“Where are your friends these days?”, the priest asked the kid who stood like speedy motorbike stopped by a sturdy wall.
“Their holidays are over”, he replied while he slipped away from the priests as if it was hazardous to stay there.
These kids were quite known in the premises of the temple. Every day one of these three would come to the old Shiva temple and pour a cup of water everyday. The priests were often quizzed and surprised at their punctuality. It had become more of a daily event for the people involved in the temple to watch these little kids jump in the temple premises and do the daily ritual. It gave them immense joy to see the devotion of these kids.
A couple of months later though, two of these kids stopped coming. It was only the third kid who would come daily and do what they’d been doing all these months. This surprised the priests even more. A few days into this, the third kid also stopped coming.
Soon in a few months, the memories of the kids coming to the temple, became limited to the conversation of the locals.
It was not until 2 years later that one of the kids visited the temple with his parents. A small rustic family car stopped at the temple gate and the kid jumped out of the car. To his dismay, he was unable to find the small idol of Shiva where they used to offer water everyday. The small temple was built into a large complex and their small Shiva lingam and the small structure was now gone.
He went searching for it in the entire temple, but was not able to find it. His little hands held a small vessel with the offering water filled up to the half of the vessel. The kids mother asked him to offer the water on some other deity. But the kid was still lost looking for something identifiable. Suddenly he found a small black stone which used to be right outside the lingam space, out in the open. He went close to the stone and offered his water there. The parents were surprised at what he did. When asked, the kid replied – “the stone lived with Shiva, so it is also like Shiva to me”
The family was a little startled at the kind of statement the kid made and without much discussion, they moved ahead inside the temple complex.
The kid’s emotions were pure and dedicated. It really does not matter if the primary source of your dedication becomes invisible or stays out of your sight, you always have another black stone that will act as a proxy to what you respected or had an affection for. It could be a black stone, a human or a place. What matters is the bliss you experience in a particular environment.
So while you are enjoying life in all the colorful pursuits of this world, also keep looking out for the black stones out there. Everything is poised to go one day and even if that goes, the black stone is here to stay.
Always Ranting,
Rantzaada.
The 11 o' clock diary 