My experiments with touch

If I am exaggerating this while I narrate, read it the way it is, because as kids life as some point has been exaggerated and over magnified by all of us. We have all told stories of how we had beaten up the kid next door; or how a dragon had been the victim to our anger and then how virtuous we had been to pardon him when we’d see him weeping (then obviously concluding that it was a part of last night’s dream, when the whole thing had been dragged too long to be believed).
It was beneath the large mango tree that we first saw it, like all the other things around it was also green and that is how it was suppose to be. But there was something more that it was meant to do. And so to check it out all of us walked towards it. We were the regular visitors of this place but never had we been so careful about our footsteps and so vigilant about what was that we all stepped on. Before that day we had never seen the roots of that mango tree go in and out of the ground at intervals, as though been sewn into the fabric of this land. We had grown on the branches of this mango tree fighting on who was the one who that spotted the first ripe mango and then who would be the one to get it down. Running around to find every heavy but small round thing possible to bring down all that the tree had been bearing the brunt of through the year.
But today was not like the other days; today we were here on a mission to explore the unseen. To see how our touch could make the kind of difference that we were told of by our school master. We were a team of seven worthy men (boys would sound too armature) who were set out to change this world by their touch. Their were a lot many distractions that came our way, the other boys were up on the ground at this time, we could hear all our heartbeats rise and sink with every roar that struck our ear drum, some voices were loud and clear while some vague and unclear but none asked for any clarification from the other whether it was their team batsman that hit it over to the boundary line right now. We were all men who focussed on task and now that no worldly affair could hamper us from doing it.
After a lot of keen observation and finding from our side, one of us managed to lay our eyes upon that miraculous thing. His awe directed us to the thing that he assumed to be the object of our desire. Somehow this unsaid rule developed that no one does anything alone or by himself, the truth behind this was the fear of the unknown and also the fear of being mocked at if that was not the thing. Some one had to do it and I was stunned when all eyes stopped at me. Was I the one to take forward this mission and to complete it? To me it was more of a reward…but somehow the others knew that they were to follow the act and so it made no difference to them who goes first. Was this what I was thinking and was a myth or this is what it meant? (all this didn’t strike me then, it is only now when I write of it I think in this manner).
Before I noticed all the others were on their knees and then I felt someone pulling down my pajamas’ too, to me it was a clear indication to follow what was being done. We all crawled towards it and I bit more close. I brought my hand closer to it and got my fingers to touch it. I felt the blood rush into my fingers and as I brought them towards the leaves. I felt the space in between reduce and then as I neared very close to it I felt tingles in my fingers, I felt the space that separated us. If felt magical and magnetic, I felt it calling me or me calling it. And then I touched it, and it dropped, there was a silence and I could feel the happiness of having conquered, in that silence. It did not say ‘touch me not’ but we heard those words being said in definite syllable like the broken line of a nursery rhyme. I heard the drums and trumpets that rolled in our hearts. Then it was the time to see the touch of the ‘touch me not’ and we all dispersed to find our own touch me not’s. It was as though not we but they were touching us, and as they touched they sang to us -to…uch m…e not, to…uch m…e not.
That day taught me a lesson that takes a new face every time I think of it, it taught me that the small joys of life come coated with the silver foil of laughter that are born in our hearts and travel to our lips unknowingly. These laughs are not heard by our ears but give true happiness to us, and then the joys becomes larger than the objects that gave it.