I got up late today; the alarm did not ring. I opened my eyes to see the first rays of the warm March sun lighting up the tiny winged leaves of my dear old guava tree; the silence in my room was echoing with morning fragrance. Spring has arrived. Look at my young lemon trees in my little garden – all laden with maiden white humming fragrances radiant with morning sun as tender as the spring itself. How I love that morning freshness. I have always loved it, so passionately and tenderly, and I know somehow these tender things love me too.
Beyond this silent and tender spring morning I know lies a busy day that doesn’t understand and respect tenderness – shrieking insane horns of motorcycles that push me aside forcibly and leave behind a cloud of burning smoke, and featureless faces corroded and flattened with the lifeless tasks of life that erode all that is tender, the glare of florescent colours on the street side walls, rusted hoardings and even the colourless sky that seems to be thrusting their way through my eyes with a violence that is too much to take, and then the violence of day-round ‘give and take’ that hurts me so deeply . . . no warmth of hand and heart, no sunlit smiles, no simple heart that understands; just give and take, pay and use. And then, then . . . I think – why not give? Give all that I possess, give all that I can acquire, give without demanding anything in return – give till the last day of my life . . . give to that child who is opening her fairy like innocent eyes in a world that doesn’t respect beauty, to my old grandmother with age-old wrinkles who sits on a scorching day under a tree to sell a few cucumbers – her only saving of the busy day which sees featureless faces running past one-another, and shrieking horns and violence of colours – the story of her everyday life.
I could easily have fled away – ‘fled far away’ like many others from this everyday violence that hurts me so much to an island “where no storms come”. But tell me how to leave behind all that I love so deeply to perish and die? I am too deeply in love to leave all that I love to its own fate; to see them scorched and mutilated – I know they look upon me. how to turn away my eyes from them? Have you the courage to look into their eyes? My heart swells with pain and tears run down. It’s this moistness that stays with me throughout the dry and hard days that suck the tenderness out of you. I have to be there – with them and let no harm come. I am not a coward. I have the courage to love and to fight for all that I love.
Welcome to my Caravansary 