Yogi

I was led into a room with a balcony overlooking a jungle. 'This is Yogi's room', said she, my host. I said hello to my home for the night.

When I got up to the sun's orange rays raining through the white curtains and I opened old drawers, I found Yogi's diary.

My host, Yogi's mother, called me down for tea. We talked as she watered her plants.

I asked her about Yogi. Yogi left home six years ago, when he was nineteen. Way back then it was hard on her. But he had his reasons. Confines of home stifled him, she said. And Yogi wasn't made for college. But his father had other plans for his only child. And the child had no plans as such.

So one summer morning, he simply left, with just the clothes on his back. He called seven days later, from somewhere high up in the Himalayas. And then again a month later from somewhere else. He still does call his mother. But she doesn't try to get him back.

Back in the room I pushed the door open and I saw something I had failed to notice ealier. Yogi painted. On the canvas that hung right before me, were footprints on sand. He called it 'Guitar and barefeet'

Those words brought the man of flesh of blood infront of my eyes when I closed them. The whole night I thought of Yogi. I liked his name so much, and wasn't he a Yogi? I thought of gay abandon and kept staring at 'Guitar and barefeet'.

Those footprints must have been Yogi's, I thought. I pondered over what he looked like and whether he remembered to shave. I mulled over the broken strings of his guitar and what music he liked. There are only a few people who followed the heart.

By dawn, I was completely in love with the 'idea' of Yogi. I placed a picture of mine right beside the painting. That picture, embodied the two passions of my being- 'Seashells and poetry'. I looked at the two of them for sometime. They looked like soul-mates.And I simply left.