jaalakam november-december 2003

All my life, I have been a dreamer. All that I saw, heard, read and imagined had enriched the primordial chaos in my mind-whence fancy conjured up psychedelic images that haunted my waking hours. One such dream - one that filled my childhood and stayed with me during my youth was a riverspace where a river met the sea. An eager river rushing among a thousand rocks swirled and bubbled, cried and laughed, and fell into the arms of the sea. There, countless dragonflies surfed on the bubbling foams, the morning sun decking their translucent wings in rainbow colors. My spirit burst into a million fragments and sailed with them. As a child, I believed that they were the souls of the dead, waiting to be reborn. In my youth, many of my dreams fell on broken wings, or disappeared beyond my vision. They never knew how my fate was made and my future cast. Then, the dragonflies took another identity. They became the lost dreams of all the young, flipping among bubbles that burst. Later, when work swallowed my days and nights, that dream, like many others, slept under a blanket of snow. Now, as if spring has come again, the riverscape with its foam, its rocks, and its dragonflies has begun to haunt my silence...

Now, we are heading south towards Albuquerque for the International Balloon Fiesta to be there before the Mass Ascension. I am grateful to Mani, My son-in-law, for the quiet in our car. For my thoughts can wander freely. I have scanned the Internet to have a background for the world's most photographed event: fifty nations cover the fiesta live to broadcast through satellite. From a small gathering of thirteen balloons, held in a parking lot in 1972, this has grown into an international competition, held every year in the first week of October. Albuquerque is now the foremost ballooning city because of a phenomenon called the Albuquerque Box - a combination of weather patterns and geographical landscape that helps controlling the balloons. In the year 2000, the Balloon Fiesta was a nine-day extravaganza with a thousand balloons. What may be the next target in another landmark? Yes, dreams are limitless !

Parking our car, we dissolve into the dark sea of people crowded into those two hundred acres of launching space. Many balloons are already crowded into those two hundred acres of launching space. Many balloons are already up. They look like huge bulbs hanging from a sapphire-blue dome, glowing softly. Down below, the bulging balloons look like pleasure-boats in a dark sea during an ebb tide. Dawn is still far away. And cold makes my fingers numb. People are standing, crowded around the balloons waiting to ascend. The gas burned roar, hotair gushes in, and the balloons bulge. Most of them carry four people each. Lifted by the hot air and the cheering crowd around, the people in the balloon rise in wide-eyed wonder. The young, the old, run from one balloon to the other to share the thrill of take-off. I wonder, what might have been the sensations of those who started this oldest aviation sport, what might have been the feelings of uncertainties and of adventure, what might have been their experiences of the silence in the sky, the music of the wind, the dance of the clouds?

A big crowd hoots and shouts; we move on, curious to see. A huge "car" roars into life with its driver in his seat ! Cameras flash on all sides. There, throngs of children jump up and down, clapping their hands. A "Teddy Bear" looks down upon them; here rises a " Bunny" ! The commercial America rises up in dreams. Tonight, children will dream of their toys floating up in the air on invisible wings! A "wine bottle"! Is its cork loose? Is it the red wine from that bottle that has colored this dawn? If Omarkhayam were alive today he would be dreaming of a bottle of wine floating above the wilderness. Ah! A cow is rising up - "Creamland". I travel back in time. Nandini, the fabled cow of Indian mythology, the symbol of creamland on earth, the cow of the gods, is homeward bound !

A bunch of "red chilies", artistically braided, goes up as an offering to God. Wait, I don't understand. What is that? An old Grandma from whose folds children peep like Lilliputians? Well ! a nostalgic dream of a lost world, when children were secure and rooted in native- American culture. Daylight has flooded the sky. All those balloons - up in moments - float like toys on a vast cloudless lake of blue. I think of the kite-Festival in India. In the windy season, for three days, the young and old alike send up kites from every houses. And the many colored wings flutter in the sky like hopes and dream and prayers.

Overwhelmed, we begin to move. And I can see the reflection of my beaming face in every other face. All these balloons will land somewhere by and by. If I could, I would send a balloon without people, a balloon that cannot be controlled, a balloon that will never land, a balloon that will disappear beyond the clouds, a balloon like a dream! As we drive home, we are settled in silence again. I travel back into my childhood. After the month of reaping, we would run flying kites all over the paddy fields. And many colorful kites with tails and wings flew over hills and valleys. The kites took various shapes, as our imagination ran riot. I ran with children in search of kites that were caught in the trees. I used to persuade my childhood companion to send some of those kites with the wind, breaking the thread that controlled them. Many of our friends did, in fact, send some flying off, just for fun.

Those hills that were no-man's land, half a century ago, are rubber plantations now. And the trails we made are private roads for private cars. Much of those paddy fields now yield cash crops. Children no longer fly kites, for the world has become a global village conquered by soccer and cricket. Where are those kites that flew away from us? Where are those dreams that eluded our grasp? Can I dream now that those dream are waiting like those dragon flies skipping over rockey spaces, full of bubbling water, on their iridescent wings? Where the river of Life meets the sea of Eternity- waiting for children yet unborn?

©jaalakam