The Jigsaw Puzzle

A boy sat down with a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces. The picture on top of the box was of small beautiful scenery. He opened the box and scattered the puzzle pieces on the newspaper he had spread on the floor. They looked so many to him. Some were upside down and others were upside up.

Each piece was of similar size and shape except for the corners. There were only a few differences in the variance of the puzzle pieces.

The boy took out the corners out of the jumbled pieces taking his own time and one by one the frame for the puzzle picture was done. Next he tried to arrange all the similar pieces, he could see, separately by using the correlation of the colour and intensity patterns in each piece. He could figure out the glistening water of the pond given in the picture on the box.

Slowly and steadily he put all the pieces together and was amazed to find the white geese which arranged themselves same as in the picture.

He took out the separated greenish leafy pieces and arranged some of them to form the left and right tree given in the picture and yet again the pieces amazed him with some tiny flowers he was unable to perceive in the pieces separately. The zoomed in brownish dirt path came along next with its small green grasses. The boy felt happy seeing the long thin dark strokes on the path which gave it a feel of movement.

The grey walls of the right side loomed with brick patterns which the boy was unable to observe in the small pieces. These joined as if giving the boy the feeling that he himself was constructing a brick wall in reality.

The bright white clouds formed their creamy layers through the hands of the boy. Their bluish background gave a serene effect to the now almost complete puzzle. Last but not the least, came the cottage with its chimneys puffing white clouds of fumes which the boy had mistaken as extra cloud pieces.

The puzzle seemed complete the moment the boy put the last piece. It looked like a lively picture with the running pathway, the swimming geese, the flowing water, the puffy airs and the swirly clouds and the tiny but bright flowers with the looming grey walls and the open cottage door.

The picture invited the boy to come enjoy it in his dreams…which he did.

© Aditya Subramanian, 2020