And those birds which she kept caged in her soul for years long, they always wanted to go away flying , taking off from her shoulder perhaps. I just got the curious chance to see them as once she spoke about them. It had been a beautiful day of spring. The air was on the drier side. The trees were getting their new dresses. The roads of our town were getting fresh new coat of asphalt. She told me how one bird in her wanted to go all the way to Volos, a sea side town of Greece while another had the desire to go to Egypt. Then there had been another with a Mediterranean spirit. And another which longed to visit the Alps. And another which had an ascetic bent, finding calm only in lonely caves of the Himalayas.
'But how do you keep them in you for so many years, without setting them free? Do they not quarrel? Do they not chatter and freak you out?'
I asked her that day of spring when the weather had been particularly enchanting. The scent of blossoms was lingering in the air. The sky was clear like the one we oft see in picture postcards.
And hearing my query she smiled.
'A woman can keep a thousand birds in her and yet she can be perfectly sane with them, for she has a bit of her in each one of them and each one of them is her part. She knows them all too well and she feeds them, cares for them, loves them, caresses them and gives them the shelter. A woman is like a bird sanctuary. She keeps the chirpings as another layer of her emotive expressions. '
She said.
No she simply did not say that.
She spelt that.
I heard the wings fluttering soon after... wings of many birds, all fluttering at once.
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