Valley of the Moon Vineyard

I was taking a long evening stroll and was listening to some music that solely belonged to the bewitching hours of dusk. This time I was taking a walk all by myself. I was alone but not lonely. I felt happy for no particular reason. At once I felt light in heart, mind and soul. I once again fell into my childhood habit of categorizing things. This time I tried to categorize the types of happiness which have influenced me so far in the almost quarter of a century I’ve been living. The beatific music which was still pouring into my being through the headphones was a backdrop to my thoughts. They seemed to accompany my ponderings. I didn’t want to turn it off. It had a divine quality.

The stars started to bloom one by one in the glamorous evening sky. Even the drab skyline of my conservative locality had an elusive charm under the million stars. I looked at my Ruby mount, all aglow with tiny crimson lights, and felt happy. Someone was perhaps earnestly praying there. I wondered why I was happy about that! I recollected my long drive across a tiny town in Tirunelveli called Aralvaimozhi and could almost see those beautiful windmills which made me dream of the romantic city of Amsterdam. The memory made me tremble in bliss.

I remembered my train journey from Kochi when I was a teenager and when life was one big package of impossible possibilities. The train snaked into an orange dusk in the Malayali countryside. The famous backwaters of Kerala caressed the timeless sands of God’s own country. My eyes misted and I knew my soul was reveling in an eternal spring. I was too young to understand that it was a unique moment of its kind and will never repeat. That moment of delight was just mine. I was the reigning queen in that land called happiness.

There! My thoughts returned to the type of happiness which made me the happiest. In spots, I’ve done decently with life so far, if not as a whole. Those miniscule achievements had brought me happiness. Or I thought they had. I have read somewhere that, at some point in everyone’s life, a moment of realization dawns…a dawning which is soft and pleasant like a fine autumn drizzle. I realized then that true happiness is something which is born without any reason. It has a lasting quality to it. It is timeless and consistent. It is unaffected by circumstances or time. The happiness which dies with the reason, for which it was born, is not true. It is as fickle as the human mind.

When true happiness engulfs the soul, the deepest of human sorrows vanish like mist in the sunshine. The wine of happiness intoxicates a being and washes the daily drudgery of existence. The veil shrouding the mysteries of existence flutters when a human encounters true happiness. It reveals a resplendent form of life which presents itself before you like an apparition…something which the mind’s eye perceives in those ephemeral moments of pure happiness.

And for those wondering why I named this post ‘Valley of the Moon Vineyard’, it is simply because those words gave me one of those moments of reasonless happiness!