The gardener and the garden!

When the cherished garden of the gardener starts to decay, he , taking solemn cognisance of the matter, starts applying ways to save it.

It begins with spraying pesticides, of several kinds that to his knowledge, would help garden regain its glory . But none of them could help stem the rot. He imagines the decay , the peril to which the land would be subjected , and it shudders him. His heart rends with pain at the mere thought of this destruction , which his garden would be going through in future . He would be devastated , he thought . Oh how much did he love them, just as if all those plants were his children , and the land his own extension , his own body, his own self. 

Oh! This curse of life!

He looked at the expanse, soon to be barren, wistful , sad and devastated. "Ruined!", he murmured, as his lips quivered and two drop of tears hung precariously to it .

As the time seemed to drag away, night and darkness zoomed  on the land. He rose and walked away. A perturbed soul.

After the gardener had left, a stem rose,  and was moved with such pity for itself, that it rend a huge cry.  "What fate has befallen us, this doom, this sudden decadence, this perishing of the soul before its time!", it wailed. 

 And then, the pain of the gardener, the frustration of his attempts to rehabilitate it, stung its heart. "What has been this decayed built of my body, that could not accept the benevolence of my Master ! What has been the nature of this sudden perversion , that it could not respond to the care of the Master! Oh this hell! How could one bear this pain of ones decay, and the  greater pain of alienation from ones Master".

Days passed, the garden continued to slip into decadence , the plants continued to shrivel and wither. The gardener , however , preserved with his hope for its renewal , for its resurgence to life.

More days passed, and it finally became inevitable , the passing of garden into barrenness . The gardener had continued with his efforts to revive the land and the garden, but only to be dashed all the time. This took a toll on his health too  and he began to keep sick every now and then. His family members requested him to stop visiting the garden, and  decided among themselves , that it was perhaps in the best interest to sell off the land. However , gardener was a difficult man to be convinced to part with his land.  As his health continued to deteriorate further, it became certain that he would not survive for long. Seeing this, his children stopped pestering him to sell off the land. "It was only a matter of time", they thought.

One fine day, his health grew worse. It became clear that his end was near. He looked up to his family, and surprisingly none of them seemed familiar to him. He asked his sons, to carry him to the garden, and leave him there , alone , for the night. At first they demurred, but finding the gardener obstinate to his demand, they obliged .

The gardener lay in the centre of the garden.  All around him, lay the sight of a destroyed heaven. He began to sob convulsively, hiding his face in his palms. Suddenly, he discerned an almost indecipherable sob from somewhere in the near distance . There was not a soul around on this dark night. The noise seemed to come from nowhere, when suddenly he saw a half decayed stem, sobbing and shuddering violently .

"Don't be surprised Master! I am your child. Your plant ! As I heard you sobbing there I could not help sobbing myself , too. We all have failed you collectively . All of us, the whole bunch of plants and this land ."

Gardener lay watching the stem speak,  bemused , yet not afraid.

It began again, "All of us here have been discussing it day and night . What is this calamity that has suddenly befallen us! This disease that has turned us into a decaying hell hole ! This disease that has ruined our soul itself,  Master. However , Master, that pain isn't as big as the pain of embarrassment that we have all gone through , of not having been cured by your numerous benign attempts. You, who gave all your life, to nurture and protect us, have been failed by this disease within us . Heaven knows!, I and like me, everyone here is perplexed by this calamity, yet that stands nowhere close to the pain that we go through, as we decay to our ends, despite the efforts of a benign gardener. Master, we have failed you !". And as it drawled these final words , it got transfixed as a stem again.

The gardener rose. A sudden thought welled up inside him. He went up to the stem, held it with care and warmth. Sobbing lightly now, he began , " I see now , what I could never see all this time ! I see the truth! All of you, my children, forgive me, for having ridden you with this guilt. Forgive me for having projected my care for you , as care for your personal good. All this time, I kept thinking , "how is it that these plants have suddenly taken to rotting, despite of my love and care for them!" , while I forgot that it was my fantasy  of the "beautiful" garden, that had decayed. Not you, however ! Go on , live your "diseased" self with élan! I can only be forgiven then."

And there, with those words , his soul left his body .

I stand nude!

I stand nude. I laugh. 

I am standing nude at the city square, and I am laughing. No, I stood nude and then I started laughing, or was it other way round?  Anyways, now, I am watching the laughter around me. There is a joke doing rounds, not of words, but of sight, of mind, of thought, of the realization that a man, stands nude, in the center of the city, and people look at it.  Many haven’t laughed since ages, some develop wrinkles on their eye corners, laughing. Some tripped over the pavement, with bouts of laughter. It was the greatest celebration of all times. Never before had the city realized that it can all laugh together. Never before, has this moment dawned on all of its inhabitants. Yet, of all the laughs, there was one, which differed from others. It was mine. I laughed too.

My laugh was different. Not in the way different is different, but in the way that it was different from all other differences in laugh. Most present were laughing at their own sense of compulsion being overturned in folly by me. But, I wasn’t laughing at the same. Could I have done that? Laughing at oneself? Laughing at the laughter that has originated from my own source of revolt. It doesn’t seem to be even grammatically correct. Recursions are not allowed in languages, and when they appear, know that that’s end of rational thought. Irrational laughter follows. Thus was it. The laughter, all in itself, for no rational reason, for no reasonable purpose. For no aim of mocking a villain’s laugh or an intellect’s  scorn, or that of a hero’s benevolence. 

I stand nude and I laugh.

I know, I cannot proceed without deconstructing the event now, but I am not taking that course. Rationalists can leave, here, to continue with their laughter. 

I will move ahead with this laughing, nude, irrational me. I remember having done this on numerous occasions. I go, I stand nude and I laugh.  Every shopkeeper in the locality know it ; I have been denuded already and many times. Even the traffic policeman, knows that, and that is why his laughter is mostly on visual aspect, and that is the reason, he  grudges , "Oh! again comes the devil", but doesn’t stop me.

So much on nudity, nevertheless. As if, that is the most shocking thing to say or write about. What does this nudity entail? Lack of something? Clothes you say? Hah! I do not ever shed them. Nor have I now. Even when I bathe, I do it in clothes, I am scared of peeling  my second skin, but despite of all and everything  that I wear, I remain nude. I remain exposed. But too much on nudity for now. I am feeling cold, without clothes. Oh, did I just say, I always wear clothes? Well, I might have mistaken clothes with my ego. It’s not easy to be rational and deterministic about one’s writing in such a condition. The cold is growing.  City too begins to inch towards calm and peace of sleep. I move too, my standing here no longer serves my purpose. Yes, I too have a purpose. Just like all the sick minded people have.  There is this unique thing about purpose; it starts making you rational, the longer and dearer you sick to it. So, I shed them, as soon as they start becoming dear to me. Still, I take on new purpose every time, I have to; all sick minded people have to take a purpose. 

So, at present my purpose happens to be, ah! wait, I can hold on to it. Perhaps you will see for yourself!

The Descent !

I take steps, into vacuous repetitiveness, and the next step follows the previous one , as the former followed the one before it . Ting-tong, the elevator bell sounds , I was about to be 'lifted' below. An emptiness , enclosed in steel cage, opened up, and swallowed my presence. It was brightly golden inside , dying sun had poured all its rays in this enclosed cage, winking through its glassy window... 

The lower floor arrived . It didn't stop. It went lower, and lower , at once victorious of having not stopped at intermediate lowliness , and wistful of its quick decay into deeper recesses. Ah! The dialectical joy! 

And then the moment arrived , golden rays had poured out of this enclosure that wasn't able to hold it back as it descended into deeper and deeper lowliness. But, it held my soul, holding fast on to it, as the slimy darkness drenched me, when the descent came to a halt . It was a halt , I knew that . I could continue the descent , go deeper into the layers of dark and slimy ego, and yet for the moment , I had hit the limits of self. I could go no further. The doors slid open in front of me.

I had to choose . I looked over my head , nothing but infinite darkness flowed there, just as it did in almost all directions . The bell ting- tonged, and I saw myself almost jumping out of those two faintly shining metallic doors , when all of a sudden something took me aback . "Endure your descent, for it shall be your ascent", and I jerked myself back , shaking , almost shivering with turmoil. And as those faint metallic doors drew close in a kiss, I closed my eyes .

....Hunched down , I picked my mask , as I saw the the lift slide down into deeper recesses  and having fit the mask , so as to be indistinguishable , my steps followed each other again into the world of people. There was no going deeper beyond your will and then your will was your depth. I , cowering behind the mask, faintly chuckled at the defeat, and let my feet follow each other on the road that led to people