Lost in footsteps

It was getting a little dark. I quickened my steps back to home. There were few cars on the street. Few of the sodium vapor lamps stood like torches in the enveloping fog. Slowly the awareness of my surroundings grew and I could notice the smoke rising from the old looking house. The air was thick with the smell of burning wood. The atmosphere was strangely soothing. Probably it was the afternoon rain that cleaned the dirt off the leaves and made them shine in the soft glow of street lights or may be it was the workout at the gym, I did not know or care. I realized it had been almost a month since I took one of the lonely walks. Apart from the sound of occasional breaking twig and the rustle of leaves there was nothing but the rhythmic sound of footsteps falling on soft pavement. There was absolute silence...inside and outside. There was a joy enveloping that did not depend on anything. I smiled as I entered home...I just got lost in my footsteps...once again.
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Fears

He was a peon in my father's office. He had a sturdy built and curled up mustache. He would join us all in the after dinner talk, discussing a range of topics. He would cite some of the stories from puranas that my parents didn't know and had a knack of engaging the attention of all when narrating them...Especially of 10 year kids, like me back then. He often told stories from muslim and hindu religions. I came to know that he used to actually read puranas and other religious hindu texts to the illiterate villagers in a remote telangana area of andhra pradesh. I did not realize the importance of that as a child but now I know how big a thing it is...because he was a devout muslim who fasted during ramzan and did namaz everyday.
In an era when extremists of colors breed intolerance and call for revenge citing historical persecution of 'others'..I fear for this way of life, which still exists in rural India. This is the way of life that is corrupted as much with terrorist attacks as it is with proselytizing, vain talk of secularism, giving unnecessary oxygen to those who espouse intolerance, lack of resolve amongst us to call a spade a spade and finally inability to keep our religion confined to our hearts.
One of the songs I used to sing in school compared India to a garden full of flowers of various colors...Replacing the garden with flowers of same color robs its beauty and makes it into a farm not garden just as painting the canvas with a single uniform color erases the painting beneath.
I wish the garden blooms with hundreds of flowers of all colors.
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Jagannath's smile

At the temple, the 2 year old was comfortable with all idols but was scared of the Lord Jagannath's idols. He came to me and secretly pointed out to idol of Jagannath and said it was the 'bad guy' in the temple (a fictitious person I conjured on his earlier visit to my house earlier so that he would not shout at the top of his voice).
I did not know what to say, for I am always inspired by the penetrating eyes of Jagannath. I just asked him, are you a good guy? He replied with the innocence of a child..yes. I said that it was only to 'bad kids' that the Jagannath appeared to be bad guy. I asked him to pray to Jagannath, saying he was a good boy. And I further added that he had to do it by closing his eyes and should not cheat. He dutifully did that and had no problem all that evening. He replied as we left the temple that he no longer looked at Jagannath's idol as a bad guy. He told me that he was smiling at him now!

That made me wonder..Is there any meaning to the idols that we pray except that they are focal points to hold our minds? Apart from the religious context we associate feelings and emotions with people, objects, pictures, sounds. But is it our mind that they all come from?

Can the happiness that we all seek be found within us? And as Anne Frank said, "we all seek happiness. we are all so Different yet so similar."
One of the upanishad verses claims that everything outside is just a reflection of what is inside. My cousin's son forced me to reflect on these at a temple and I wondered how true they were. Lord Jagannath is probably smiling at this childish enquiry.

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