You’ll be amazed by what you find every day.
By Niharika Mookerjee
NEW YORK: The other day, I was driving by a brook, arched over by the shadows of tall, willow trees in a sleepy little town in Pennsylvania. The car radio sobbed and heaved some of the top hits of today. “I have died everyday waiting for you, darlin’ don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years…and I’ll love you for a thousand more…”
Oh no, I thought, not another lugubrious song of love. I switched the channel and in came Gotye’s enigmatic break-up song of the year, “Now you’re just somebody I used to know…” quickly followed by Taylor Swift’s endless renditions of infatuations gone awry on the trail. “Cause I knew you were trouble when you walked in…” And then the clash of ominous guitar chords thundered along.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am as much susceptible to songs of love and heart break as the next kid fresh out of middle school. In my forties, I may be, but I swing to its beat, tap my feet and put the music on full volume to the utter amazement of our elderly neighbors who see me drive up to the garage door.
Nevertheless, I have a hunch that this terrific, single-minded obsession with romantic love has stopped us from truly living life. From believing fully that love in all forms surrounds us everywhere and at every minute. “It is written in the wind, it is everywhere you go…”
The troubadours of the Middle Ages are the real culprits with their panegyric to the unattainable “Lady of the Manor” held as the holy chalice of life, leading to centuries of mislaid myths around romance.
Now, we do not need to pursue the most eloquent or high-brow passion to stir ourselves free from love’s insidious embrace. No, its gentle affection lies in the mundane things of everyday life.
It is in the bright shine of the cashier’s eyes as he bids adieu to his customer, in the snippets of conversation about the weather with a stranger, in the gracious warmth of a person who holds the door for you at the mall. It is in that lingering, fragile feeling that comes softly and vanishes swiftly much like its messenger, dissolving into that swathe of humanity, never to be spoken of again.
Years back, I remember walking into a decrepit diner with my husband in a forgotten, old town in Indiana that lay in the midst of grasslands with nothing but desolation of farmlands to be seen for miles. In walked, a farmer with blue overalls and a ruddy expression, laughing and nodding to himself.
He gazed at us with his twinkling blue-grey eyes and flashed a dazzling smile.
He had chopped a tree that afternoon, “about that big and this high,” after which, he said, he had sat down to a hearty dinner of beef roast and mashed potatoes with his son-in-law out in the fields. And then out of the blue, the cows had given him a chase and overturned his table of delight, and so there he was once again for supper.
For a spilt second, we looked incredulously at him, unable to decipher the thick mid-western drawl. Was he really talking to us, immigrants from the other half of the globe, who knew little of farming and had spent most of our lives in the garish light of urban sprawls?
However, there he was, this kind, old man from nowhere, who barely cared about who we were, striking up a kinship in a minute and touching our hearts.
We never saw him again but on our drive back home to Ohio, my husband dallied for a while, with the idea of quitting the city and planting potatoes instead. Eventually, he surmised, he would like to disappear from the world of fitted blazer and settle for a life closer to the earth.
The recalcitrant Tom Sawyer of boyhood had emerged, I suppose.
But that moment of quaint bonhomie stayed on like a sweet scent of grass and wispy hay in the roll of time.
There was also that other time, in another season, when I was newly married, fresh out of college and steeped in poetry, without any sense of the sauce-pan or the ladle. Yet I loved the fish markets of Kolkata. They were slippery and watery but I enjoyed the chit-chat with the fish and fruit sellers. Fruits, vegetables, and fish were all piled up in stacks against the window, with the pavements strewn with baskets and worn-out newspapers.
At one time, I remember paying a hefty price for a bag full of crawling red crabs, knowing full well that I would have no idea how to cook them. But little did I care. The disarming smile and winsome words of the poor village boy had softened my heart in a jiffy. The story, however, changed the moment I reached home. Encircled with twitching crustaceans, I stood in the middle of the heap, aghast at my misplaced treasure.
Far removed from the crowded streets of Kolkata, I recollect the drifting whispers of pine trees in a hamlet in New Hampshire. My two daughters and I had walked into a souvenir store outside a stony country church, festooned with ivy.
An old, ancient man, wrinkled and stooping, held the door for me and said “Tout a vous, madame (at your service, madam) and exclaimed at the girls, “Ah you two sisters? You from India?” he asked in faltering English. “We two brothers and seven sisters. A big happy family we were. We go here to this church ever since our mother had taught us to pray. She’s gone now. We old but we come for pilgrimage.”
He was from Quebec, Canada but in an instant, we became privy to his life, his faith, his family. He looked around the shop for a gift and brought out a wooden rosary saying, “Take this. You will like it. It will keep you safe.”
It still hangs around the altar at my house in solitary memory of the gleaming ray of light on pine trees, the mountains, and the gentle word from a kind stranger.
So they come every morning, a magical whir of butterflies, strangers who stream into our lives, weaving ribbons of beauty and joy and then leave just as breathlessly. A few stay a lifetime sprinkling stardust on our way.
And do we really need to ask for more? Because the powers and grounds of the spirit are our mystery.
Lost in the wilderness of the mountains in Alaska, Chris McCandless of “Into the Wild” reflected: “You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience.”
And there he hit the core of our living.
To contact the author, email to niharikam@americanbazaaronline.com