Myriad Reflections. Shastri Akella

Cappuccino
Languid, never-ending afternoons and sleepless nights interlaced with fitful sleeping patterns and dreadful nightmares. Both stained a neat brown with unending cups of cappuccino. Plopping sugar cubes into the thick, gooey liquid (reminiscent of sepia images of the past), I watch little swirls of vapor rise from the ceramic cup and disappear into the air above in elegant, leisurely curves. Swishing a spoon through the cup, I create frenzied ripples in that ocean of silence, and watch with considerable candor, how the sugar cubes disappear into the eager folds of the coffee ripples. The act of coffee-making done with, I return to my work at hand – invariably involving the glaring, poker-faced screen of the computer. And in an instant, the doors of the mind are shut on the vivacious world of images, color, smell, and sound, the disappointment of their countenance heightened to a conspicuous reality just before the door closes rudely on their face. The web of melancholic words envelops me like the tight embrace of a shawl on a frigid winter morning – warm and yet suffocative.
But today is different. Rain – the icy tears of the clouds, batter the earth with forlorn ferocity. A thick, surly gray defines the color of the Saturday afternoon, and the normally amicable moment seems unfriendly and intimidating, like a friendship gone sour, like a sibling estranged. In the battle between the two worlds of inebriated electricity – natural and man-made, the latter withdraws into a pitiable defeat, and I am subsequently drowned in a cloak of darkness. My ally of grief, my companion of ecstasy – the computer having gone into a forced slumber, I have little else to do but to observe nature and its little handiwork that spells both havoc and creativity simultaneously. Brewing myself another cup of cappuccino, I amble casually back into my room, enjoying the thick, heady smell of coffee that laces itself deftly into the air around me. Leaning on to the sill, I peep through the glass window, scrubbing with my hands in slow zigzag motion to efface the misty haze that has settled on it. Awe. That’s the word that most accurately defines my feeling in that moment of rapt observation. Rainwater approaching in piercing, splenetic sheets fills me with awe, not so much for its sheer tapestry, but for the realization it brings about. The realization, that splendor of nature can strike you in the most casual of moments, in the most familiar of environments. Not a plush guesthouse obscured in the deeper folds of the Himalayas, but the familiar little window sill of the house I have lived in for a decade is where nature has decided to unfold its poignant opera. And what an opera it was – thunder echoing the voice of an able tenor, breeze sauntering wildly and singing like a soprano in the highest octave, and sheets of rain striking the earth in a state of trance, deftly slipping into the role of a befitting orchestra. That little window elevates itself to embody the role of a kaleidoscope, and fills my vision with images snatched from a wild Himalayan setting, a lush play of the Opera House, and a lush valley of Switzerland captured in a prized picture postcard. All the while I gently remind myself that the iridescent, vivid images when culled together create nothing more than the picture of the pond street and the horizon hovering fixedly over it. As a writer I pride myself on my ability to observe and absorb foreign terrains in rich detail, and as a human, I am appalled by the dexterity with which I can take for granted the splendor that constantly surrounds me. I dig into the somber worlds within with ferocity to spell out the sadness that has streaked my world with thick eloquent strokes, but I do not raise my gaze to notice the presence of divinity that is waiting right there, a heartbeat away, only to cheer me. It is only when the manmade facilities (that I so deftly used to express my anguish) crumbles, that I am compelled to undo the laces that I have strongly knotted with them. It is only then do I notice the sparks of divinity that float around me. In the rain that tumbles eagerly onto a parched earth, in the clouds that so happily give up their impregnated existence to fructify the earth life, in the thunder that streaks the sky in eclectic beams. I sip my coffee in that state of keen cogitation, and my being is instantly filled with rhapsody. The thick taste of coffee as it journeys from my palette, down my gullet, and into my tummy, is electrifying energy. Each sip that I drawn in fills me with shots of ecstasy, and I observe the little beads of water that have appeared at the rim of the ceramic cup with strange fondness. I reflect: How many cups of coffee have I guzzled down whilst feverishly working at my latest tragofictitious saga? Endless. And how much of the taste that has now spread its long fingers all across my heart can I recollect? Nothing – I conjure a lackluster blankness. But I don’t regret. Lost moments cannot be reclaimed, but an awakened consciousness certainly can prevent the yet-to-sprout moments from the clutches of banality. I’m suddenly filled with the unbearable lightness of being, and I scuttle into the kitchen, my coffee cup empty, my heart aching for another engrossing odyssey of cappuccino through my system. As the milk brews, and I look at the eager cup, I feel excited at the prospect of filling my hours of sainted rumination with another shower of dazzling cappuccino.