Connections
(In response to Carolyn Hastings’ prompt, Year-End Note, 2021)
This year, more than any other, has been a series of ups and downs: Everest-high mountains, and Mariana-trench depths. No, I wouldn’t call it a roller coaster ride: because that, can be switched off. This can’t.
I decided, though, that I would light a lamp, to tide me over these dark patches.
My mother used to tell me that we need to light a lamp twice a day. Once, after bathing, in the morning, after sunrise. And once, after sunset, because that is when darkness sets in, in the mind, and the world. I have been doing that, as long as I can remember. These are some of the brass lamps that I light at home.
I learnt, too, that the only lamps that can help us stay lit, are the connections that we make in our lives. Times without number, without conscious thought, people have reached out to me, whenever I was in dire straits, and lent a ear, a hand, a smile, a thought, a blessing. Today, for instance, Jane Frost (Jane Grows Garden Rooms), reached out, all unknowing, that we were wading through bureaucratic barf, and sent a sunbeam shaped canoe to me. Yesterday, I. Trudie Palmer, thanked me for something I wrote and hauled me out of the morass of self pity I had fallen into. And always, friends like Sujona Chatterjee and my sister, Suja Sukumar, reach out to help.
I have built connections with people this year who I didn’t know the existence of, before September 2021, on Medium
And the thought that stays with me, is this. Connections lubricate relationships, and make life worth living. The two shores of a river never meet: the only way we can cross over from one shore to another, is by consciously deciding that whatever is on the other shore, is worth rowing, or swimming towards.
©️ 2021 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
This is a response to the prompt, ‘Year-End Note 2021’, by Carolyn Hastings, for the publication Paper Poetry. I have an uneasy feeling that the story has exceeded the stipulated 250 words, but I hope it is not by too many words.
