The visitors

“Empty your mind, clear the thoughts away,” said the yoga instructor in her soothing voice.

I felt a comforting sense of calmness wash over me. No thoughts, no white noise in the background to disturb me. It was just a void. A strange sense of lightness overcame my being, strange in a happy sort of way.

As I inhaled deeply for a count of four, my stomach expanded. I concentrated on the breath alone. Thoughts of that unfinished report were pushed to a quiet corner of the mind. This was not the time for work to suddenly show up like an unwelcome visitor.

Every morning before the crack of dawn, I attended the yoga classes in my neighbourhood.  It was still dark and quiet everywhere. Even the stray dogs, deep in their slumber, would not let out so much as a snore. It was this quietness that I enjoyed most during the day.

All of a sudden, a sound was heard. It was something like a cross between the melody arising from the plucking of a veena string, the purring of a cat and the striking of metal on a gong.

The magical spell was broken. My concentration veered. Somebody had forgotten to switch off their phone again, I thought in exasperation.

Soon enough, another metallic tang was heard coupled with a few more tangs in quick succession. Unable to concentrate on the breath any more, any longer, I opened my eyes. The other yoga students too were wondering looking around trying to figure out the source of the sound.

When it was clear that it was not any of our phones that was causing trouble, the instructor decided to take charge. She went out to enquire with the watchman about the source of the sounds.

There was no other premise in the building open at this hour in the vicinity. A music class in the offing perhaps? Nope, not that he knew of.

“Not in any of the other floors of the building? Are you sure,“ she asked. The building had five floors and the yoga studio was in the ground floor.

“No madam, I don’t see any neon board hanging outside advertising one,” he replied nonchalantly.

Now, all of us were scouting for the source, looking for light glowing from a room or two from houses in the vicinity. May be some sleepless soul had woken up at this hour and had switched on the radio for company.

“It can’t be a radio,” said one of the students in a magenta tank top and black tights.

“It has to be an animal, sounds more like a kitten,” said another man who had not got up from his lotus pose, the padmasana, like the rest of us.

The sounds were repeated, frequency between two consecutive sounds maintained at the same pace. 

They were emanating from somewhere inside the yoga studio, we decided.

There at the corner of the room, behind the pot of money plant, lay a small wooden box. The box was closed and lay motionless. There was no doubt now, about the source of the mysterious sounds.

I slowly ventured towards the box on tiptoe as the class collectively held its breath. I practiced some deep breathing to steady myself and stretched out my hand slowly and lifted the cover.

As I looked inside, I found two little kittens huddled together, lying on top of each other, purring loudly. Probably being a day or two old, they were hardly able to open their eyes. The entire class was now peering at them over my shoulders.

That day, the yoga class extended for an unusually long period of time. Not because we were practising various poses, asanas but because, we were busy finding milk and a safe home for the forlorn kittens.       

Ragtag Daily word prompt : Empty
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/rdp-friday-empty/