Truths of Life [part 1]

Once upon a time, there lived a lonely, depressed, angry old man. But he was thus only due to the horrible times life had forced upon him. Not by choice.

Then one day, as he was de-weeding his tiny front garden after rolling up the hose pipe he used to water it, he felt a strange whizzing sound above his head. He looked above, but alas, found none that could be responsible for such an alien sound.

So he continued de-weeding, squatting on the wet, soft soil that rose around the weight of his bare feet. He was far too occupied with the dark thoughts of hate that clouded his mind on every such morning, for him to give the whizzing sound a second thought.

But as he stood up to go back into the house, wiping his sweat with the edge of his lungi, he heard the strangest sound he had never heard before. It was so beautiful it nearly had him transfixed to that very spot. With the weeds in one hand, and the scalpel in the other, still holding the edge of his lungi.

It was a voice, but not human, of a song, so melodious. It instantly cleared the angry man’s clouded mind. The man nearly knelt in submission to the sound, but kept his strength, and slowly, for he did not want the sound of his steps to interfere with the sound of the magical melody, he approached his house from where the voice was coming. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness of the room, against the open skies of the garden, he realized, to his amazement, there was none present in the room beside him, from where the voice boomed loudest.

Was it a genie? Was it a joke? The singing stops.

The man feels a surge of relief when the sound stops, as if released from the grips of a trance. He searches everywhere, cabinets, under tables and chairs, behind and beneath furniture, inside kitchen drawers; he even opens the taps to check if something were hiding inside its nozzle. He finds none. “What a lonely mad man have I become,” he exclaims to the empty room, “Imagining things that exist even not. Lusting after the mere voice of a woman.”

“Is she beautiful,” asks a voice amidst the darkness of the room.

The man spins around. “Who is there,” his voice booms.

“The woman, whose voice you so lust after, is she beautiful?”

But how must he answer such a ridiculously vital question this angelic voice has posed before him. “I believe so,” he finally says, surprised at his own certainty that the owner of such a voice could but only be the most beautiful being present.

With a tinkling laugh and a flutter of her wings, she came and perched herself upon the back of a chair within the man’s view. Alas. She was but the tiniest, most beautiful bird he had never seen before.

And he stood transfixed, gazing, just as he had the first time he had heard her sing. If anything, she was more beautiful than he had imagined. “Please tell me your story,” he begs, almost kneeling down. She tinkles another laugh, I am a learned bird, and since you are lonely, I will sing to you every night, and talk to you every day, and fill your empty house with my presence, if you promise to care for me, to shelter, love and feed me.”

“But it won’t last,” he warns her, “for I am a foul tempered old man, and none ever last long beside me.”

“Won’ you at least try?”

“It won’t work.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I only fear for you.”

The tinkling again, “Please”.

For the first time he looks into her eyes; and his heart, that had long since been replaced by stone, melted. Then he knew, he could never stop loving her. So it was.

She sang his troubles away every night, and he listened and he loved. She would chatter with him while he did his chores, and in turn listen to tales of his troubled life past. They would debate and discuss issues whichsoever she had sufficient knowledge of, far many more than those even the man knew of.

Soon, they began to get quite comfortable with each other. Comfortable enough for her to believe that he was far too stupid for her; and him to believe that she was far too arrogant for him.

One fine day, she flew in to see that the cage she had requested him to build for her was occupied by another bird. That all the windows and doors to the house were shut, and she had but no way to enter.

So she sat through the winter on the fence of his garden, singing her throat sore through tears of regret for what she had brought upon herself. Though his heart was hard, he loved her so very deeply he could not bear the sound of her voice reflecting the extent of his cruelty upon her. So he opened the door and opened the windows and freed the other caged bird far away so it might never find its way back to his home.

His beautiful angel majestically returned to her place in his home, his heart and his life; but something had changed. For the guilt of having betrayed her weighed heavily on his heart. Though he knew, he could never stop loving her.

From that day on, as he’d promised, he worked to make her a new cage, a bigger, better, stronger, richer cage, all along hanging his head in shame of having betrayed her. “But I don’t need one,” she insisted. But he would hear none of it.

The cage, though, took a great deal of money, and energy, and effort, and time. Meanwhile, his love was terribly lonely. She had grown tired of living a life in solitary. For she had but spent over a year in waiting.

Her mind began to wander. Her soul began to wander. Her dreams floated further and further away. Yet, he did not come to her. She gave him all the signs, but he did not see.

Then one day, as he entered the house wiping his feet on the door mat, the hollow, dark, emptiness of the house gripped him. It suddenly struck him. Oh God, what had he done?

But no! How could she not understand? He was doing this for her.

The only thing that had gotten him through such agonizing times without her was the sound of her tinkling laugh, inside her new cage, for her.

She fluttered through the darkness to him. Her spirit having long left her behind on the journey she was about to embark. “I must leave,” she said, from somewhere far away.

“No!” He knelt before her, begging her to stay, “Please!” But she could not hear him anymore, she lifted her heavy wings and soared into the light.

And night after night the silly old man sang the songs she once sang in the hollow emptiness of his dark room, with an empty, empty cage above his bed. And he knew, he could never stop loving her.