A Rupture... A Rapture...

Courtesy www.bindweed.com

With a peculiar screech, he would arrive and I would dash out to the front-yard, climb up the slender vines ensnaring the papaya tree and stare at the blind turn up the road. It was that blind turn from where he used to magically appear… like a conjurer appearing amidst a smog of miasma.

Around four in the afternoon he used to come, when the sun could only shine with half its resplendence. Though half battered, it would bombard uncountable solar arrows against my eyes, but like medieval legions, my eyes would hold ground… a continuous battle of strength and perseverance.

But alas, after minutes of onslaught, I would flinch and look away to rub my eyes, and as soon as I would look back, there he was… donned in a grubby Kashmiri attire and smeared skull-cap… a grotesque sight you might presume… but before such presumptions amalgamate in your mind, let me tell you about his shoes.

His shoes… they were mystical… like the sandals of Hermes. Radiant white with not a speck of dirt on them, curling at the toes like the ones the Nizams used to wear. They made a clicking sound, which became more and more prominent, as he approached. A smile on his face… a hop in his stride… and a huge rucksack on his back… In the silhouette of the glimmering sunlight, there struck a queer similarity between him and Quasimodo, the famous hunchback of Notre-Dame.

In that rucksack he carried an object, ‘The object’ which had made him so popular and lovable, an object of my impatience and his pride.

“Come out kids, let me take you to the land of colours” he would say after unpacking that object he had carried all the way from his home.

“Come and explore the vivid world of colours” he would say after successfully deploying the object and placing it on a tripod. An intricate and fiddly looking structure which the man called “The Magic Box” but my father, ever the intellectual, told me one day that the device is actually…

“A Kaleidoscope”

 A cacophonous bunch of kids would surround him from all directions, like wild mice around the Piper, everyone waiting for their turn to have a look inside the ‘Magic Box’. The man would try his best to maintain a steady discipline and would give every child his fair share of time at the Kaleidoscope.

I would wait patiently in the queue, eagerly awaiting my turn and when it was finally time, he would come close to my ear and ask in a mild yet alluring tone…

“Which colour will you be today?”

Someday I would see green, someday red, another day a mixture of all. After that we kids would talk about all the colours we saw, how they all meld together to form a vivid and elegant masterpiece and how much we admire the presence of the Kaleidoscope guy.

And after this carnival of fun and frolic, just like he arrived, he disappeared. Just to appear again the next day, the same time… the same exact time every day.

But one fateful day, he didn’t come. The next day at four the blind turn remained silent again and the days that followed too. The kids in my block were at first disappointed, frustrated but as the tides of time roared they forgot… all of them forgot… about the Kaleidoscope guy and his ‘Magic Box’… but not me… he remained in the attic of my memory… and till date resides at a place in the deep corner of my head.

Years later, in a physics lecture, I was taught about the fundamentals and the rudiments behind the ‘Kaleidoscopic Vision’. A lecture, unlike the others, I awaited with sheer ardour. An hour of tedious equations and theories leading to one final conclusion…

It is nothing but white light… plain, simple and bland… white light.

Baffling… for I expected something else… something more… something… magical.

In the dawn of that day I went for a stroll around some desolate area. I needed to be in complete solitude. Confused and for the first time disappointed in the ‘Kaleidoscope guy’. I wished for a discourse with him, one last conversation to clear my head. And just then I could feel him moving sluggishly inside my head also willing for the same…

“Is something bothering you kid?” he asked.

“I thought it was real… I mean… it was real. You had everyone captivated’ I said.

“Who ever said it wasn’t real?” he replied.

“Everyone used to see a different pattern. How could one thing appear differently to different people? You made a fool out of us. You took advantage of our naivety.” I said.

“What makes you think you are different than my ‘Magic Box’?” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

… He remained silent and went back to his place in my head.

Hardly a moment had passed that it struck me and by god didn’t it strike me like a thunderbolt. My true self ruptured out the eggshell… and what remained was pure rapture.

“I am… the Kaleidoscope guy”

Changing expressions and gestures for every man I meet, forging a different impression on every individual, making then happy, satisfying  their need for a friendly discussion and then changing again for the next guy that walks by… making a fool of them all… each and every moment of the time they spend with me… like the Kaleidoscope guy.

I was and I am nothing but white light… plain, simple and bland…

What the Kaleidoscope guy made his living, I made my life. With what the Kaleidoscope guy earned his daily wage I earned pleasure. But I am no evil… I am but an ordinary man with ordinary taste who has learned to hide his asepticism and manifest fake vivaciousness.

So obsessed I am that I walk around draped in attires similar to my childhood idol, though I couldn’t find such mystical shoes, I keep the skull-cap as a tradition… a mark of respect for the original ‘Kaleidoscope guy’.

Now whenever I see an individual walking towards me with intentions of conversation or solace, I hear a voice inside my head coming from an abyssal corner of my mind… the voice of the original ‘Kaleidoscope guy’… asking me a question with a smug tone… a very familiar question…

“Which colour will you be today?”