perhaps it was the way they tightly clasped each others hands as they walked down that long empty road. or the slight tilt of their heads which suggested that they were seeing with their ears, or merely the fact that i knew that the mornings event at the vishwa shanti ashram last saturday was bhajans by the children from the r v school for blind children. but they held my attention, these four boys as they walked down towards where i was sitting on the temple stairs. there was something about the way they walked, in one horizontal line, like a collection of footballers defending a free kick on their goal. except that their hands clasped each other, and not themselves :-) there was both an immense, perhaps beautiful, vulnerability to their walk. and a surprising confidence too. such as when they suddenly veered off to the right to the hall where their friends sat waiting for them. how were they so precise?
the bhajans were an experience too. for one they sang very sweetly and very much in harmony with each other. in retrospect, harmony is the word that comes easiest to mind when i recollect that morning. even when the soloists took their bow. shyly they stood up and sang. sometimes very beautifully. and quietly sat down, not a beat missed. once again, that slight tilt of the heads as the others listened to the leads before joining in. once again that surprising confidence, even when they were adjusting the mikes they couldn't really see. and the unmediated expressiveness of their faces, as if the melody was being written on that skin.
there was this little boy in the front row. probably a born musician. sang for the gods. and then give him those tablas! unbridled joy! fearless, flying fingers on languid leather and you're left wondering whether. he's seeing, and hearing, things that you just dont :-)
lovely bhajans. sung with feeling. and sung confident. and yet when the song was over and the children got up to receive their shawls and then to slowly proceed in one human line to lunch, once again they seemed so little. and vulnerable.
came home and wondered how it would have been to have no eyes. for one, kiruthiga, the monday morning emails certainly wouldn't have talked about all those greens and yellows and flowers and showers, and those palghat railway journeys :-) and facebook would have been quite a different book. and the status updates, till i had committed that qwerty keyboard to memory, would have read something like this:
vh;ljwvh vnperu]q wgyu9o PRU;hgf hd qwedvfbiuy vjqorig cjfqoigi vk[eigq.
and things they all go bump in the house even in the daytime when i walk with my eyes closed. the books that i have loved, all these movies that i buy, the beautiful faces i have cherished, the soft yellow light of the lamps in our house, that fabindia ethnic look - it would have all been different. so different.
and yet now when i think of it. in my most intimate moments, my eyes they are naturally closed. when i am listening to some really beautiful music, when my tongue is playing with some delectable flavor, when i am smelling, really inhaling the fragrance of the jasmines the flower lady sometimes delivers, or exploring the textures of a blissful touch - the eyes always fall silent. and everything is more intense, more immediate, more alive. and perhaps my face touches the lyricism of some of the faces i saw last saturday.
and yes, the mirrors. they will stop scaring me as they sometimes do these days :-) (who is that staring back at me i say!)
Where Do The Eyes of Women Fall?
If your
pockets were happy with coins and into a fancy
store they brought you
Where would the eyes of women
fall?
Our clothes chat with other clothes as they pass,
who but a sweet young creature would care
so much about how they
look?
But if a mirror ever makes
you sad.
you should know
that it does
not know
you.
Kabir (as channeled by daniel ladinsky)
on saturday i was transfixed by those four blind boys walking down a long empty road, hands clasped so tightly, each a natural extension of the other. and left wondering by the expressiveness of the children's singing. today as i sat and, eyes closed, mulled over the last of shobhana's brownies soaking in every bit of that sweet dark bitter feeling, i too saw, even if briefly :-) to such seeing, then!
much love,
d&s |
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