I was out on my morning walk. I normally walk inside the apartment complex I live in, but sometimes I go out onto the roads.
It is always a walk that exercises my mind more than my body.
It is a bit late in the morning today, and life on the streets is busier than the usual 5.30 a.m. life I see.
There are more men and women waiting for buses to take them to work. Shopkeepers are cleaning the storefronts and getting their lifeless mannequins out. Shutters are being noisily drawn up and life is beginning to stir.
On a small empty patch next to the road, a woman has set up shop. This is a seasonal one. Ganesha festival is around the corner. The smart lady is selling clay idols of the Lord. It is a small sales window.
On a wide wooden platform, hundreds of the idols are laid out. They are all colourful and have Lord Ganesha in different forms.
The elephant trunk is common, but the forms are different. Some have trunks which are short and some long. The Vighnaharta Lord is pink in some and brown in others. He is dressed in different colours. God in his many manifestations, one would say.
I stop a good distance away and let my eyes run over the display. There are a few others who are out to buy and have a good look. A maroon electric car passes by and pulls over. A couple steps out. The kind that has gone for a walk in the park in a car!
The Apple Watch shines from their wrists. The lady has a pair of fluorescent green shoes and a matching apple-green T-shirt. The guy has a contraption strapped to his arm, the one that measures your heartbeat and all other stuff. Both have sunglasses on and the sun is not even out.
As they approach the cart, I see him.
An old man with a plastic sack lugged across his shoulder. It is evident that he has been dealt a poor hand by life. He looks scruffy. Unruly white hair, a beard that is unkempt and a shirt that is in bad shape.
A life spent collecting plastic bottles and other scrap that can be sold somewhere for a pittance. What brought him here is something I might never know.
He walks haltingly towards the cart and stands watching the idols. A contrast as stark as it can get. Fluorescent green T-shirts and grey and wrinkled tatters.
Some carrying branded water bottles and some discarded plastic bottles.
The couple have a long look, point to a few of the idols, discuss something and choose their Lord. They pay and walk away carrying the idol with all love and care.
The old man moves closer, bends down and picks up a few plastic bottles lying on the road. He straightens himself, looks lovingly at the gods on display, smiles and walks away.
Can you tell me, God, what he might have been thinking or smiling for?
On second thoughts, maybe one should be asking what did God see, and who saw God?
I walk away as life on the streets becomes busier.
All I can think of is that God is everywhere. Some are selling the Lord, some are buying, and some are left wondering about what went wrong. All the while he watches.
Kabir in his own way put it thus.
“मोको कहाँ ढूँढे रे बन्दे, मैं तो तेरे पास में।
ना तीरथ में, ना मूरत में, ना एकांत निवास में।”
(Where do you search for me, my friend? I am right beside you. Not in pilgrimages, not in idols, not in solitary retreats.)
As for me, well, as the song goes.
Oh Lord, I am stuck in Lodi again.
Well described with simplicity
Great job Sudhir
Thanks arun
Beautifully written. Keeps us hooked from start to end.
Good to know you liked it. Thanks