waiting room 2

She was back, except this time, with no book or pen, or anything. She came with herself and her conscience and her will, and hoped that would be enough to hold her together. It had been over a week, and there were many questions she wanted to ask. Many things had troubled her, and she needed clarification. She went to a doctor for some explanation, and he had told her that she was hallucinating, and that he was very sorry to say it, but she couldn’t have heard anything. It just wasn’t humanly possible, he had said. Then how could she so vividly remember it? That feeling of “hearing” not as a separate sense, but as a part of thought itself. Lost in her thought, she didn’t hear the woman come in. But then again, she couldn’t have anyway.

The woman walked up to her, and touched her on her shoulder, and she started, her thoughts dissipating like a wisp of smoke. The woman was looking exactly the same as last time, with her very beautiful features, looking at her emotionlessly. Without a word, she began to walk away, indicating the other to follow her.

They reached the door, and the beautiful woman opened the door and gestured the other to go through. At a questioning look on the other’s part, the beautiful one shook her head; she would not be coming in this time. Closing her eyes, she walked in.

Still a fairly alien sensation, the music closed in on her, causing her to feel momentarily claustrophobic, but then it passed, and it surrounded her like a protective cocoon. When she opened her eyes, she saw him sitting there, looking completely ordinary, sitting with his guitar. He was playing it very softly this time, very gently. For a while, neither said anything, she sat down a little way in front of him, and waited. Then suddenly, the music stopped, and there was a silence that was as thick as a smog that suddenly settled in the room. Now truly feeling claustrophobic, she started, and thoughts began to bubble out of her incomprehensibly.

“Calm down. Everything is alright. Keep your thoughts under control.”

The silence was complete; nothing stirred, or moved, or made any noise. A silence like this complemented the music, both were utterly unearthly. Stilling her breathing, she held her thoughts in check.

“That’s better. Scary, was it?”

“Yes, very much so. Why? Why suddenly this silence?”

In answer, he pointed to the window, and gestured for her to go and look outside. Curious, she walked to the window, and looked out. Nothing out of the ordinary did she see; a squirrel scampering about on a tree, a bird eating a lizard and regurgitating it for her offspring, an ancient oak that was nearing its end. But nothing out of the ordinary. Her eyebrows furrowed, she looked out more questioningly, thinking she had missed something. But she hadn’t, there wasn’t anything she could see as an answer to why he had stopped playing. Maybe he was scared of disturbing –

“Don’t observe. Just look. What do you see?”

“I see a squirrel running, a bird feeding her young, an old tree dying.”

“What do you feel when you see?”

“At peace.”

“Why?”

She thought for a moment, and then pushed, “Everything is in balance.”

“As am I. The balance of Nature is unrivalled. That means not, that we must not maintain it in our souls too.”

How easy it was for him to say that, she thought. He’s stayed in this room all his life, and felt nothing of the bitterness of life. He’d felt nothing of broken love. Nothing of the struggle of life, of the unfairness of it all. How could he say something like –

“So much anger. So much pain. Do you really believe that I haven’t felt anything that you say you have felt? Do you believe that all you see in front of you is a product of isolation?”

She couldn’t respond. She had nothing to say.

“Sight is the most deceiving of all the senses, and thoughts based on sight can mislead with ease. Don’t let your sight blind all your other senses.”

She said nothing still. And neither did he; he just began to play again, softly. The music seemed to flow like a thick floating river through the room, coursing through the air with grandeur, leaving a tingling sensation in its wake. And it stayed at that intensity, soft and mellow, but with a solid backbone. His fingers seemed to caress the guitar and coax the sounds out of it, rather than actually play it, and the guitar was putty in his hands. Noticing her jaw had dropped slightly, she closed her mouth. His eyes were closed fast, and the music came fast.

All the questions that she had had all planned out and ready to ask, began to dissolve. She came in with the notion that she would figure out just what was going on, and just how everything was happening. Now, when she sat in front of him, and the music enveloped her, she couldn’t care less how it worked, or why it worked the way it did. She understood, on a very primal level, that she was doing something extraordinary, but there was no sense of pride in it, no sense of supreme accomplishment or superiority. There was just a simple, humble sense of peace.