Colours of Joy

He woke up startled, a smile spread across his face and a feeling of high very evident. As he lay on that charpai, spread-eagled, he screwed his face trying to remember what had made him wake up with a start and why he was so happy despite a broken sleep.

The smell of burnt wood wafted, with a chilly November breeze, from the sigri under his charpai. Its warmth was a solace for his bare arms and legs in such nights. He could hear the birds chirping at a distance and knew he had only a few more minutes to lie before he heads off with the cattle for their daily graze. He took a deep gulp of saliva to quench his dry throat, and the winced at the aftertaste of garlic from last night’s dinner. Everything else was dark, the chirping and the chill and the whiff and the taste all meddled with what he wanted to think about. Plus the urgency as the night was about to end…. He turned his head in an attempt to doze off again.

For the next few moments he tossed around lazily and then considering it as a lost cause woke up again; though the experience, that had woken him elated, lingered on. Getting back home, he took a deep breath and the air was scented with freshly thatched cow dung cakes, making a thoughtful gesture he moved quickly to wash up. After the daily chores of the morn, he picked up a bamboo limb and headed to fetch his bovine companions.

It was amazing, the dexterity with which he moved among the fields on the paltry muddy pathways. Every now and then he’d run his hand in the bristles of grass and trying to make something more out of the tickling sensation. He whacked the buffaloes a few time just to hear them groan and again smiled as the thoughts of wee morn kept renewing inside him. On his way, he pulled off a few leaves from an abutting bush and kneaded them on his palm impishly, and his smile broadened as he put his palm to his nose and let the aroma fill him up. To him it was all a joy of discovery…. Over and over again!

Reaching the destination, he tied the buffaloes to the tree and got inattentively distracted by the clinking of their bells. He sat there for many minutes flicking the bells casually and repeatedly just to hear them and the same jubilant smile lit up his face. He had packed for himself some extra amount of rice for lunch, just so he can have a nap while the buffaloes grazed. The idea of a siesta was just too tempting, for previous night’s slumber had just given him a new found joy!

He sat for on the bare ground and started tucking in the rice, and again he mashed up a lump of rice in his fingers and kept stretching them out and back in to feel the stickiness, and again like a new born who just learnt to stretch out his fingers, he would giggle out with joy and kept doing it in hope to find something more. After having played with his food for much time, he undid his bundle and stretched out a tattered sheet on the ground; unbundled himself and did as intended – stretched himself out. For a last brief moment before having dozed off he felt the gravel lying all around him and heard its crunch.

Then he just slipped off into the world he aspired to! All that was dark suddenly came to life…. The open sky had a strange hue of freedom… The home he lived in was earthy in complexion. In his fantasy, he walked among the grasses and crops that had a restless tinge about them, a sort of playful pigmentation; the buffaloes grazed somewhere nearby and a mere look towards them made it clear they were of a lazy solid tincture; leaves and twigs of bush around his field swayed with the winter breeze and looked intoxicatingly saturated; and the gravel among which they grew were heavily undertoned.

If truth be told, this was his fantasy, his fancy, his dream and that was the best he could do. When awake he had to use four of his senses to understand the hues of the beautiful world around him, which he couldn’t name, but when asleep he made up for the one sense he didn’t have.

His dreams was where he saw, his dreams was where is envisioned his sensations of the worldly escapades, his dreams was where his had not bounds to his vision. He didn’t have to name every hue he saw, so long as he felt it right….. But his dreams was where he saw COLOUR.