One
evening while coming out of a suburban train station my eyes caught hold of an
image. Among several images that I subconsciously happened to chance upon and
then discard, this one had to be given a second glance. It was a normal summer
evening with lots of hope and wishful thinking for some cool breeze but alas my
wishes remained unfulfilled. Replacing this wish for the cool wind was this
picture in front of me. It was sudden, refreshing and kind of unbelievable
given the surroundings or the situation. It was a tree, but not a normal one.
The tree had blue leaves! a blue
bordering on green. The leaves glistened through and caught my maximum
attention. I was in awe of what I saw .I simply could not believe it. It was
straight out of some fantasy film. My mind wandered for a second thinking maybe
I was in some LA-LA Land. Finding myself there I was thrilled and content. Sure
there was a spring in my step. The sparkling blue leaved tree gave me happiness
so much so that I forgot where I was and missed a step while getting down the
platform bridge. Smiling sheepishly I continued my downward spiral almost
feeling like an intoxicated drunkard.
The
onward journey to my apartment continued. My happy thoughts were interrupted
when I saw a swanky sedan by the road side which apparently had an engine break
down. “Wait a minute, how could this be possible?”, I seemed to almost ask out
aloud. This car looks brand new and must have a ‘no engine breakdown’ guarantee
of some sort. The owner looked towards me, almost as if he judged my thoughts.
In a very displeased manner looked away instantly. A bad day he probably had, I
thought. Carefully moving along, avoiding the cement left over adorning the
roads, admiring my skillful hop-jump routine, I almost bumped into someone.
Ready to use some cuss words, I happened to look upon. A familiar face stared
at me. Both of us were trying to recollect each other in the mini seconds that we
had. The conversation started with the ‘H’ questions
A:
“Hiiiiiii. Long time (Yes, because I cannot recollect your name). How are you
(seems important to ask)?”
B:
Hiiiii (should I also include a hi-five for more drama?)I am good
A:
Blahh Blahh
B:
Blah Blah
A:
Bla Bla
B:
Bla Bla
A
Nice J
B:
And some more Blahhhh
A:
Bye.
B:
Bye.
Feeling
overwhelmed and guilty for not able to still recollect her name, I walked the ‘walk
of shame’ almost sprinting to get out of the situation. All of a sudden it
dawned on me that we were ‘friends’ on a popular social media website.
Happy
that I was able to recollect the roots of our ‘friendship’ and glad to be back
into this aura, I walked and walked. I suddenly felt hungry. I wanted to have a
cheese cake since long. Sure I knew a place that housed some sweet goodies.
There it was the perfect blue berry cheese cake sitting inside the cute butter
paper that wrapped it. The cake looked so perfect. Its different colored layers nicely complementing each other. I bought it hastily and bit into the
seemingly perfect piece of heaven. After the first bite came a startling sense
of disappointment. It tasted horrible. My other half of myself seemed to argue
meekly “It did look good though”.
Chucking
away memories of the bad cheese cake, I made my way inside my small little
world shell shocked at the way I managed to keep my apartment so untidy.
That
night over a cup of hot chocolate I pondered over the day that was: The breakdown
of the luxury sedan, the awkward minutes of my life spent chatting with my ‘friend’
and the disappointing cheese cake. Something seemed very right at first about them.
But every bit of these experiences left me at some level, disappointed and
unsatisfied. It was at this point that I
was yearning to know if the tree with blue leaves was for real. I simply could not wait any longer, grabbing
my house keys I rushed out. After a few minutes I was in front of that magical
tree. I looked carefully at it. Yes the leaves were blue. My optical focus
shifted a few meters downwards. There stood a medium sized hoarding with tube
lights inside it. I was a tad bit sad. It was after all the neon rays of the
hoarding that gave the leaves all its magic. For the magical tree with blue
leaves to be simply a tree with leaves all it needed was a shift in focus.
Feeling
content with my genius diagnosis I turned back. One question popping up in my
mind “Is it what seems to be or is it what it is?”
