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Dear Valley,
While I have never written a letter to you, I have had conversations with you on several occasions. When I have watched your birds in admiration, it’s you I have observed in flight. When I have watched the still waters of the lake or the gushing mud brown water of the Bund, I have witnessed your serenity and raw power. Witnessing the spectacle of a hundred fireflies under the banyan tree on a moonless night, I have rejoiced in your magic. Even the lashing thunderstorms that bring down trees have been a language of yours. You are shrouded in mystery and will take a lifetime to explore, and yet leave the explorer wanting more.
Dear Valley, you are blissfully bountiful and breathtakingly beautiful. All those who live and love The Valley are ever grateful for this. The children take delight in watching your winged incarnations and collecting their feathers like treasures; some chase butterflies playfully and yet other relishing the sunset-orange passion fruits, tam-lollies and sucking on bay leaves; some swing from your branches admiring your blazing gulmohars on a hot summer afternoon; adults become silent artists sitting under a tree painting the morning sunlight falling on the golden copper pods. Your mischievous streak comes through when you send children and teachers running helter-skelter for their respective buses, and on most days–just when everyone has summited their mountains, both the school gate and the flood gates of the heaven open for a splendid downpour.
The monkeys chattering from tree tops, the wild boars ploughing the brown earth black, children running bare feet on your cool earth, the gulmohars and amaltash blazing the treetops saffron and yellow, the silent eyes drinking in your serene sunset are all you in your many incarnations. It’s you in the decaying seed pod, the infant bud, the magnificence of the mighty panther, the scorching noon sun, the gleaming dancing ripples on the lake, and the sweat on the brow of a cross-valley runner. You are a healer, a storyteller, a musician, a painter; you are history, mystery, a home, an emotion; you are nostalgia and a source of divine silence. Within you resides the heartbeats of beings galore. Every child and adult who comes in touch with you takes a big part of you and leaves behind a bigger part of them.
On this 43rd birthday, I wish you on behalf of all those who reveled in your love, riveted in your beauty, and healed in your sacredness.
Ananda
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