Treasure Troves

On the other day I was travelling back from a city in south India back home after concluding a business meeting. The flight was half empty and took off by 2030hrs and I leaned towards window that shown me racing world behind that either kicks me up off its surface or I kick the same to reach skies above…

At 30,000 feet when the flight leveled I looked beneath… and something sparked in my mind that took me decades back to my childhood…

In summers we used to sleep in the backyard of my tiny home. Not much of luxury by means of material but by spirit. Just a leaf strewn mat over which a not so fluffy pillow and when I lay back and look up in the dark skies above sprinkled with gems. It was so imaginatively fun to get dots connected and make shapes out of them that are exclusive to our imagination that otherwise are so incomprehensible to anyone who tries imagining in the same modulation we children used to have.

We heard about treasures in stories. But never saw them in real. Even in adulthood I never happen to sea treasures. I mean once or twice in a bank I happen to see bundles of money that could be treated as treasure but not those treasures that were told about in folklore like pirate stories of road to Eldorado.

The abundance of gems and jewels that were thrown so carelessly and the whole expense of area adorned with glitters is an eye candy to look at. I used to feel this is what a treasure means that’s normally explained in stories that I heard or read.

Ironically the idea never stagnated in my heart that should have germinated a desire to see treasures in real… Because I happen to verify most of the facts that I heard in stories from real life like Lions, Hyenas, Horse Riding, Castles and many others save for monsters, angels and fire breathing dragons.

Treasures on the other hand were of an enigma. Because they are there but never seen. I am not sure if anyone in the world has a huge vault of treasures Uncle Scrooge of Donald Duck stories. But if there is such treasure I wish I could see… not such organized treasures like Fort Knox or Currency press.

While I preserved that amazingly beautiful experience of my childhood… I silently laughed at the concept of treasure troves that was given to me by my adulthood. Even when I look at dark skies sprinkled with stars I now feel that they are all stars sparkling in the absence of sun light. I think of astrology but not treasures of mythology.

And very surprisingly nostalgia kicked me back in a different way.

Looking down the flight window at approaching city… I saw gems and jewels spread in densely packed way again. Wow… what a scene??? This is even more appealing than what I saw in my childhood. My Dad used to tell me…look at that red star… look at that blue star… I used to get perplexed as I happen not to see any colors in starts that are just sparkling and nothing else.

But what I saw now is a clear distinction of colors and sizes. The whole terrain is a blanket of treasures. For a moment I vehemently blocked the stupid logic of my adulthood that tried barging in and tell me that whatever I am looking at are the city lights. The treasures however molten out of glitters turned out to be street lights, lightening conductor beacons, neon signs and so many other things that made this world look so artificial.

I went in to my blissful mode of childhood again. I am not sure if there was an innocent astonishment on my adult face while I looked at the multi colored treasures I witnessed down the flight window as it approached the city.

I savored the pleasure of looking at treasures that could only be seen but not relished in greedy sense. It is pointless to have treasures that go beyond your life time and you could do nothing about them.

But it’s too beautiful to see them with mouth wide opened and satiate the sense of imagination. Be a child or an adult… the feeling of discovering some valuable thing in something that’s so common is the real treasures that we could relish.

Perhaps love is such a treasure for me… I can only imagine it… could have seen it once or twice. When in childhood with my mother and when I became an adult… with the girl I love. Both of them faded away in the realms of life through inevitable and practical perspectives.

In my childhood I wanted to grownup and be an adult… And now in my adulthood… I wish I were a child…