The laughing seagull

One of my quieter friends, while on a trip to a beach standing on the ferry showed me some seagulls flying above the muddy waters. He said, look above you and stretch your vision as far as you may so that you remember this moment and me. I was so overwhelmed with the surroundings and his words, considering I was very young then, that I kept my eyes focused on the flying seagulls for a long time until our other friends dragged us out of the ferry. Such a sweet, passing moment but one that still finds me in the grip of memories till date whenever I think of that trip. My friend reiterated how he found melancholy in the flight of the seagulls and because I was a tad too softhearted back then I saw myself searching for the sorrow and misery of their flight. It didn't help that we both spoke about the passage of time and our tirade through the bouncing college life that we were supposed to leave in another year or two for our graduation. I kept the conversation in my head for a long time, months and years even, after a while that I started forgetting how he had begun talking to me about it back then. Memories are so fragile; we just cannot pretend to hold them tight howsoever much we wish to preserve and protect them in our embrace.

My friend since then pursued other ventures apart from architecture. He said, it was not the only means to living in this beautiful world. My other friends always pegged him as being too much of a dreamer, always engulfed with his head in his imaginary clouds. He was dazzlingly brilliant in the sense that he disliked poetry to the core but stayed in Rumi's haze as long as he was awake. He was into sufi mysticism and I regret that I was too much of a negligent friend to ever really understand his love for spiritual sciences. It was a mystery that we spoke with an ease that baffled a lot of our friends who couldn't understand my patient stance around him. I feel that some people have a calming effect on our persona with their mere presence. He only had to look into somebody's eyes while in a conversation and they would entirely give themselves away to him. We often wondered about his calm nature and the fact that he was in a rigorous professional course such as Architecture. He was one of his kind; always smiling through his eyes and healing through his words. It was impossible not to feel loved in his presence. He spoke of sharing love like sharing the sunshine, not less, not more but just enough to make its presence welcome.

After we all split up in search of different avenues since graduation, he kept lingering in our thoughts. He had simply vanished. We knew nothing about his whereabouts until about a year ago, when one of our mutual friends stumbled upon him at the same beach where years ago, he had initiated our conversation. My friend does not practice architecture anymore. He paints and teaches tribal kids, often moving through places. He said, he has no home, not a permanent one; he resides where he is at peace and requires his services. The last time I heard of him, he was in Assam, working through the flood hit regions, teaching kids there, writing a text or two once in six months. It's a miracle he even uses technology because I had him completely pegged for someone who has renounced this world. He laughed when I told him about this. He's coming back in December and wishes for me to find a seagull that looks happy and one which laughs. That's quite a task but one which makes me rush to the beach and scout for their happy souls. I realise this now as I discover that the misery I saw in them was my own and the laughter that I seek within them will be my own. A happiness that belongs to me.