Karma Chameleon

Have you ever experienced one of those moments when you look up from a thought, profound or not, and find it inexplicably reflected in what you see in front of you? When the inward and the outward do a tandem dance. Far beyond any logic. It’s magic. This was one of those moments for me.

I sat relaxed on a deck chair, with my legs stretched ahead of me, reading a book about karmic connections. The pristine beach of Vizag, stretched a few meters ahead, before giving way to the vast waters of the Bay of Bengal. As the sun found its way up in the misty sky, I shut the book, shut my eyes and started to think of how I ended up in this amazing, serene place. My son had been invited to perform a piece he wrote on the Origin of Theatre at the Vizag Literary Festival. I had read up a lot about Vizag and just thought to myself how lovely it would be to accompany him. I could have asked for anything in that moment. My son called to tell me that the organisers had requested for my presence. There was no way the organisers knew me, so I thought he was pulling a fast one. But no, as it turned out, the host for the entire event, was my school friend from 40 years ago, who I had not met in the last four decades and had no idea what she was doing. A quiet girl in school, she was now a force to reckon with in the cultural scene in Vizag.

I smiled to myself thinking about how karma functions and how life’s colours change with every action we take. Visions of her life story flashed across my inner eye, but that is a tale that I shall keep for another day. One thought spiralled into another and my mind went into a pontification of how each action we do sets into motion the wheel of karma. A wheel, no one can escape. Just as we were taught in school, ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’. And yet, none of us expect what life throws at us. We find it hard to accept the various colours the karma chameleon throws our way.

I opened my eyes and right there in front of me, on a low wall, sat a chameleon in all its glory, communing with the sun, the water and the ether. She just sat there still, one with her surroundings, almost an apparition. Did I just visualize her? Was she just the form, of the thoughts chasing each other in my brain? She moved her tail up in a C, encompassing the water and the skies in one motion, breaking my reverie. No apparition this. As I looked at her stealthily, now through my phone camera lens, I could but marvel at the wondrous design of this planet.

The chameleon blended perfectly with the misty colours of the sky and the sea. It wasn’t green or brown, but a perfect grey, the grey of a misty morning. A chameleon has crystal-like cells called iridophores, underneath their transparent layer of skin, that can actually absorb or reflect any and all colours of the spectrum. But it is not really “their colour changing properties, but their natural, relaxed state that helps them blend in,” says Daniel Flynn of the Conservation Society of California at the Oakland Zoo.

There is a natural design to all that we see. And all that we are. And every time it speaks to me visually, I marvel at how we all are connected. Through not just our minds, but a larger consciousness. If only we would tune in. In that moment, the subject of my photograph represented an encompassment of all the colours that karma throws our way. That we have ourselves created. I call her the Karma Chameleon.