| Shoes
At Your Door; fruits on the forest floor |
| Written in memory of Dollah, a wonderful forest worker |
| Distance,
Time and Speed: these were the first few concepts we learned during
our formative years at school. Back then, it was simply a matter of
calculation; easy because the variables were familiar, the formula
was handy, and the outcome was fabulously predictable... Hooray! Yes, it was as simple as childish hearts were young and gay. Little did we know then that, as we aged and laved in the vicissitudinous vessel of Life, such concepts should become so much more profound than we had once presumed. Where is forever? How real is timelessness? What ubiquitous distance lies between hello and goodbye? |
 |
|
It was the latter question that confronted me recently at the funeral
wake of my friend Dollah.
'Wasn't it like yesterday that I first met you and now you are gone', I remembered thinking. I was standing at the threshold of the main door that led into the living room. Family and relatives were carefully embalming his body for burial. Many came to pay their last respect, and in no short time, the whole stairwell outside was filled with both young and old, and more were waiting at the lobby many floors below. Shoes upon shoes piled up before his door! I was mesmerized and dazed by the presence of this great community. No doubt, Dollah's wonderful friendship had added greater poignancy to my senses. He had touched me with his gentleness, sincerity and strength; his quiet smile had stayed with me since. What could a young supervisor asked more of a daily-waged worker whose zeal for work preponderate his lowly pay and advanced age. As my co-worker and teacher, he was truly a blessing. When the pallbearers finally brought his body across the threshold of his home for one last time, I also carried with me a silent vow to write a requiem for him. I want the world to see the glorious multitude of shoes at his door, and to feel as I did, how they had resembled the plentiful dipterocarp-fruits that had littered the forest floor that same year. I wanted the world to see the true light of Nature shining-forth from within both man and forest; where true worth triumphed in the capacity to touch and give life. But would modern society accord greater esteem for the unsophisticated man or the understated forest? Both are presently vulnerable to diminished accounting in which the good man is reduced to his paper qualifications, and the rich rainforest diffused flat and formless on a map. The truth, the light and the goodness of Nature deserve more. |
|
'The
sands in your way beg for your song and your
movement, dancing water. Will you carry the burden of their lameness?' - Rabindranath Tagore |