Stones, dear stones..

 I had walked past the same road about a million, no, gazillion times. To school, back home to gobble a quick lunch at midday, then half-running, half-walking in the tearing hurry to make it in time for class after lunch, and then back home after school in the evening. Not a terribly exciting life, I admit, but, the fact is, I had walked down that same road about a gazillion times.

Never had I imagined that life would take me so far away from the predictable routine that had established itself in my life then. Far from my sheltered home, far from my people, my culture, far from the city that was home. Ten years down the line, I had a new though only slightly different routine, one that involved rushing again, but rushing to catch the morning bus, rushing past crowded streets, streets milling with people speaking in an unfamiliar tongue, rushing past an urban concrete jungle. It was only when I travelled back home after having lived my first six months in this concrete jungle, did I realize where I came from. As the long-distance interstate bus hurtled down the national highway, sparse and scrubby vegetation faded out of view slowly, and the first sight of green – real and true green crept into my line of vision from the stuffy seat that held me, and my heart did a little leap inside. My eyes now glued to the windows, I took in river after river, each brimming with water all the way to the horizon, lined with coconut palms along the banks – and then I instantly and instinctively knew – I was home.  

Some years down the line, thanks ironically to modernization, connectivity was further improved, and I was able to take a flight back home in the rainy month of June. You could bet for all you were worth that I would take a window seat and there I was again, eyes peeled against the window and as we coasted along the same route, albeit this time overhead, and it was the same feeling though multiplied several times over by the altitude-enhanced perspective. No wonder was the coast further down south called God’s Own Country! As far as the eye could behold, hills and vales were swathed in a carpet of green, not an inch left sparse! My heart did a double take again, brimming over with joy and pride.

Fast forward to 2020, the year of the unexpected. The pandemic that outwittingly threw life off-gear has had me homebound for over three months. While the rest of the world scrambled around trying to find their bearings in the turmoil, I was thankful to spend this time with family after many, many years away. With all else grounded, I made it a point to take a walk once a day to keep myself from being sucked into the vortex of the whirlpool called work. And then it happened, again on one very seemingly normal day in the rainy month of June, as I walked by the same road – that same path I had traversed a gazillion times, when my eyes chanced upon the walls along the street. Those walls, betraying every evidence of the paint they once held, the colour having been stripped clear by the incessant rain, were now coated in a decadent green with velvety moss all over. The raw unevenness of the laterite stone, with slight irregularities and holes on the surface of each brick had encouraged tiny shoots to spring up here and there amidst the dense undergrowth of the moss. Suddenly, I knew profoundly - this rather mundane sight that wouldn’t have drawn a second glance otherwise, was so close to my heart, that I had missed these very walls for ten long years, and that the very sight of them evoked a deep sense of love for my city that I hadn’t even known ever existed in me.

“For her stones are dear to your servants; her very dust moves them to pity”. Psalm 102:14 Wouldn’t that be much like the heart of the servants of the Lord for His city Zion? Yes, instantly, this verse penned by the psalmist in the annals of history assumed new meaning and revelation for me. I now knew what King David meant when he said the very stones of the city were dear to the people of the Lord - only with Jerusalem, the depth of emotion and meaning associated with it would be so much more greater!