Forgotten Woods

There was a time when this woodpecker used to go to the Rhododendron trees and make holes to find insects. Then they will make a house for themselves and live. It never mattered to them as trees are uncomplaining. It never mattered to me as I used to find a much lower skin to peel and write my stories with white chalks. Finding a shelter was easier thus.

Some winter, when an untimely storm blew my old friend, we both got homeless. I have wondered before. I was concerned about its ageing. Sometimes me and the woodpecker will look into each others eyes and read minds. Perhaps the mute companion of ours had a wave of understanding that he generously granted us. We would talk about our lost days, idle summers and explain our hearts the worthiness of it all, though vague.

My father used to say, when there is no beauty in your sadness, go to a tree and wrap your arms around it and cry. Uncountable times, I have. It was inexplicable how it has soaked all of it. They say, grief has its own waves to reach others. I have not mistaken the woodpecker's sparkling eyes in a dark night for anything else. We three have cried, together.

At times when I have had reasons to laugh, I have run to the woods. There you laugh once and they join in. Physics was always mundane. It used to call the generous, an echo. Sound reflects, so do the emotions that you could never distinguish through any baro-paro-meter or a class X subject.

With all that as a memory and what we easily lock up in our furnished apartments, as past, I have slept with strangers, liquored myself, added zeroes on the right side and grown money-plants. Reaching at that phase of a life where you await a storm, today, I feel like remembering all those.

There is a moment where you feel lonely because you are urban. Then you think of all those toys you had left behind as they were poor, trees as you couldn't take them to your new place. You think about your mother and how you could have visited her one extra time and surprise her. You couldn't, as it never occurred to you for an annual leave was there to save, to earn. You think about how your father would have been happy if you had called him once and said, hello. Just that.

To repair all that happened in springs, I shall go and count the leaves and the holes someday. The losses, we will share.

SoUmY@