Time of the year: A Graduating Class

This is the time of the year when the atmosphere on any major American university campus is a fascinating one. The weather decides to become forgiving and the relief of the last exam can be felt in the air, even when you do not have an exam to take. This is the time of the year when you can see movement, in things and lives.

And the most heartwarming of sights, for me, is when I see parents of international students visiting this country to witness their children take the grad walk. Indian parents, waddling around for their evening or morning walks and being given campus tours by their sons and daughters – of a place they had probably not even imagined in their wildest of dreams, maybe even unpronounceable to some, but they still put all their money and trust into it. There is nothing but excitement and pride you can see in their faces – legit and well deserved. And thus, this is also that the time of the year when you can see the movement, in dreams of the great Indian middle class, where they take a tangible and recognizable shape, wings spread and ready to soar.

Calm

The earth has now finally flattened herself to rest. Who knew that her chaotic dance would come to this calm soliloquy. The winds do not carry the soil with them anymore and the water has eroded everything that stood around it. Everything has settled down as the new uniform muddy floor a few feet below the waters that cover the entire planet. There was no movement, no waves, no life but just the water profoundly reflecting the dead sky.

But not very far from the spot where the first rock carved by man had stood was the last rock he would carve. It jutted just a few feet above the water and was the only place left to stand on. On it lived the last man who spent days carving this island into what now looked like a marble coffin in the sea. It might be difficult to have a point of reference in such a place but I have seen men find a home between two steps in a stride. He worked without breaks and only rested on moonless nights. The tides did come in perfect intervals and he would simply let them pass under him. The mud was uniform but it moved and it raised him and his rock to the crests when the tides came.

It had been decades since he had last spoken or heard a word. he could not remember his own name but he remembered the name of the last human he had seen and it was a young man who called him The Scientist. His hands had completely cracked with exposure to the sun, the water and the salt. With these hands and whatever little fuel and metal that had remained, he built a capsule in which he had shot him into space.
Now sitting alone he thought a lot about his fellow men and how they used to make things out of rocks to leave behind their proofs of presence for the generations to come, proclaiming in one tongue or another rather simple words – “Yes! I too had lived.” each such wail only wanted to be found in this ocean filled with noise. Everyone had their rock carved and left it here to be found but The Scientist was sure that no one would see what he would leave, even if it were the best rock ever to be in this sea.