“Expanding circles
    on noon waters  ...
     ... A white bird’s plunge ! ”
- Self 
 
 
 Prose  

IN THE noon’s stillness, the placid water in the pond mirrors the world -- the green trees that look grey, the blue sky that acquires a silver tinge, the white clouds that look like balls of cotton ...! Everything else is still -- even the wind, who loves the snooze on the noon’s lap. The little one stands mesmerised at the pond’s eastern edge. For his short years, he has never seen or sensed anything like this -- so still, so much like a hanging on the wall, so much inviting to keep watching from every angle. He tilts his head this way or that. He goes closer to the water’s edge, but stops short. He fights the temptation to put his foot in the still water. He loves that stillness, that mirrory glow on the surface. He lowers himself on the grass, and bends over to look deeper into the water. There, he sees himself. A little taken aback, he retreats a little. Unintentionally, his fingers find a pebble in the grass. He looks at it, plays with it for a while in his little hands.

 

He wants to hurl the pebble into the water. Yet, captivated by the noon’s stillness, he chooses not to do any mischief. He leaves the pebble on the grass, and looks back at the water that looks as if frozen. This stillness is my gift for today, he says to himself. In the distance, however, a white bird takes a flight from a clumsy tree -- attracting the little one’s attention. The bird soars high and higher. The boy is amused. And then the bird turn head down, and takes a dive toward water, straight, fast ... and takes a smooth plunge -- plonk. That plonk disturbs the boy’s romance with silence. The plonk disturbs the placid water as well.

 

A circle appears on its surface. Then another and then yet another -- followed by many, each expanding steadily to the water’s edge. The little boy at the water’s edge is irritated. Why should the bird disturb the stillness? -- he wonders. But he is also amused, so to say, by the placidness of the surface being torn by the bird’s plunge. That’s a lesson from Nature. It accepts everything. Accommodates everything. Absorbs everything -- the noon’s stillness, the water’s mirror-like placidness, the bird’s flight up and down and into water. That lesson occupies the boy’s head and heart as easily as the expanding circles occupy the water’s surface. That noon, he has gained something that he chooses to keep to himself. (This memory is a lifelong companion.)