacon has kept all the planets spellbound and orbiting, executing orderly steps of a whirling dance around it since eternity. The thought ushered me back to my introductory lessons in biology and chemistry. Talking of cells and atoms, the teacher had said that each cell had a nucleus, and so did each atom. Activities of incredible intensity and with great orderliness took place within the confines of every cell and atom. This memory replay made me wonder that whether was it possible or feasible to transpose the two scenes?
Returning my gaze to the sky, I realised that the images of the Sun at the centre of our galaxy and nuclei at the centre of atoms and cells seemed appreciably and convincingly interchangeable. The resultant awareness of the presence of trillions of cellular galaxies within each one of us, the living organisms, and likewise so many universes like ours within the parameters of the one limitless cosmos, named as virāta, or brahmāńda, by the ancients, held me in an ecstatic state of mind. Revelling in the consequent rapture of that experience, I couldn’t help but stay rooted in that moment which soon revealed a vibrant eternity enclosed within its precincts, expanding continuously at a startling pace.
The very next moment, I felt a stirring much closer to me, vying for my attention. My gaze and thoughts converged at a spot where two doves were taking turns, bringing twigs from somewhere and flying into the ficus trees growing by the boundary wall. Before disappearing into the grove, they rested on the fence that I shared with the neighbours. They would cast a furtive glance in my direction for just a fraction a moment and then scurry into the trees. I had kept my camera away very reluctantly because they seemed to get scared each time I stepped out to observe or record their forays. Even in my hiding, they could sense my presence and delay their arrival on the fence. They must be making a nest for themselves among the dense foliage of my ficus. Wasn’t it amazing? How could they spot the tree and a part of it suitable for their nest and the twigs lying somewhere and then get them in their beaks one at a time? I had never seen any of them arranging the twigs into a nest, but I was sure that they were in the process of building one, which was going to be their world within the world of the ficus grove. I found myself wondering at my prospects of someday seeing their nest and the fledglings in it. But for the breeze whispering the song of the dusk to me accompanied by echoes of the temple bells ringing during evening prayers, I wouldn’t have minded waiting for them to take wings and fly out. One day, they would also find another shelter somewhere, make a nest for themselves and thus, the story would go on and on and on.
The dark goddess of Night has cast Her spell over the Sun, clouds, birds and even the sky. All of a sudden, it is so still all around me. “They will all come back; they always do,” breeze assured me,” but for now, you will have to proceed along your path.” I also found myself moving away from the scene. Those moments of indulgence with the clouds, the Sun, birds, trees, etc., rested in that brief pause, which itself was just a fragment of the eternal continuum. Although transient, yet it was no different from the all-encompassing eternity. It was the substrate for our perpetual state of flux from here to there and there to here. That space that enabled all the movements within cells and atoms was no different from the one that held the galaxies in its bosom. Whether within or without the galaxies, the cells and atoms, it was the same flow, the same space, and they followed a similar pattern of transition and continuity. Blazing Sun or the soothing showers; floods and tides; blooming and wilting; songs and silence so on and so forth; every act gets staged for a particular duration and at a specific place only. Transience enables one breath to follow the other and one heartbeat to repeat itself after another. It is this substrate that hosts this eternal continuity in life. Impermanence has permanence hiding in its being.
My brief indulgence at twilight was a tryst with the dissolution of all distinctions. It was a lesson in and beyond the universal oneness.
It was a realisation indeed !!
