When the music plays, we sing and dance. For those who are deaf, they would think we have gone mad. For those who are blind, they would think we are a bore to not make the most of the melodies. Some hear music when there is none. Some miss the music that’s quite obvious.

Music or no music is a tough riddle to crack. The two groups would always point fingers at each other, accusing the other of pretending, blaming each other for oversight. How dare you prance around like a madman? How can you not dance to those tunes, old man? Why aren’t you happy when there is so much music around? Open your eyes, self inflicted blindness human, see how we dance around the bonfire!

Life can be deaf. Life can make you blind. Life is filled with vibrant colours and sincerest of tunes – if you choose to identify them. Life can host ear shattering house music. Life can make you deaf. But only if you are keen to not listen. Life will make you blind only if you want to stop seeing the world around. Keen to block out the undesirable? Life will rip away the senses.

Embrace the world with all its fallacies – life will smell really good. It will smell like she does after a shower. It will smell like your grandmother’s favourite book. It will be as simple as a sun ray, and as prominent as a thin one coming in through the dusty window. It will be as simple as a Sunday, and as warm.

Meera danced away as the music played, music only she could feel, enveloping her with ecstasy, she danced and danced and danced as the world looked on, bewildered and deaf and blind to her summons, her madness lost on mere mortals and she rode her dreams into the heavens. We are all as crazy as she was. We just don’t know it yet.

[inspired by Bhajan: Kafi — Pag Ghungroo]

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Words: Sushrut Munje