Thursday, June 26, 2008

The Lake House

Not the one in that film called The Lake House. Last Sunday I was standing at the gallery of one real lake house.. The chimes they had tied atop the trees made the trees even more beautiful. Imagine feeling the wind and listening to the music it creates..Then your eyes look up trying to see what these chimes look like. Are these ones like the ones you saw in the Lake House or the ones you heard near that tall tree you passed few steps behind or do these ones look different from the ones you have seen? I wondered many times through the day as I walked past the lakes and the bushes and the cottages.

The guy had asked us what we thought this place was.. A resort, a hotel, a what? It was a farm. It was like visiting my village.. the one I never had. Agro-Tourism as a concept is new in India. The guy had said.. I believed him. Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken so many years for me to be able to stay a night at a full-fledged farm.

Water-lilies are water-lilies. Water-lilies are not lotuses; I realized. Fish farming is more than the blur diagram in school textbooks. It wasn’t my first rendezvous with nature. Yet, it was one of those experiences I would want to talk about and write about. Night at a farm house feels like a night. It’s not a night of neon signs.

It was a starless night. The sky looked like those human sketches I used to draw as a kid. My human figures never had any ears. My mother always made those poor beings feel complete by either drawing the ears herself or making me draw them for the sake of that entire family of ear less people I loved to draw. I wished my mother could make the night complete too somehow. Star in that tree! Glow worm…

Together we sat looking at the stars in that tree. Then when we thought it was time for us to come inside we walked back to our cottage. My mother switched all the lights off... just as we all stepped in... The house was more wooden than my house in Mumbai. The house was as small as our one room in the city. The house ensured that we spend all the time together as a family. As we tried to look around ..just look around for nothing in particular, in that darkness under the wooden bamboo table, a star came alive..

I missed seeing that smile on my family’s face. But, I didn’t miss feeling it.

-Dedicated to Saguna Baug

1 comments:

Almighty's Guinea Pig !!! said...

awesome...you made the place alive in front of our minds...and yes...i do believe you made ear less people..hehe...gud one...and yes thanks...i believe I will also visit this place.