THE PICKLE JAR

It was as somewhere in a land, foggy with dreams and memories- I remember a day when I got caught stealing the fresh lime pickles off the porcelain pickle jar. Those were such strong hands that turned my ear and made them red. I was teased for almost a week for having red ears. How I hated going to school with my red ears! And all for a pickle?!

My granny made the best pickles in the world! I am sure all grannies make the best pickles in the world. Just the taste and the smell of those pickles! You can’t wait until it is time for you to eat. You just need to have it, all the time! Besides, there’s always this secret pleasure in thieving. We were raised with stories of God stealing butter for pleasure. I mean- what the heck? If He can, so can we!

All those years there has been something down there- churning out a man or woman from deep within ourselves. Looking back- we seem so strange to even ourselves! Almost every individual has an “Eat Pray Love” moment in his life. The self discovery sometimes leads to nothing! While at times, it breaks down every shred of belief you had ever held dear about yourself.

We make friends- we see them part ways. We meet people. We see them left behind. All the dreams that we had dreamt once- we see them fading away. As though it was not ours’- estranged! We see ourselves changed. Sometimes for good too! All that and more!

We have all grown older in the same manner. Well, almost. I have heard a friend say- that she wishes to skip a few years and reach the future. We have all felt it at some point of time in our lives. But as I thought about it- I felt that it is just a red ear- that won’t last for more than a week!

But the pickle jar still- is out there. It now stays behind the curtains of cobwebs. No one knows how old it is. No one has taken it out for a long time. It had been there- behind those thick curtains of cobwebs, looking exactly how it had looked the first time I saw it. Did it have my grandmother’s lime pickles in it still? Or maybe my grandmother had made something very special and kept it in there and forgot all about it!

All it requires is a touch! It requires your guilty, tickling fingers to touch it. To see what’s inside. For who knows? May be it holds in a hidden family treasure- if not pickles? Or a Genie- that would grant you whatever you need, perhaps? For all I know- it could hold anything! Gems and jewels or a mighty Genie- you only need to look in once. It might even contain a self that was lost once- to time!