The Scarf🧣
Tiny ponds, a sip of chai, and people dozing off in the afternoon are always the first sights that one can find in the late summer of small towns like ours. Sleeping during the night is a necessity, but afternoon naps are much like looking at the clock while waiting for your turn in a clinic that is scheduled at least two hours later - which does not quite help but gives the assurance of how those two hours can be the most unhurried moments before you get back to the daily rush of your puzzled life again. I've spent my life, until now, trying to avoid that addictive afternoon nap but I've always failed miserably.
It was 3:00 p.m. as I looked out of the window and saw that it was pouring. Unlike most days, when the sun loves to scatter its golden rays for a bit longer, the sky today was covered in grey. The rays made the green and yellow leaves, the colorful flowers, and even a heap of dried leaves that was left to be burned look like some sort of treasure, holding a thousand secrets, lit by the rays that fell upon it like a spotlight. Across the courtyard, I saw Maa rushing to fetch the clothes from getting wet. All but an old magenta scarf made it inside. I ran out to bring it before the rain got heavier. She asked me to shut the windows, and I did.
I am not someone very fond of scarves. I do not even search for them in markets. But this one here looked a little different, a brocade with intricate designs and conversational prints. It was funny how, if you looked at these patterns, they would make no sense initially—wavy, vine-like lines with stickmen figures dangling from them that ran throughout the scarf. There were occasional flowers, circular motifs, triangles, and strange shapes that were unclear to decipher but looked like empty packets of chips.
I do not really like chips except for the extremely spicy ones. However, one evening, while I was watering the plants, a cricket ball suddenly flew into our garden. I picked it up, and as I turned around, I saw him. This was the first time I saw him up close. He put out his hand. I gave him the ball, and he offered me a half-full packet of plain salted chips, the kind I dislike the most. Before I could tell him what I really liked, he handed me the packet with a smile brighter than a million suns combined and he left. He really did.
Talking about the patterns, looking closely at them, one cannot help but admire how unaesthetic yet brilliant these designs are at the same time. They are like the one perfect pause—the one that, if broken, would disrupt the entire existing order. It is as if, without that pause, the flowers, circular stones, and other patterns would crumble the tiny little men hanging in the vine. That scarf seemed to be the only place where motion and stillness coexisted. Much like in life, when the fragile harmony breaks, it disturbs us in infinite ways.
I crave this balance and stillness all the time. And I mostly like silence, except for the chaotic afternoons in our colony when a group of boys play cricket. I see them daily, especially the loudest one—a boy, a year older than me. He’s always out in the evening. Be it summer's heat or winter's chill, one can always find him with his bat, running around the colony with the younger ones. Each time I look at him, I wonder how somebody like him could ever love plain salted chips. The kids call him "Captain," and they cling to him like toddlers stick to their mothers, refusing to let go until his tuition teacher arrives. As I watched from my window, I would see him dash indoors at the teacher's arrival while getting scolded by his mother every day. Aunty was always dressed in the best pair of pastel kurtas and her signature magenta scarf, draped like a dupatta. The colours she wore did not match or contrast, yet she pulled them off effortlessly.
I never really paid much attention to colour coordination until recently, when I realized that colour mixing is not man-made but something that has always been in nature. The minimalist yellow sunrise, the blue cloudy skies, the shades of sea-green waves of the sea that strangely turn blue-grey at night, the orange gradient sky during sunsets, or the moon and stars like polka dots in the night sky somehow fit perfectly. Even in animals, the pale yellow of lizards echoes their disliked presence, and the mossy green-coloured frogs seem like those depressed souls who only feel heard when it rains, as they start croaking with joy. And my Candy, the jolly little fluff of shiny white fur, wagging his little tail. He looks angelic in his white fur and is the most loved member of our colony. Candy, however, does not like people much and is a bit antisocial.
One afternoon, while Maa and I were busy, Candy climbed up the wall and sat watching the boys. All the kids except their Captain rushed to him. Candy, trying to avoid them, leapt into a tree and eventually got stuck in the electric pole wires. He was terrified. In five minutes, the entire colony gathered. I too ran out, panicked. The air was full of fear and anxiety until I heard Aunty, with her usual magenta scarf shouting for Captain. Captain took the scarf and wrapped it around his fist. Like a squirrel, he climbed and reached the top of the tree. Candy, terrified, sat frozen. After 20 minutes, Candy took a step forward, and Captain scooped him into the scarf like a handful of candies into a pouch. He dropped the scarf, and the crowd caught Candy. For the first time, Candy did not seem to mind the crowd. The crowd was shouting with joy until a loud thud silenced them. Captain was no longer on the branch. In fact, the snapped branch itself was on the ground. The electric wire was gone. The sky and the crowd were silent. Candy whimpered. I do not remember much after that except how a few hours later I had Candy in one hand and the scarf in the other.
It has been three years now, and I still wonder how brilliant these patterns are. They seem to trap time, capturing that exact pause of motion and stillness—the one that could have led to a million different possibilities —the kind that life lacks. I wish I could revisit those moments and return to the very pause where everything could have changed. I wish I could have said something when you handed me those chips that day or could have stopped Candy from climbing the wall. I hope I could have said that I loved you, Captain. I always have, all my life, in your presence and absence. In stillness, in motion, in the stillness within motion, and in motion between the stillness. All that I wish, is to go back, just for a moment, before life changed.
I still sit in my room with Candy by my side. I mostly keep the windows shut. I have come to like scarves lately, especially the magenta one here, because it's the only thing that gives me the illusion of you being here. Plain salted chips are my favourite now. I buy them every day. I still love afternoon naps, except now, when I long to see you a little more in my dreams, refusing to wake up in a world without you in it.
I have come to realize how beautiful some pauses are, like the one in the patterns of this scarf, but not the one in my life, where life is moving but I am still, and the one that I am forced to live with forever.
Comments