Ayurdays 4

MORNING IN THE NURSING HOME

There is a garden here - a patch of ornamental plantation with a few marigolds, tulsis, cockscombs, table roses and everlasting flowers. In the calm of the morning I sit amidst them trying to bring myself to the slow enlightening revelation of another day.

Far to my right, beyond the silk cotton and coconut trees a cock crowed and the morning started. Vannathi, the only black and white bird of Kerala sat somewhere behind our low cost building and sang. A couple of busy crows flew into the south. A lone bee-eater chirped on continuously. Four white cranes flew in formation into the blue above the white long strata of an almost static cloud.

A large dark ant carrying a food load much heavier than himself came close to my feet, smelt something and diverted his course. Two of his friends like conscientious watchmen kept moving about very carefully. A young ill-mannered housefly came and sat on my left shin, looked around and walked up tickling me. The massive sound of a train shook up the whole scene for a while and I shifted position to get a glimpse of the rising sun.

The east horizon is almost covered by a high growth of bamboo shoots. Cashew nut trees line up beyond them. Huge nimbus clouds like shadows of ancient sorrows remain in the background. The golden joy of the daybreak brightens them up. They seem to turn into the passing memory. Behind them is the translucent curtain of morning light. Melting it in a slow smooth process, the sum appears. Bhargo Devasya Dheemati Dhiyo Yona Prachotayat.

The darkness was all that remained in the beginning. All the pasts and futures, the sets of seven worlds, the living and the non-living in them with and without intelligence and the space that contain all that remained as darkness. All that are real and unreal, perceived and imagined, my Lord, everything except You remained as darkness in the beginning. Then you willed, Let there be light. And the sun appeared melting the darkness, the dark ignorance. In the mighty chariot of the seven coloured horses, sitting in the blood red cushion of lotus, holding the varadabhaya signs, Oh! Sun, you come turning the wheels of time. The Suryopanishad says, you are Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra, Ric, Yajur, Sama. From you are born the earth, the air, the light, the intelligence, the organs of perception. You are the sound, the touch, the form and the essence of knowledge. The creator of all and the sustainer of all, Oh! Mighty Sun you dissolve them all in yourself. I bow to you.