The Empty Street...

GOD HAS HIS WAYS.

For hours I had lain in a kind of a disturbed torpor and at ever-lengthening intervals, a flash of pain darted through me, like the ripples of sheet-lightning and thunder which had caused the lights of the whole of Pantnagar go out that night. It was 3:00 a: m and I woke up all of a sudden with a jerk and with my hands desperately searching for some water in that eerie darkness. As I got my bottle, I quaffed all its contents in no time. Only when the chilled water explored my guts, I realized that I was alive. My lids burnt with tears. The walls of my room began to make me feel claustrophobic and I ran out to the end of my wing, to the staircase and till I reached the window upstairs. The eerie darkness all around made me feel hysteric, and I felt like yelling out and weeping loud.

As I lifted up my liquid eyes, there before me was The empty grey street running outside the hostel.I thought that people walk on it the whole day. Lovers stroll on it and she hears what they whisper into each other’s ears. She listens to the transactions the businessmen make, to the fights between two best friends cycling over her… she listens to every one who walks on her. But, at night, when it’s dark and lonely, when people have reached their destinations, no one cares to listen what her silence speaks. No one cares to feel what lies beneath the sheet of smothered dust- that lonely heart which craves for just one listener.

“He hears me” she said.

“He?” I asked in amazement.

“ He, the vast shadowless blue sky… He listens to my silence. He knows that beneath this smothered and crampled dust lies a fire, a fire which lights the Earth’s core. I am not lonely. He too spends the whole night with me awake because He can feel my silence and because He cares…”

“You say He cares!” I exclaimed in sarcasm, “He never approaches to wipe away your tears, when you cry. He’s never there to celebrate your happiness with you. He’s so so far away…”

“Ya” she smiled. “ He never approached me to wipe away my tears. He just send the wind to do so. He never celebrated my happiness with me, He only smiled at me to tell me He was happy for me. His smile is the sunshine, the limpid bright sunshine. And when I see Him smile, it lits the candles of the answers of all the queries of my life. BUT, DOES NOT EVERY ONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO SUNSHINE?”

I kept looking at her trying to understand what she was saying.

“But, not everyone craves and prays for his smile. Not everyone is devoted to Him the way you are…” I still protested.

“But everyone has the right to it. I can’t own him. He is the vast azure sky. That’s how it’s written- ‘MAKTUB’” She whispered in an entreating tone.

“MAKTUB” I Said to myself. “It’s written” says Coelho in his novel, ‘The Alchemist’. “How true…” I thought.

“ So,” I asked her a last question, “Will it go on this way? Will God always keep you deprived of His love?”

As I said these words, the lightening and thunder increased all of a sudden and in a few moments, it began to rain heavily; as though The Sky himself wanted to answer my question.

“Look!” she said in a calm and satisfied tone, “THE FATHER TOUCHES THE LADY AND LOVES HER, AND CREATES IN HER WOMB, A MIRACLE CALLED LIFE. HE TOUCHES ME DEEP INSIDE MY SOUL, LIKE THIS THROUGH HIS TENDER RAINDROPS, AND CREATES IN MY WOMB THIS MIRACLE…”

“MIRACLE?”

“YES” She exclaimed, “THE MIRACLE, THAT I AM ABLE TO GENERATE LIFE AND SUPPORT IT. HE GIVES ME THE HONOUR OF BIENG CALLED, THE MOTHER EARTH…”

I was astonished. Speechless. Dumbfounded.It was raining heavily. The distance between the sky and the street had been filled by th raindrops. What the world calls a simple shower, is actually one of God’s noble ways that the smothered lonely soil could touch the vast mysterious sky and unite with him, so that the circle of life moves on! Really, God has his ways! And they’re beautiful.

I had got my answers. The unrest accumulating in my heart from the past so many days had finally calmed down. I walked back to my room humming these lines from one of my favourite songs-

“ Isn’t it a wonder,
That I can see, a change in me…
But I won’t go back, coz that’s behind me…
And after all, strong words are spoken,
My heart will never be, never be, never be broken…”

As I was walking on the wet street the following day for my classes, I saw a fresh green creeper emerging from the mud. I smiled and continued my journey.