Lamps

By Kumar Shaurya Singh

Alexis Gilmour was the type of person who never felt satisfied. No matter what task she started, in the end, she did not feel as if she had achieved everything that she could have achieved. It always seemed to her that something was missing as if she were a novel and the final chapter was still to be written as if she were a song without a chorus. Something was always lacking.

Her co-workers had mixed thoughts about her. Jim Huntington, The Editor, often said about her: 'She's the most organised human I've ever encountered in my life. I mean, she wakes up at 5, makes her breakfast and lunch before 8, and plans for the day even before entering the office. What is she, like god gifted? If you come to my desk, you'll find that I haven't even sent my life insurance policy papers back to them, and the last date was yesterday. I am The Editor, and even I am so laid back while she... if she didn't have two hands and two eyes, then I'd say that she's a train...coz you know...she's always on time.'

Hannah Silverman, who was good friends with Alexis and was a little annoyed by her Editor's comment, used to say: 'Ah Alexis...Alexis... Her pouch of satisfaction is never filled. No matter how much fortune goes down her way, she is never content. She is always hungry for more. No matter how much she has on her plate, she wants more and more. Well, I always tell her: You can only have as much that can be digested by you. If you acquire more, then well...'

But Alexis never felt complete. She was always seeking something, hunting for something. She'd be on her edge, always looking out, as if some strange and mysterious gift would manifest around the corner, and she'd be ready to grab it. Her catlike eyes would always scan the room for opportunities that would spring up randomly, and ever would she pounce at those hoping to snatch it out of someone's mouth and consume it for herself. Such was her nature.

Her colleagues had tolerated her obnoxious behaviour for a short while but when she started stealing paper clips from the office then Mr Jim Huntington had to come up with a plan. When Jessica Rodriguez was waiting by the copier, he approached her and said: 'Hey Jess. I have a proposal. Let us all go out on a hunting party. We'll pack our bags, set our camps in the forest, and begin our hunting. There's a forest I've been to... It's strange and mysterious but is full of many exquisite locations that are just waiting to be discovered. Let us all go there, and maybe we can take Alexis as well. I bet, there, she'll find herself well satiated.

Jessica frowned because she had a pile of papers on her desk that had to be finished before the month's end. But then she spotted Alexis breaking a rose flower from the office pot and said: 'Yeah, alright. Let's go to this hunting party of yours. We'll go and take her with us. Maybe that ought to fulfil all her desires. Maybe then she'll be full.’

'Oh, I bet you, she will be.' Huntington said with a sarcastic smile as he rubbed his palms and figured out the plan in his head.

The next day, the office staff were ready in their camping gear, equipped with cargo shorts, torches, lighters, space blankets, and marshmallows. The bus had come, and Huntington himself had driven it, intending to maintain complete independence during the trip.

Alexis was content from the journey, but even as she continued to drink in scene after scene of flashing landscape, she felt a little bored and wished to go back to her apartment and watch some movie. After a while, she expressed herself to Hannah, saying:

'What are we even hunting?'

Hannah just smiled secretly and said not even one single thing.

By evening, the stars had popped out from the depths. The moon beams fell on the forest pond and illuminated it beautifully. Starlight glittered in them like jewels, and in the soft hue of twilight, the planets in the sky looked marvellous. The company of 7 set up their camp in a beautiful grove that was bordered by giant oak trees. The forest floor was like a carpet of dry leaves that gave off a wild scent and made them all feel like hunters and rangers. The Energy was high that night, and as the evening waned away, they pulled out their guitars and marshmallows and celebrated the beautiful evening in high spirits.

***

The strings of the guitar were reverberating when Mr Huntington looked very sharply in either direction and raised his fist to halt the music. He bent his head towards something and said in a whisper: 'Can you listen to that?'

The other six concentrated hard and tried to identify the source of the sound. It was soft. It was low, and it was like a rhythmic chant. It seemed to come from the east and they could certainly figure out the voice of a woman. She seemed to be singing in sweet notes, and it felt like she was calling all of them.

'What do you think?' the brown-haired Manny spoke, 'should we pursue that which gives us the call?'

The red-haired Albert Pinto replied: 'Seldom do mysteries unravel themselves with such grace. Let us not delay our quest anymore. Let us approach the strange tune and discover the source of it.'

All agreed. Alexis, too, was excited.

The company of 7 moved softly towards the source of the Music. The voice took them through a dense growth of tall grass and brought them to a little stream. There, in the moonlight, the streaming water rippled with silver starlight, and next to it they saw a very beautiful woman who was touching the flowing liquid and singing softly.

She was dressed exquisitely in a rich coat of green that seemed to be weaved with vines and dark leaves. Likewise, her hair was dense and jet black with shades of dark green; it fell upon her shoulders and complimented her moonlike face like clouds compliment the lunar orb. She was barefoot, and her nails were painted in a deep shade of green that matched the beautiful shades of the surrounding grove in which fireflies had started to come out.

As the company came closer, they saw that in the stream, three water nymphs were playing sportively with each other, and they seemed to be enjoying the song of the mysterious green-haired woman. But as the company approached them, the nymphs scattered away into the depths of the pond like squirrels depart when a stranger enters the wood.

The green lady allowed her song to fade and looked deeply into their eyes. Then she said: 'You all have entered our home without our permission. But you won't be able to leave it unless we will it. Thus you shall stay here forever until you finish the deed that's been reserved for you.'

Before anyone else could speak, Jim Huntington, who had met the lady in the past, smiled and said: 'O Divine Lady of Plants! What is it that we must hunt this time?'

As he said this, a beautiful firefly fluttered near the woman's head and sat on her open palms. It was purple and glowed brilliantly. The Lady looked at it and asked:

'Do you know what these are?'

Huntington asked: 'They are fireflies?'

The Lady smiled and said: 'No, Jim. They are little orbs of happiness. Here, they are roaming freely, and they will go to anyone, whenever they want. No one needs to search for them. Yet, so strange this world has become, that now these little beings have been abandoned. Nobody wants them. They are all alone and filled with beautiful light.

‘Your duty is to seek these living orbs of happiness for yourself. Once you have found as much happiness as you can, then you are free to leave. Otherwise, the ways to the outside world will be lost forever for you.'

***

The company of 7 was huddled together in a group, like a soccer team. Jim Huntington said to others: 'Alright, Team. This should be easy. Let us all spread out in all directions and meet once again after exactly an hour. Then we should have collected as much happiness as we can, and then we will be out of here.'

'Wait a second!' Albert Pinto interjected, 'so this means that we are officially hunting happiness right?'

Jim Huntington smiled and said: 'Yeah, Albert. In one way or another, we are all hunting happiness. Okay then. Spread out.'

He handed small plastic bags to all of them that could be sealed tight shut, and the company went in all four directions to hunt for happiness.

It was not an easy thing -collecting happiness! The living beings of happiness fluttered their wings and glowed with various lights as the hunters attempted to catch them. One time, Manny got so enchanted by those lights that he followed the blinking orb towards the edge of a small cliff and ended up crashing to the ground! His right ankle was twisted, and it swelled to the size of a tiny bee nest.

Likewise, Hannah Silvermen fell in a pond of mud as she was chasing an orange-yellow being of happiness, and poor Jim Huntington ended up trampling Jessica’s toes as he struggled really hard to put his caught orb of happiness into the sealed plastic bags.

It seemed that these little beings hated being confined. But everybody was trying to put them in sealed plastic bags. They would shout: 'I have 7 happiness!' But the other would say: 'Oh, you only have 7? I have 13 happiness with me. I beat you sucker.' And in such wise, they continued to shove the orbs of happiness into the sealed plastic bags where these little things suffocated and started to die slowly.

Alexis had trapped 21 beings of happiness in her plastic bag. 3 of them had choked and died inside, and their light had vanished. But Alexis wasn't worried. She still had 18! They were still alive though, by the looks of it, it seemed to her that they would quickly fade out. So she pulled out her whistle and blew it.

Everybody gathered around. Six of them had managed to trap happiness in their plastic bags. Only Fredrick Beckham had not even a single thing in his plastic bag. Nonetheless, Jim decided: 'I think that we have enough happiness with us to last for one lifetime. Let us go back to The Grove and submit this to our lady. It seems that this much should be enough for the competition.'

So, all of them went to The Grove, and there, they saw The Mother of Plants dancing upon the green grass mound on her soft soles. As they approached her, she eased her motions and asked them with a beautiful smile: 'So? Happiness?'

Jim Huntington stepped forward, and he felt proud that night. He said: 'Here, Maam. If you calculate all of them then you will find that the count crosses 100.'

The Lady winced as she saw the plastic bags where the little beings were choking and suffocating within. She immediately opened the bag, and all the tiny creatures fluttered outside and flew away from them and sat on her shoulder or on top of her head, while some went near her feet and established their abode on the ground, as the others circled her head and sang in high pitched voices.

'Tch Tch Tch,' the lady said, 'If these orbs of happiness were really yours, then you wouldn't have lost even a single one of them. Since they left you, the moment the plastic bags were opened, it implies that they were never yours in the first place! You had captured them and confiscated them! You possessed them! Thus they were never really yours, or else they wouldn't have left you.'

Huntington rebelled: 'But then O Mother! How are we to capture happiness then? What is the secret to secure happiness so that they never depart?'

The Lady smiled and pointed at one little green orb of happiness that had started to automatically flow towards Fredrick Beckham. It sat on top of his head as Fredrick burst into ringing laughter. Upon hearing his laugh, other orbs also started to flow merrily towards him and circled him, and he touched them and caressed them. They circled around his being, and all of them could visibly see a brilliant light emanating from his body.

'How?' Alexis broke out.

The Lady said: 'These little beings of light… They are independent. They are always roaming around, sometimes invisible to the human eye. You don't have to search for them. They are present everywhere and come to you on their own. All you have to do is accept them and receive them. An empty cup gets filled automatically with delicious wine. The streaming water automatically moves into the deep well. Nothing has to be done. Like rivers flow into the ocean, these little beings too flow to you automatically.

'But when you seek them and hunt for them, then they become afraid of you. And once you get them, then you trap them, thinking that no more of them will come. A mere collection of 3 happiness orbs keeps you in anxiety and you try to hold on to them. But in this struggle of yours, you close the gate to accepting other orbs of happiness. In your anxiety to grab on to what you have, you miss out on that which you are getting. This is the simple secret.'

The Company tried to understand the meaning of the words, but it didn't come to them easily. But slowly, as the night passed into the dawn and the beautiful rays of the morning sun painted the sky with a brilliant shade of orange, they marvelled at the celestial beauty of the scene and enjoyed the serene moments of the forest. At such an auspicious hour, a million orbs of happiness came and engulfed all of them, and Alexis was so delighted by their presence that she let go of all her thoughts and collections, and the little orbs ended up lifting her up such that she floated in mid-air and felt like a cloud.

Her laughter rang like sweet music around the grove, and the singing birds seemed to harmonise with it.

Later, the company of 7 thanked the lady and left the woods, and on their return journey, they were so delighted that the little orbs of happiness followed them all out of the woods and filled their bus with glowing lights. Then Jim looked at Alexis, who was peacefully playing with these orbs, and said to Jessica: 'I think that the hunting party was a success after all.'

But Jessica said: 'How can it be called hunting when the only thing we did was receive?'

Mr Huntington thought about that and continued to drive even as a little orb played on top of his head, and he hummed his favourite song.

By Kumar Shaurya Singh