Digging for Meaning

A beautiful yellow and white butterfly is hovering outside the window of the metro. Outside, the summer has begun to sting. Inside, the air-conditioning makes the outside look pleasant. The wide rectangles of metro windows frame the Qutub Minar well. The Minar rises and wanes in greenery. Solace for dry eyes, beauty in embrace of a wide expanse of greenery. And yet the solitary little butterfly has chosen to be here, besides a thundering metal and glass caterpillar. The giant caterpillar runs along a hundred times faster in a straight line. The butterfly hovers, flies and staggers undecidedly at its own pace.   It hovers and staggers, two paces ahead, a few flaps of wings to stay put, then sideways and ahead again. It is as if it is searching something down below. Hovering and examining the world below. Maybe it's wallet fell down or a ring. Do butterflies get married? The metro is guarded with rolling barbed wires. The butterfly is hopping from one segment of wire to the ...

on the way back home today, i was startled with a little green and black thing flying in front of my face. i quickly jerked back with a step backwards. it took a moment for me to realise that it was a butterfly. well, it has been quite a while since i had seen one. a butterfly in this gas chamber we call mumbai, should be wonderful sight, a rarity to capture forever in one's heart n head. but, the gas chamber has made the butterfly such a rarity, that like every alien thing, our brain forgets to understand beauty and the first instinct it activates is that of killing or steering clear of the abnormality. lessons to be learnt: 1. dont become an abnormality, atleast in other's eye. don't be a 'freak'. 2. instincts know no beauty. if you must show, educate beauty to others, do it gradually.