Winds of Change

Yesterday evening was a beautiful one. One with a revelation and like a flashlight pointing towards a changing world. Thanks to the unexpected "Laila" marauding the eastern coast, Jabalpur was blessed with a rather unusual evening.
The weather was cooler, the evening temperatures dropped as the cool winds swept through the city. The house inside was hotter than the outside. I took this opportunity to take a break from studies. Standing outside in the open air I felt that sense of euphoria that accompanies so often when such a weather comes around. But there was something that was missing. I was tempted to go to the top of the new hospital building to feel the air. So I did. I went up four floors and then stood on the sort of projection that juts out of the buildings terrace. It was the tallest building in the neighbourhood. After a long time I was witnessing the Jabalpur "skyline". Long since the building was built and newer buildings came up, I had lost this view I was witnessing at that precise moment. The last of the birds were making their way back to their trees. The sun had set and an orangish hue painted the western horizon, the sky a patchwork of clouds that looked as if they were in a confusion whether to rain or not. But it had rained somewhere close by as I could smell the familiar and intoxicating fragrance of earth. I could feel my hair stand up. I looked below. Few years back I could see this sight from the terrace of my house, when the tall palm trees looked formidable on which we scribbled our names with nails, when there was a beautiful garden, water flowed in fountains and waterfalls, when the summer was in the luxury of mangoes, the rains in the taste of the Jamuns, the winter with the guavas and the miniature Japanese guavas, when there was a rose garden in the backyard, when I used to play cricket with the gardener's son, when I was a child..When the mornings and the evenings were the same, when all there was to do was to play hide and seek or 'pittu' or some or the other game. It was another lifetime altogether. And now as I stood on the roof I could see the world around me as it had changed. The 'duniyadaari' surrounding me like an inevitable shroud. I spread out my arms, closed my eyes and felt the smell of earth fill my lungs, felt these winds, these winds of change which penetrated every pore of my skin and suddenly I felt as if I had been reborn, reborn to accept the realities that were facing me today. I knew that the world had changed and so had I, but the sky was the same, so was the wind and so was the feeling that came in when I stood there. And it told me it would always be there to guide me whenever I felt it was too hard to come to terms with the present. I got down the four floors and went back to my desk and opened the page where I had left it. It was time that I turned it.