Court

Today I went back to one Court where I felt I was placed among the nobles, not the king but still a person that inspires men to lay down their lives, men who’ll follow me into battle with their eyes closed, laying their faith in me. It looked different, smelt different, although I am not sure that if it was the place that seemed changed to me or was it some part of me that had been changed during the long absence of mine from the one place I loved, or was it that I had, god forbid forgotten the smells, the sight, the very touch of my favourite place on this Earth? I walked into the Court with my head held high, with my eyes riveted to the front, my steps somewhat faltering because of the absence of my old trusted sword broken in battle not long ago, the battle that had forced me to take a sabbatical from this Court. Striding, I could sense the eyes of people on me, scrutinizing stares that conveyed to me that I was unknown here. New faces, expressionless but with eyes that spoke volumes, I could see gazing around, in vain I tried to find old and familiar faces, ones that I could not spot, ones that would have been killed or gone away. With a small wave I strode forward into the court, taking a seat behind the Court’s nobles. I wanted to observe the young men and women who had replaced the wise old men I had left behind. It had been too long and time had slipped by me so fast. Silence had descended with the very first steps I had taken into this Court, but now it was now broken with whisperings and muttering, obviously to my account. Looking around I could see the contests among the nobles, with swords drawn, they strove to better themselves amongst their peers. I could see the amount of talent that seemed to ooze out of these youngsters, whereas the experienced swordsman in me reasoned that they needed work. After some time, one of the youngsters, after vanquishing everyone in sight, strode towards me and said, “I wish to challenge you, O stranger, who has so unwittingly come to this sacred Court of ours.” “O nobleman, great is your power while wielding your sword. I unfortunately, do not have my sword here with me, having broken it in combat.” “Fear not O stranger, we’ll find you a suitable sword!” So ultimately, armed with a borrowed sword I strode forward into the ring, aware again of the stares I got. With a cry the nobleman charged and I, a son of great fathers, also swung my sword high away my head and brought it down with great speed, only to have the ball fly out of the tennis court, accompanied with a call to arms, “ Bhaiya! Ball le kar aao!”.

Life's Speed

Life has suddenly taken up a speed that I can only watch dazed. By just looking at the passing trees of days from my window, I feel too much out of sync nowadays. Is it because before all of this I was so happily strolling down the garden path and now I am sprinting behind the truck carrying sugarcanes, grasping the thin air? I have no problem in sprinting, but then again when I look around, I can clearly see that if I continue sprinting in shall lose sight of what had happened earlier much before I would want to, that I am not currently not at leisure to observe the things that speed by me, things that I would miss even if I blinked. But the thing that most scares me if the road ahead. There is an unsettling doubt in my mind that if this sprint continues at this very same pace, would I not stop completely much before that is expected from me, let alone that, stop before I reach the goals I have set for myself. I now have started looking for the niches along the way, in tunnel I run in, to stop and rest. But alas to my dismay, these niches are few and hard to come by. Even when I starting getting into one of these, dead tired, pausing to rest, the other runners along the same track either display dismay, ‘come on, there is no time for waiting’, or display a snigger that clearly says, ‘aha! He has paused! We can overtake him now!’ But, what see of feel is the fact that I run at a faster pace than them. But then again the fact of life makes a last ditch attempt to throw me off-track,’ What is fast for you may not be fast for you.’ This statement alone is enough for me to pause while writing this, smiling at the language that I use. Looking back at the path travelled, I can see there are two paths by which I could have come, that have originated from a single one long back. Both move almost parallel. I say almost since there are many loops and turns, bends that occur in each of them, almost equally, with the only difference being the fact that in one they appear at set intervals whereas in the other they occur at random. Circumventing the various puddles and the huge rocks, these two converge at the point that I stand on right now. But the thing that scares me is that I don’t remember by which path I came from. Was it the one with regular bends or where they were irregular? Or was it for me to decide? Or was it someone unknown who hid the alternative path from me? I’ll never know. Then there is something known as relative velocity. Simply put, the velocity that something seems to pass you by is the sum of your and the things speed. At this point of time my mind refuses to believe that the speed by which the things fly past me is by my fault alone, it’s just that the speed of things is complementary to my speed. I write this at a place that is somewhere I am supposed to move with a pack with a single person leading it. So is this my fault that I can find only this time to stay back and do something. Or is it that life is not a highway, rather a tread mill with its control in an unseen hand?