Fallen...

"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils..."

The words of Wordsworth...happy yet melancholic...something that suddenly came back to me in one of those inexplicable moments that left me quite visibly shaken...for the irony was not lost on me...I wasn't close to dancing with the daffodils...! But of course I do have those pensive moods a lot and I do feel the bliss of solitude once in a while. The days are cold and the winter is gray (and in my couch I lie)...very gray...and I like it. It is days like these that let you savor a bad mood (vacant...pensive)...and the loneliness (the bliss of solitude)...

I ventured out today in the cold weather and found myself gazing at the phenomenon that gave this season its name...the fall of the leaves...To say that what I witnessed totally and completely reflected what I felt would be an understatement. However, to downplay the melancholy I felt inside (or maybe it was to accentuate what I felt inside, as I later found out) I found myself thinking about the concluding months of a typical calendar year back in Kerala, India. Specifically, I thought about the weather. I remembered that it used to rain heavily during the last weeks of November and early December...thunderstorms. I recalled many instances about the thunderstorms...not just one thunderstorm, but several...and just as always, the mind side-tracked. The memories then started pouring in...much like the rain back in Kerala...and the still and moving images of my life flashed in front of me...and my misery grew ten-fold. However, the falling leaves were merciful to bring me back to my present freezing self. It must be wonderful for those leaves in the brief moment that it falls down. It floats down...with the breeze...enjoying the drift of the air. And it slowly glides to the ground, just like an airplane when it lands ever so smoothly. Once it reaches the ground however, its fallen...fallen from glory to rot on the ground. The gypsy had said that it was the season for love...but I saw only the falling leaves...I realized that perhaps I was like the leaves on the ground...fallen...