Sunday, February 17, 2002		Article

A prayer built with hope, sustained by patience
Rooma Mehra

THE other day I woke up with a song in my heart. It was Saturday. The warmth in the winter breeze spelt welcome to spring — at last. An hour later, I sat with barely curbed impatience in an autorickshaw. I felt the spasmodic motion of the vehicle moving to the beat of seemingly innumerable speed breakers on the bumpy road. My hands ached to move on the relenting softness of pliable clay. I wanted to carve out a reverential prayer on clay.

The drive to the Artists’ Studios in Garhi village seemed to last an eternity. Finally, I reached my destination. Minutes later, I was moulding clay to the tune of my elated soul. On the first day, fingers of clay stood rigid in closed reverence — it was my homage to God and nature and to this wonderful, rain-drenched morning.

The following day I felt the finger joints grow knobbly under the touch of my hand. A tense, anonymous head emerged from the joint, bowed in desperate prayer, seeming to ask for salvation.

The next day, I saw another head peeping out from a knuckle of the closed hand... another dream prayed for realisation. The day after, the two thumbs, joined in a united ode to a beautiful morning, suddenly rippled with tense muscle and protruding bones, another pair of hopeful voices mingled with the others. Two more heads... these gazed heavenwards! I saw expectant eyes in faceless heads.

Faith seemed to have been enthused in a lump of clay one divine Saturday morning. A few days later, I saw a flurry of human beings singing in unison to that faith. Rays of hope from a zillion hearts seemed to follow the beaming sunrays of a beautiful dawn. The prayer seemed to be rising to a crescendo.

I touched gingerly the centre of the sculpture, where the two hands met in a union of knobbly fingers supporting crying heads and bent bodies. It was as if my touch had sparked off a reaction within the substance of the prayer.

Suddenly, I saw living points tracing on the clay a wavering path as if to the fluctuating beat of a diseased heart. The next moment, the crack yawned open. A million fingers seemed to close over my agonised heart in desperate accusation as I saw my work of art collapse in pieces.

A prayer seemed to disintegrate in front of my eyes. My first reaction was panic and disbelief. This could not be happening!

I averted my gaze, looked out of the window with glazed eyes and saw another handful of sunrays filter through the leaves of the tree opposite.

A sunny breeze sighed softly. I remembered Kahlil Gibran’s words: When you pray, you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may never meet... and I felt the need to meet those countless souls who had been praying with me.

My prayer was one with the great prayer of the entire humanity. How could I have built it on a weak foundation lumped together by two impatient hands?

I collected all the pieces and began kneading them together into a big, strong lump again.

The foundation had to be strong — as strong as that ball of fire in the faraway skies that looked at me, from behind a sea of clouds, with the tender eyes of a father coaxing his child to start anew, another prayer on a strong foundation of not only love but also of effort and patience — built with a song of hope and sustained with a lot of patience.