Those Lucky Chimes

Ever wondered why those wind chimes of Feng Shui bring luck to the people who keep them in their houses? How can four hollow metal pipes hung in a room where most of the wind flows, bring the Lady Luck into their home ? This is just a musing.

Well, I am not going to answer these questions sensibly, but I’ll tell you what I feel about these chimes and the luck they bring. You see there are a number of things involved in this. First, we should agree upon what luck is and that depends mostly on whether you believe in it or not. Luck is something that happens out of the blue when you do all that you can and the rest is left to the other external factors. Good luck or bad luck depends on the individual. Good luck now, may, in the long run, be actually bad luck. Anyway, that is what I think of luck as, and you need not agree with it. No problem, amigos.

I’ll let go of the other things we should be aware of, thinking that you already know them. So you see, I was home the last Saturday and we had this wind chime hung in the middle of our hall, just beside the dining table and that’s a place where lot of wind flows. It was tinkling around and was pleasant on the ears. It felt good to hear that sound after all the noise I’d been through to reach my home. In the afternoon when I decided to rest (as I was feeling terribly tired, thanks to the new four lane roads from Hyderabad until Nizamabad, where we take a turn). Anyway, I just laid down on my bed and was going into deep sleep when I was interrupted, I mean when my sleep was interrupted. “Tinkle, tinkle”. I didn’t have much energy to open my eyes and look at what caused that. Owing to the deep slumber, my mind wasn’t functioning properly and it was only after a couple of minutes that I realised that it was those damn wind chimes that were causing a hindrance to my sleep. Of course, they need not be damned, but when you are out of sleep on a bumpy bus the whole night then you’d expect some solace when you are at home. The music was good though. But it was so occasional that it started to disturb me. I thought the whole point of having that was to soothe our mind and now here it was working against its whole purpose of existence. It was then that it dawned to me (you are free to disagree again) that may be this disturbance, this thing that I considered then as "nuisance" might have a meaning.

I thought about these mysterious four-piped metals and found that these things were hanging near the windows of many of my friends homes as well. But when I went back after a couple of weeks or a month, they were gone. Either they were packed and kept in the store room or they were moved to a place where the wind blows infrequently. Either way, they were not in the path of the wind anymore.

I asked others as well and they came back with the same reply “It tinkles quite frequently and in a manner which would make me go mad”. But now I think it is to be kept in windy places with a purpose. As you go on hearing it tinkle, you build patience. My inactivity, my laziness, my whatever-you-call-that-thing-when-you-can’t-wake-up, led me to the discovery that these chimes also build patience. And may be, just may be this might also be one of the reasons why it exists. As you build patience, you grow up to be a better person, you do things better way (or not!). Mostly, being patient pays off.

And this might just be one of those silly reasons that I search for. At least this discovery made me sleep that day amidst those tinkles, and not just sleep, a peaceful sleep.