Patterns

Let me wipe away this tear. My eyes are sensitive to wind, cool air and to staring- very sensitive. I am resting on my bed and there is no wind, this hot city has no cool air but most rooms have ceilings. Childhood home, classroom, dorm room, train station, offices, libraries; the pattern follows.

When I first looked at this ceiling that I am still looking at for an hour now, my mind was full of praises of how well it is painted. No mark, no landmark as far as I can scan it. No bumps on the road. Very clean ! Twenty – five seconds in and I saw a dent, the paint looked thicker there. Ah, found it ! I held on to it and now I am floating in patterns that begin at all three corners. The fourth corner is too far to see. The patterns here, take me back to the first ones that I ever saw. Are all patterns same?  Maybe in their nature if not in their design: engaging, fanciful, daunting, dynamic, and puissant.

Patterns are never lost, they get replaced. Looking at them is like looking at clouds. You take your eyes off and you lose it, but the sky still has it, maybe a little differently. They are funny, sometimes mysterious and appalling too. Indulging with them can make you a creator. It can also remind you of what was long forgotten by you. It reminded me of my ‘leisure’, when staring at ceilings and walls, was the most engrossing pass time.

Patterns are man- made; unconsciously made by man for most times. You don’t spot a pattern until, your second encounter with it. You might not know it even then if you aren’t attentive. Everything constitutes a pattern, sometimes your very own and the one colossal pattern for all other times. Patterns caught the eye of great philosophers and thinkers like Aristotle and Plato .They searched for their origin in science and sometimes described them as an imitation of nature.

Whatever the history be, the present is challenging and questioning. The ceiling patterns have flushed me with nostalgia. They remind me of simpler days when neither I recognized patterns as ‘patterns’ nor did I know that people around the world had earnestly thought about it. The only reason I was penchant for them was that they invariably existed and I wasn’t wrong. I need to open my eyes wide and they are there, in every wall, in every ceiling, within me and everywhere around the word.

Paridhi