Mild sun. Low clouds. But no rain. The rains have stayed away today. Just a mild shower yesterday – promised to be a precursor to a mammoth storm but now again, as I write this, it’s raining again.
But it’s been a good weekend so far – a little reading – right now I am reading about a place I never been to. Cambodia. “First They Killed My Father,” – a first person account of the killing fields during Pol Pot’s despotic Khmer Rouge regime. I wonder really what makes people so numbed to pain – how do ordinary people allow an illogical idea to so rule their senses that they allow for such massacres of the spirit such as genocide? I am glad that India has been spared of such violent slashes by history – democracy, has in a way, protected its people more than in other countries in Asia.
Today, I did a little shopping – bought a yellow shirt and gifted a tracksuit for my dad. But I didn’t find what I was looking for – a little lucky charm. I know it sounds strange – to go around looking for a lucky charm. “A charm isn’t lucky by itself,” you might say. “It gains luck on its way.”
Long ago, when I was a child, I used to think that smooth pebbles were my lucky charm. When I used to go to school, and then I was but a lost lonely child, I always had a collection of little pebbles in my uniform’s pocket. Each time, the teacher would ask a question, (something which I dreaded as I was too shy to raise my head and speak) in trepidation my hands would finger the coldness of the pebbles in my pocket. It used to give me a sense of security, a certain calmness underneath the surface tension. Those stones were like my best friends – always around when you need them, and never asking for anything in return. Somewhere through the years, I lost them. And with that began the most turbulent years of my life. That turbulence passed over, as all things do pass away. But I never did fall out of love with those stones. So now I am searching again for those little lucky charms.
But pebbles I see are not so common in a city littered with stones on the road. Where have all the pebbles gone I wonder? Odd thoughts on a Sunday evening but I just had to put them down.
PS: I am happy today. Very happy. And I am happy that I am happy.
