A Lotus in the Swamp

An invitation that inspired a journey

As the auto- rickshaw see – sawed over the innumerable pot –holes

Finally coming to a halt at a township where people were stacked like sardines in a tin

Buildings stacked like bakery shop sandwitches

Racks of floors spread across to fit 17 of those tins

My eyes rolled over those stacked buldings in the left and right

And at the road divider that made the division evident.

My intuition pictured a virtual map and guided me to the destination

Then there were these invisble vibrations, repelling me from not going to one of the houses on the other side of the divider

I became a clockwork man to my intuition, And I Manuvered my way to the entrance,

Dodging over the random heaps of polythene.

The tins were noisy, quite contrary to the way they were disciplined in every rack

An then a door opened with a smile

A smile with an aura, a refuge from the filth people were surrounded with.

I entered a room of a man with basic needs

Faith, knowledge, rest and travel

A wanderer

Who trusts his imagination inspired by printed letters, not by spoon fed plasma screens

Who exahales experiences like the throttle of his royal enfield

Who makes you realise that it’s not the size of the house, but the belief that gives a man the warmth and security which he desires.

And you question yourself,

What makes a man?

Does he carve the environment or does the environment carve him?

We blame the upbringing, but

If his individuality permeates and gets manipulated by the guild where he belongs or rather where he is forced to live

There would have never been

A lotus in the swamp