

Joi de vivre is there in every element of nature around us. Ready to make us smile and laugh and burst forth with bountiful energy. A dancing peacock can brighten up an insipid morning, rising above the noise and fury that signifies nothing.
Enjoy Morning Meanderings Season 2 with your hot cuppa and cookies. ☕🍪😊
As I stepped out the morning after Deepawali, I almost shed tears at the sight of a diffident sun hanging from a foggy sky, a post-Deepawali gift of a cacophonous celebration that went on till late into midnight, while the old and the infirm waited for the cacophony to die down. But it didn’t.
The canines and the felines clung to each other, reassuring each other with petrified purrs and whimpering whines that the noise pollution would soon die down. But it didn’t.
A toddler clung to his mother, refusing to be lulled to sleep, as every other second, the noise assaulted his tiny eardrums. “Look, the sound has died down,” she soothed him. But it didn’t. It wouldn’t.
The polluted sky looked down with a grumpy air, but the sun brightened a little as one of its pallid rays fell on a ragpicker who had just found a few unused crackers on the littered ground. The spark in his eyes appeared brighter than the spark of the comatose sun. Another morn had dawned.
Now many days have passed since Deepawali, but the sky continues to be foggy, till today. The birds, mere outlines in the grey sky continued to have a cranky air. The lone Kingfisher that usually sat on the telephone wire fronting our house was nowhere to be seen.
Why were insensitive folks bent on discolouring the blue, aquamarine sky? I thought the crackers would tire themselves out, ending with a whimper, but no, they continued to burst with an undying vigour. What was the celebration all about?
But life goes on. Old scenes are replaced by new ones, old sounds are buried under new sounds. Even silences become vocal.
I have been seeing this ragpicker coming every day, in his trolley designed from bits and pieces of the treasures that he has found on the alleys and bylanes of life. The ragpickers go on, undeterred. They have to earn their daily bread, noise or no noise.
Today he has come with his daughter on his rag-tag trolley – her cracked cheeks, parched lips, a hand-me-down frock, and two plaits tied with gaudy red ribbons catch my eye.
He lifts up his little girl and makes her sit on the boundary wall around the vacant plot fronting our house and goes about his business. She yells to papa. He looks in her direction, she is munching on a biscuit and pointing towards something. He stops rummaging in the garbage can and heads towards her, her eyes twinkling stars of pure joy. I tiptoe toward the father-daughter duo and stand rivetted at the scene unfolding before my eyes. A majestic peacock dances in abandon, unmindful of the cacophony.
Morning Meanderings is a musings column by Santosh Bakaya
All crass cacophony suddenly falls silent, as the dancer dances on. The ragpicker father puts down his bag and scoops up his daughter in his arms. The drudgery can wait, tiny chunks of the treasure of a ragtag nature can wait, but the precious scene cannot. Eyes fixed on the pirouetting treasure, the little girl’s happy squeals fill the air.
One more cracker bursts somewhere to celebrate this magnificent scene, perhaps.
And honestly speaking, this time I do not grudge the bursting of this cracker. The grandeur of the scene calls for a celebration—two impoverished people enriching themselves by the precious sight of the graceful moves of a delightful danseuse.
The five-year-old girl laughs and laughs. Her clear musical notes fill the air, and the danseuse dances on, in sync with the rich lyrical cadences of the poor kid.
The ragpicker father-daughter duo look in my direction and smile – the peacock dances on, undeterred, determined to beat the noise and dance to its own rhythm of joy. Clasping this rag-treasure to my heart, I walk on. The happy girl waves to me, chortling in delight.
Click here to read all episodes of Morning Meanderings Season 2
Don’t Forget to Revisit Morning Meanderings Season 1
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How perfectly beautiful dear Santosh di
Brings such a smile 😊
Thanks Ipsita Ganguli