Thought Garden

The Flying carpet.

 S/W: Bryce and Poser.

Flying Carpets.

I saw him land his carpet softly in the pale moon light...or was there a moon at all?fficeffice" />

“Hi!” I exclaimed, still slightly too stupefied to address him in a natural manner.

He turned to me, a bit surprised but not completely startled. “Hello!” he said, somewhere between apprehension, curiosity and friendliness. Wary but not frightened he bobbed his head, both acknowledging as well as returning the greeting in the same motion.

There was something very familiar with him...yet I couldn’t completely place him.

He grinned at me. ‘It’s fun!’ he declared, as if offering an explanation for being caught in an act he wasn’t supposed to indulge in.
“You do this often?” I asked him, “Fly around on a carpet?” and even as I mouthed my question, part of me wondered what was it in me which allowed me to converse naturally, peer to peer, with a child hardly 7 years old, moving about on a flying carpet!

“Started recently!” he half said to himself, “I had tried and tried and tried before...but it just wouldn’t fly! Stubborn thing! I hoped and prayed...yet on the floor it stayed!” there was mock reproach towards the carpet, yet loving indulgence too laced his words. By now, I too was convinced that this was all a dream and the least I could do was indulge it!

“How did you come by it? How did you find out that it was a flying carpet and not just any ordinary carpet?”

He looked at me, first with wonderment and then with mild scorn...or was it pity? There was an oh-why-do-adult-try-and-test-a-child’s-intelligence expression written large on his face! “There’s no such thing as ordinary carpet!” He scoffed at me.

“All of them are flying carpets?” I asked him.

He rolled his eyes heavenwards, god spare him from intellectually challenged adults!

“Of course not! There are the vanishing carpets, the rolling carpets (which rolls from one place to another, I later came to know) the food carpet ...”

“Food carpet?”

“Yes, you roll it up! Wish for your desired food...roll it out and you find your food laid out!”

“Ice creams?” I asked suggestively; in some ways mocking him as my adult mind found this a bit too hard to digest!

“Naah!”, his face contorted in distaste, “ Have had too many of those!”, he replied with a slight precociousness. At least we seemed to share some tastes.
“But as I was telling you...food carpet, disguise carpet, picture carpet...”

“Picture carpets?”

“Like the ones you hang on walls! Any place you’d like to go, imaginary or real, you wish it and it becomes a picture on the carpet, and you step into it and become a part of the picture!”

“Hmmm...” I replied appearing to be serious and thoughtful, but reminding myself, this definitely was a dream!

“So how come I never come across one?”

“You mustn’t have asked!”

“Whom?” again the look of incredulity at my question! How stupid can adults get!

“Ask the carpet of course!” he said with half-masked scorn, “You’ll never get a straight answer though,” he warned conspiratorially, “They tease! Try to fool you. You have to be very clever and most importantly...win over their confidence!”

“Why Mirzakaleem here,” pointing to his carpet, “only spoke to me after 5 weeks! And it was 12 weeks before he admitted to being a flying carpet!”

“How did you get him to fly?” I asked, curiosity winning over incredulity.

Shaking his head as if not believing in it himself, he said, “Well I tried and tried and tried! Nothing would move him. I thought there was a secret chant...a mantra! I tried all kind of words!”

By now, I was fascinated! I never imagined that I would be indulging in a dream, which would have a logical flow with a process embedded in it! Cupping my chin in my hand and squatting on a convenient feature I asked, “How did you manage?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know...one day I got mad and stamped my foot and said ‘You will fly!’ I was very angry and it flew!”

“I nearly fell off... I was very scared! I was going round and round in the room. I was just stuck to the carpet, some how pressed to it. I was very scared that I would fall off...but I didn’t!” That would be centrifugal force, I thought, but kept quite wanting him to continue his story.

“I finally collecting courage enough ask it to land and it did!”

He shook his head, a bit disbelievingly, lost in his recollections of his first flight. He glanced and me and said sheepishly, “Luckily no doors or windows large enough was open...or who knows where he would have flown off!”

As this was my dream and as I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance I asked him, “Can I try and fly it?”

There was a brief moment of hesitation...wariness. I guess its natural for a child to not want to share his possessions. But my little visitor had a heart greater then his possessiveness. “Sure!” he nodded his consent.

I got onto the carpet. “Fly!” I said, “Fly...Fly...FLY...”

My voice gained urgency. I even stomped my foot...cursed! The child watched me silently. He shook his head and then asked me to climb off his carpet. I was miffed. At least in dreams things should obey you!

‘You don’t believe deep within you that the carpet can fly do you?” I was dumbstruck. I wanted to protest but in the dream world, no lie came to protect my ego. “Also you have to love the carpet. When I had stomped I was angry with myself not the carpet!” said the child.

The incongruity of the child mouthing wisdom struck me! The oncoming dawn cast its first wash of pale light seeking to banish the night sky. He looked up, “I have to be off now!’ he declared. He jumped onto the carpet and with a barely perceptible nod was off!

I placed him in my memories, even as I spied his diminishing form.  I had wanted to meet him a number of times. Had wanted to communicate to him, all that I had learnt and experienced, so that he might benefit. To teach him! He was my childhood.

But my childhood, instead had reaccquainted me with that which had been inherent in me, but which I had, over time, eroded within myself. A belief...

I might still find my flying carpet...

9.8.03 07:39