A huge wrought iron gate with thickly filigreed patterns has
rusted over a few eons waiting for rare visitors to arrive once in a blue moon.
This day my mother, my wife and my sister has arrived. They stand outside the
gate clutching onto the grill, waiting to see me after a few years of my
voluntary confinement. As I walk on the pathway leading to the gate, I can see
them.
As I approach closer, my gaze slowly shifts towards the
garden on my right and I see a few golden little chicks which have just hatched
from their eggs, gnawing at each other with exuberant bursts of new found life.
I stop and go closer to have a look at them. They are bigger than normal
chicks, more like ostrich chicks out from their big egg shells as big as a
rugby ball. They look quite strong and seem to be gaining a bit more strength
every passing minute. By the time I am within their reach, they have already
managed to stand upright and turn their heads to look at me. They are gorgeous
and look beautiful. Such beauty in a land bird I have never witnessed before.
Their structure is like a baby ostrich with strong legs and dark black eyes.
They have the mature colour of a wise goldfish with bright orange spots on
their head stretched till the back of their neck with fiery golden feathers
standing upright through their spine. Although their mesmeric and unearthly beauty
has had me under a spell, I manage to turn back towards my mother and show her
what I had found with gleaming starry eyes. As much as I can understand, she
looks quite pleased with my fantastic discovery and starts calling me to come
towards her with her curled beckoning fingers and arms far stretched out
towards me. I raise one hand and tell them to wait for a minute as I wanted to
bring one of those chicks in the lap my palms and present it to her. I thought
this is the present I’d been waiting to give to her all these years and finally
on this fortunate day I have found it.
I join my hands in a cusp and try to go nearer to the
glimmering golden chicks in hope of coaxing one to come to me. To my surprise
they become highly alerted by my approach and start to step backwards. I try to
make some chick sounds with my tongue and narrow lips in hope of appeasing
them, but the more I step closer the more they become cautious of me. I gain my
focus and zero in on one of them as my target. Slowly moving forward I reveal
my agile instincts and pounce on it like a swift cat. All the chicks manage to
flee in different directions with this act of mine, but I was not to give up as
I keep my eyes fixed on my target and started chasing that one golden chick
with quick legs into the nearby forest.
Like a classic Jurassic adventure I keep chasing the golden
chick with masterful agility and a cunning focus to be able to catch it in my
hands. After all I had been waiting for so many years for this unearthly moment
to happen to me, this delightful sight, and I just could not make this ecstatic
moment pass by without capitalising on it with my utmost power and grip. I had
to have the golden chick in my hands, no matter what. I keep chasing it through
tall tunnels of towering tree trunks, brushing my limbs against big and bold heavy
branches, crawling through slimy slithering creepers, sliding on the seeping
wet earth and gorging through thick bushes of bustling leaves. But I did not
leave sight of my golden chick for a blink of an eye. This chick was visibly
getting smarter as we ran, she was getting bigger, stronger and faster every
passing minute. I do not know what species she belonged to, but all I know is that
she was rare, probably the rarest of them all. And I had to have her in my
hands, no matter what. She crisscrossed in ways I could never imagine a young
bird could ever think of, but she did her best in trying to trick me into
losing her. But as much as I had trained my mind over the years never to lose
focus, I did not lose sight or stamina and kept following her wherever she
fled.
We were now almost at another end of the forest, and with
one long sprint she shot out of the bushes through a long path like opening. I
came out like her tail on fire and screech myself to an abrupt halt as I see
another huge wrought iron gate similar to the one before, only this one more
rusted, and probably never been opened with heavily entwined creepers almost
making it a part of the earth by now. Holding me back by my neck I see with astounded
eyes the chirping chick run to the gate and crash into it with full speed and
blow up in a burst of golden dust and magical orange smoke and turn itself into
a half man and half bird on the other side of the gate. This magnificent
creature slowly taking shape in front of my eyes has glittering orange scales
on his skin and fiery golden feathers starting from the back of his head and
down its spine. I witness this man-bird completely manifest in its whole form
and beauty, and get awestruck by the sheer grace which radiated out of the
resonating powerful energy space it had just created. It looks at me with its
piercing dark eyes which struck me like lightning as it vanished into thin air
turning itself into a faint orange smoke. I lose my sense and faint over there,
in front of the gate.
When I wake up from my dream, I realize that what I had been
chasing after is not really the gold or the beauty or the whole dazzling charm
of all that. What we are truly searching for is nowhere else but in us, humans.
What I am truly searching for is nowhere else but in me. Like a musk deer goes
on roaming in the forest not aware about the beautiful fragrance that it
spreads all around itself, we humans go on roaming far and wide in this world
not knowing that what we are really searching for is nowhere else, but only within
us.
