It is six in the evening, I sit in my room looking past my balcony into the empty grounds, watching the evening unfold. The curtains rising and falling shyly as the breeze cools my insides as it does my house. My thoughts start retracing it's path to an evening in a small village where the sands were white and the skies blue.
Below the vast blueness is a quaint old temple. Its courtyard filled with stillness, except for the sudden flapping of a wing, a single cry of a bird or the scuffling of a squirrel scurrying up a tree.
The quiet pond with it's beautiful lotus,reflecting the sky, the shrubs of Tulsi and Jasmine,the red chethi all part of the stillness.
Through all this and beyond this there is a familiar comforting smell in the air, smell of a childhood spent with flowers and friends. The smell of old skin and toothless smiles, of burning firewood and kerosene lamps, of ripe mangoes and roasted cashew nuts. The smell of a time that was gone. The breeze blows in through the trees spreading the scent of memories and carrying away with it the fragrance of Jasmines.
It was early evening,the temple doors still not open, the gods resting.
I walk back home the stillness settling inside me, my foot prints heavy on the sand. The picture imprinted in me forever.
