I remember when we used to walk, hand in hand, through the streets of everyday busytude. People hurrying past, cars and buses honking, meandering, dust rising, winds taking, bliss settling… I remember how I used to scavenge on the ground for sepals of that majestic flower, that flower which proclaimed to be the forest’s greatest fear, and thus, greatest love – the flame, Gulmohar, or The Flame of the Forest. I remember how I used to separate those sepals into seplets, and scratch off its green inside to reveal a sticky fresh underside, which we then played with, using them as nail ornaments. And all that, not just for fun, but also with the interest of holding your hand a few moments longer…
Today, I saw a Gulmohar in full bloom. Standing tall on green grass, on the other side of the road. An army area; fenced out. Protected, and isolated. With no children like you and me to leap around and play. Simply, in full bloom. The seplets drift down, with no you, no me, to gather them, and make them love.
Today, you and me are worlds apart. We barely know each other. You talk so different, I hardly understand. I bet that I talk insanity, not given to understanding either. You have probably found others to hold your hand and play with you, and so probably have I (um, or maybe not.). Weird to see, be, change. Can things be the same?
Let us not ponder why they should be the same. We both cherish a longing memory of that sameness. The worth pondering is which asks, what is it really to ‘going back’? Truly think. We are here, now, perhaps worse off than that before, but can we make of the coming what it had been that before? Maybe we can, but you and I, we are not isolated lovers in a sterile universe. We are complex networks of people, places, memories, happenings…. And those networks, they will have to change with us. Or we end up in the pyre where all things returned do.
There is a Left and a Right. Must we chose one? Can we not have another, without having to negotiate? Perhaps there is a digital and a non-digital. But for all things practical, is there a viable non-digital? Perhaps there is trust, and then again, perhaps not. Can we see from here, and move? There are the good old days, and then, there are these hideous present. But for the way ahead, do we have to strive for those good old? Is that really a plausible? Can we not see the good from the old, and inherit a future taking off from this ghastly present?
Is there purpose in dwelling in the past, but to learn the happenings, so as to understand the present, and construct a what is to be? (and of course, for lovable memories?)
Not rules and code on top of rules and code to produce a new set of rules and code for another set of rules and code to build on. But reconciling with the what is yet to be for peace…
So perhaps we must just let the Gulmohar tree inside the wired off enclosure be. Let it be. And you and I, changed we are, and apart, once dancers of love, now partners in changing the world, perhaps we should see from here where we are, without hope or agenda of the past. So be it.
Today, as the rain rained, and wind blew, the little seplets drift gently to dance, and I remember you.
