As a child, it was the emptiness that I was fanatically obsessed with, and my jogging strip gave me just that. Far away from the city’s traffic, my jogging took me into the woods. Near the entrance we are greeted with a serene pond to one side that admittedly must have covered the strip itself when it was full. Sauntering around this lake are seen the local herdsmen; seated on a yellow rock, they watch by as their cattle walk in and out of the pond.
Far away from the entrance are the coconut and palm trees. The track snuggles its way through dried twigs and green shrubs; rocky crests and sandy troughs; narrow hesitation to a wide relapse towards the tall trees. With lungs heaving for oxygen, heart pounding, panting and with flesh wrapped around our skeletons that we wished to get rid of, we enter the zone of tall trees. A longing for the trees; too deep a feeling to comprehend.
As we leave behind us the tall trees and the mango fields to the left, the track now takes us into the village. Dense undergrowth to the right and yellow thatched roof huts to the left of the track. Before the huts are hens running helter-skelter; kids playing with marbles; dogs sleeping nonchalantly eyeing ever more curiously the new intruders. Patches of cow dung with palm imprints of the hands that slapped them against the walls; an old man with a wrinkled forehead and a bag of dry grass on his back; women working in the fields; the village atmosphere takes our mind off the heaving and panting, and we gradually relax.
We take rest at the end of the track. To one side is a Temple where the villagers come to worship, and to the other side are the trees that are reminiscent of thick forests. The farmlands beside the thick forest extend a long way into the horizon giving way to salt lakes and towards the end, city roads. It’s absolutely calm and soothing, but we return before the nocturnal beings step out of their homes.
As we jog back to the hostel, there is a sense of fulfilment and accomplishment. Our track takes us back into the woods. With the village behind us, we run into the woods. Although the perimeters of the woods have thick undergrowth, the insides are clear with little or no shrubs. Only the tall trees stand by lonely, all by themselves as we leave them behind until the next day evening. With sun lazing down and the swords of light after a day long of reckoning, tired and red, stroke our faces; cool evening breeze dries us up; the sand beneath our shoes rattles and the paddy fields sway in the breeze.
The woods are lovely, they make us feel at once lonely; but before the melancholic tendrils grip us, the woods bury us under sheets of delight and we return amazed at the wonderful life that surrounds us.
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