The Visitors................

The water was admittedly dirty and muddy. Murky. But it was still. Absolutely still. It first seemed like the water body was unaware of the thousands of vehicles that tore past it almost every minute of the day. Vehicles that disturbed the peace in every way possible. They emitted smoke and chemicals. They honked and screeched. They chipped off the road. They spread the dust. Was the water body really unaware of (and unaffected by) these disturbances? Come to think of it, who was to be blamed for the dirt and the mud in the water? It is one of those questions that one raises despite knowing the answer! There were a few so-called trees jutting out of the water in one stretch....as if they were holding hands and wanted to deal with this together. United they stood. But they stood bare. The trees had lost all their leaves. There was no green. The trunks and the branches and the twigs were all bare except for a thick layer of dust that they tried to hold on to rather than burden the water with. A few small blackish grey ducks were drifting along the water creating small noticeable ripples around them. One would imagine the ducks were initially white in colour though it wasn't actually so. As the picture seemed to come together and provoke one to ponder over what she was looking at, a bird as pure as the driven snow suddenly appeared from nowhere and flew past the water body in a slow and graceful manner and alighted on one of the trees that seemed to welcome it with outstretched arms. The reflection of the bird in the water was so beautiful! Slowly, another bird followed the same path but chose another tree. And then, there were some more....one after another. One, not surprisingly, wondered what was so appealing about the place to these beautiful birds. Suddenly, the picture looked very different....it took the mind from a low to a high.