When I Read Out To Him

His hands flipped the pages, scanning each page for a brief second, finally resting on one which divided the book into almost two equal halves. From where I was observing, the book in his hand- opened midway- looked like a bird’s outstretched wings.

“Can you read this page to me darling?” he asked.

It was a Sunday evening. The first time he had asked me to read to him was when I was some 12 years old. Before handing me the book, he had told me that to be a good reader I would need to nurture an intimate relationship with words; I would have to internalise what the words want to say. Only then would my reading have a ‘ring’ of meaning .

  It was a J.Krishnamurti book. I went on to read it aloud....

“Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, how beautiful it is? All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness there is a poem, there is a song. Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring. When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with the music of many leaves, which in due season fall and are blown away. And that is the way of life”

That day for the first time he said, “The text was speaking to me when you read. You have grown into a fine reader dear”.

***

They told me he was no more. I don’t know what hit me harder- the reality of the words or the abruptness with which I encountered them. In the next few moments I could feel the naked truth detonating in my brain, preparing to explode and blow me into rubble. But it was as if my emotions had  lost even the energy to explode. I stood there as silent tears ran down my cheeks-like a naked tree against the sky of life.  

***

It was 10:30 p.m. She was showing me the ‘mind-map’ she had made of the thoughts that occupy the different compartments of her brain. My eyes were intently scanning the sheet spread before me with her finger guiding me through the connecting pathways whenever I lost track. So somewhere in the middle was her father who somehow led to her KFI school which then led to a quotation by Krishnamurti and the arrow starting from there landed at my name. The quotation went as follows-

“The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.”

“You were the person who, I thought, was a living example of this” she said, when I threw  a questioning glance at her on seeing my name linked to it.

And then as if she could not let the meaning of that moment get lost in the subsequent chatter, she asked me, “Can I not wait till 12 O’ clock and give you your birthday present right away?”

The look in her eyes made me feel that there could not be a better time for her to give me what she wanted to and I could not take that moment away from her.

So she rushed to her room and came back with a tiny little book in her hand. The cover of the book read

“Freedom from the known” – J. Krishnamurti

I opened the book and we landed on a chapter titled ‘Love’. And even before I had read the first paragraph, I could hear myself reading it aloud. And as I went ahead in the chapter, pausing at junctures which compelled us to discuss about them; I had a subtle feeling that he was hearing me, that he had wanted to hear me read to him then.

What a perfect way to spend time with him on my birthday.