|
Page1
Even as a
fledgling, while his brothers and sisters were still flopping about
in an ungainly and ludicrous fashion, Ajay was discovering the
delights of soaring, of spreading his half grown wings as far out as
he could and letting warm up drafts lift him round and round. He
could not, of course. maintain the soaring position for long, nor
could he tilt properly or rise to any considerable height; yet at
his tender age his performance was so unusual that his parents
watched with a kind of awe, knowing they had hatched a wonder child.
As Ajay grew and
his wing muscles became strong, he flew off alone more and more
often, loving the solitude of the sky, where he could think about
the sky itself and its endless endlessness. He thought about
Infinity and the thought made him restless to know what it could be.
One day he rose higher and yet higher on a strong thermal. The trees
below became like shrubs and then like grass and then like dots of dark. green. He seemed to himself to be on a level with the highest
snow peaks, of which his parents had told him, and in that rarefied
air his lungs felt as though they might burst. He knew his mother
would be frantic if she guessed where he was, but in the
exhilaration of flight in the crystal beauty of the empty sky, in
the light filled silence and total solitude all that took place at a
lower altitude was as nothing to him, without meaning. There was
only himself and the shining sky. And then suddenly he slipped
through a crack, and there was only an infinite, living Joy; he was
a vast Being, an endless Bliss, without boundary,. How long he
remained in that state there was no telling, but when he again
became aware of being centred in his body he knew that he had
touched the Infinite. He continued to soar for a while, suffused
with bliss, as the sky is suffused with colour after the sun has
set. Then he folded his wings and plummeted back to earth in a long
free fall, expertly pulling out of it just in time to prevent his
death. Fortunately, his parents had not guessed where he was and
were not looking.
Author : Sister Gargi
|
