It was a Saturday evening and I was proceeding to carry out my last duty of the week and looking forward to some fresh air of the following Sunday that could blow monotony and banality off me. There was sort fervour in my steps while I was going upstairs to the first floor of my school. There was still some time before the prep duty started. So I stood leaning on the balustrade of the balcony overlooking lush green farms adjacent to meticulously manicured tennis courts.

My roving eyes caught a sight of a little girl standing on a balcony upstairs. She was holding on to a thread tied to a big butterfly-shaped balloon. The balloon’s anti-gravitational pull amused the girl.

I said to her, “Leave the thread. And I’m sure you’ll enjoy watching the balloon disappear in the nothingness of the infinite sky.”

She hesitated initially. But while the battle between her unwillingness to lose the balloon and her tickled fancy to know where and how it will go if it is let loose was raging on, she felt something smooth flicking out of her slack grip. And there appeared her fond possession floating freely in the sky as if scoffing at her attempt to arrest its flight. Her gaze got fixed on the balloon floating in the air. It also arrested my attention and soon I realised that my eyes were chasing the unusual bird— the wingless but not flightless bird, the bird that does not build a nest anywhere but spends all its life in the endless sky and when life evaporates from it, it embraces gravitational force of the earth that it has been ridiculing all its life.

The unbridled flight of the balloon began. Two pairs of eyes were avidly following its spontaneous path. Initially it kept hovering a few feet near the balcony so I thought that it would not go and where and ultimately it would land on the school’s play ground. Doesn’t a faint hope that our loved one will stay with us linger in a corner of our mind when we are aware of his or her imminent departure? Yes, for a time being hope gets victory over harsh reality. After some time, the balloon floated higher in the sky— above the school building, over the tennis court and ultimately beyond the school’s compound. The lingering hope for the balloon to fall on the campus died away. Like an ephemeral moment that comes only once and never returns, the balloon embarked on its journey never to come back.

My gaze remained fixed on the balloon, which was soaring high now. It pitched and then spiralled farther and higher in the sky and stirred in my mind an optimistic thought that it would land on a nearby farm and could be retrieved easily. After it travelled almost two kilometres in the sky, it became difficult for my eyes to discern it because my eyes lost track of it. The wingless bird was now on its wings sometimes hiding in the clouds that the sinking sun had painted crimson and dark scarlet. My eyes got riveted to the beauty of the sun sinking beyond tall ashes and the horizon displaying colourful clouds that kept changing into various shapes and turned into some abstract paintings. There came into my view a line of birds arranged in such a shape as resembled the front of an aeroplane.

The calm of the evening was ultimately punctuated by mellifluous cries of birds returning to their nests; mysterious shrills of crickets heralded an evening that was gracefully lit with lamps burning in houses and was a bridge between momentariness and eternity. Priests were saying prayers in Gurudwaras. Their lilting voices led a listener to deeper mysteries of life. Flapping wings of bats added a new rhythm to the music that pervaded the evening. The evening breeze was giving me its last caress as if promising to come back the next day with same enthusiasm. But I didn’t do anything except taking a plunge into the present moment. I just wanted to see where it was to lead me. And when I opened my eyes after reaching the other end of the present moment, there was the sun poking its head out of the thick blanket of the eastern sky. The birds were getting ready to go on search for food and were leaving their nests. The priests were singing songs of God in Gurudwaras. And the eastern sky was ablaze with bright golden clouds that were murmuring: “Life is here and now.”

My jaw dropped and I was overwhelmed with gratitude that I was alive.

“Ah this..!”, I said.