A woman on the side of the stairs of a temple and a man near the Gangas sat with folded hands, one with a prayer book in her hands.
You come and go and visit these places with a curious mind, not a mind with a wishlist or a bucket list. It’s already too tangled on the oranges and milk in the grocery list, but curiosity because you haven’t chosen one side of the spectrum.
You’re not an atheist, you’re not a godsman. You don’t believe God doesn’t exist, but you do believe your wishes will fall on nobody’s ears.
But at the moment it’s not about your beliefs, so vague in front of the woman and that man holding onto hope in a city like Varanasi, where truth ends and questions start and answers are in the middle. The quest for it is in the folded hands, in holy pages.
Not in your troubled mind. The execution is a one-thought-ahead plan, the elders always seem to crack it, being old school about things, and of God is a restless act, more restless than us kids. As if there was another realm where these spiritual degrees get passed out.
The unraveling hope is beneath me, yet so relatable.
The universe has already catered to what it felt like was our need and said no more. But the manifestation existed and said more. If you want more.
The transmuted thought of the world that you mustn’t forget to seek, like an alluring voice calling you like the Jungle Book. On the other hand, what you seek comes from the identity that you plan.
One can be allured, you wear the shoes that feel rusty to you, take them off as you pray by the water, for the shiny fancy shoes that, if God is listening, you’ll slip into one day.
If this side is alluring, one is of fathom.
Fathom of a different world with peace.
Fathom your whole family sitting on your dining table, stress free, healthy.
Fathom that you’re sitting at a spot with a white light around and you know you have more gratitude on you.
You don’t realise the small ant that walked around your saree and became your prayer buddy. He seeks a life without the fear of being stepped on too, or the girl who kept trying to read a note on you.
If it’s prayer or seeking, I speculate the old lady and the man being either side of the narrative, throwing all the coins in the wishing pool. What draws my curiosity will always lie in if they were ever granted.