A Bit Of Earth
There is a nip in the air now and the sun sleeps longer, wakes later, shines softer. Beneath the trees there is a busy squirrel, calling out in shrill camaraderie, to friends and foes alike. Birds call, sleepily.
Listen carefully, and you can just about hear a yawn in their chirps and chitters.
A group of young YouTubers are practicing their dance steps in a sunny spot in the Park. The dance is a fusion of Bharatnatyam, Kathak, and Oddissi forms. The young instructor and choreographer is male and lithe, and he gyrates, spins, bends, bows, stretches and leaps into the air.
It is a pleasure to watch.
And then the students, 12 of them, all women, slim, and dressed in bright coloured long salwar kameezes, that compliment their figures and forms, dance and whirl, pirouette and drop, rise and bow to the soft, Indian classical music that emanates from a phone and amplifier.
In that soft light, serenaded by sleepy birds and whispering winds, they resemble flamingos in flight.
In my mind, I am dancing, too, and there is a smile on my lips, as large and luminous as the emerging sun, as I walk by, slowing my steps, and then coming to a complete standstill, to watch and wonder.
All dance, all music, moves me. I don’t need to understand the words.
My playlist is eclectic. I have Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, English, Punjabi, Bengali, Irish, Chinese, Indonesian, Kannada, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu and Nepali songs in it. Bob Marley rubs shoulders with Iglesias, Enya, Mehdi Hassan, Yesudas, Bhupen Hazarika, Sinead O’Connor, Dua Lippa, Daler Mehndi, Gurdas Mann, Mohammad Rafi, Simon and Garfunkel, Taylor Swift, Jim Reeves, Eminem, John Denver…
And I am telling myself, that this earth, is where we are all born. It is in this soil that our seeds were spilled, and we took root and grew. Like the trees and every blade of grass, every fruit on every tree, we shall grow, too, and bear fruit, and then die, and be consigned to the ground that created us in the first place.
Whether we believe that ‘dust thou art, to dust returnest’ and are buried, or that our body consists of five elements, and that it needs to return to its constituent elements, and is cremated, or kept in the Tower of Silence, to be eaten by vultures and birds of prey: we are all a part of this earth.
And since the soil we live off is the same, our seed, the same, our roots, shoots, flowers and fruits the same, why, on EARTH, do we feel that we are inferior to, or better than, others of our ilk?
