Archive for » 2008 «
You dreamed for peace and quiet, and it is here
Arrived at your doorway on Northerly zephyrs,
Not gradually, but all at once,
but the chill does not stir your idle furnace .
So many days you have longed for the immobility of an empty room
So many hours of rushing lives in the Crowded Bus
And sweaty grocery store aisles ..
And now
You have the four walls to yourself
No shrill nags in the hallway
And your couch has plenty of room
plenty
Why are you dreaming of a Lemonade in March?
and Why does this taste like a hot chocolate in July?
Could the timing have been any worse?
Tonight you will sleep to the sound of barking dogs outside.
And think why the neighbor could not get theirs’ tamed
And look at your own life going wild and forlorn.
You’ll leave the bathroom light on and the door a little ajar for no reason
And tomorrow you’ll raise the shades to a mother of pearl sunrise
And orange light will shine on your face
But you won’t say
Look at this!!
Because you don’t like talking to yourself
You’ll just get dressed
And run to the bus
And hope that it’s very very very
Crowded
The child squealed through the reticence of the four walls of the house. The mother stood vulnerable by the door, unable to placate her agony, forlorn and impotent. The child was famished for three days; the last supplies of the food consumed to its last bit. The elder daughter hunched by the corner light, its umbra only accentuating the child’s horrors and grief. Her father had been missing for a week now; the rumors were he was arrested on the grounds of some theft in the neighborhood.
The Mother walked to the end of the room, taking the child in its arms and rushing to the streetlights in the pouring rain. She had held a bowl in the corner of her torn sari, now falling apart in the shards of abject poverty.
She stood in the rain, holding the child, covering her from the moist of the clouds above. The child never seemed to get tired of its own pain; the hunger was just a crowning glory. The lights turned red and the mother ran car to car begging for some mercy, for some humanity ostensibly dead in the eyes of passers by. She pounded the mirrors of the car, thumped the road- unable to move the passing traffic for it deemed it inappropriate to halt for a non-moving life. She could not stir any sympathy, just some angry glares and abuses. She could not feed her lone child.
One Month Later
The mother had been missing since morning. The elder daughter tried to soothe the little child, singing her songs which she remembered from her childhood.
A rush in the stairs and her mother was back, with supplies of food- Bread, rice, and vegetables of different colors and shapes. She smiled and said “Never would you be sleeping hungry again.â€
She fed the daughters and sang them the song of happiness and glee.
“These are truly the last days, May Lord keep us Happy in His Own special ways.â€
The kids slept close to her mother. She was wide awake, with a paper in her hand.
At the stroke of the morning hour, the mother crept out of the house. She had kept a letter for her daughter in her frock that asked her to keep good care of her sister and to be a strong person. She advised her not to go out of the house for coming few days. Her daddy would be home soon.
Daddy came home an hour past midnight.
The cities were rocked by twin blasts, each of them a suicide blast, killing over a hundred. The bloods of people painted the street-roads, effacing the alive and the dead apart. The stories were all over the news channels, they ran a full show carving a picture of inhumanity and atrocity, witnessed by the mother in that pouring night.
The daddy got a cheque of 50,000 Rs. in the mail next day.
The Old Man walked slowly on the deserted Road. It was 5’o clock in the morning and his Morning walk marked the dawn of his day, everyday. He felt a little forlorn; he had overheard his son talking to his wife, mentioning plans of an old age house. He felt a pain in his knees, a throbbing of a shifted heart. “Changed Timesâ€! he sighed
His blurred eyes, spotted it. It was lying by the side of the road, squashed. The paper attempted to catch up with the float of the breeze, but the gravity pulled it a little harder then.
Piqued, the old man bent down to pick it up. The paper aeroplane, a child’s flight of fancy, a work of Art of Wright Brothers with a touch of Fall of Icarus. Gingerly, he rind open the craft, careful so as not to slash.
On one side, he found a raw sketch of a woman and a child. Hand in hand, purple hued. A speech bubble above the child said :
                 ”Is this why we can Never Fly like that Birdie! Mom ?”
The pain felt better in the knee. The Old Man, kept the paper inside his pocket and strolled further to the rear end of the road.
7 AM and he was seated contentedly on his arm-chair. His morning cup of tea was missing, a forewarn of the likeness of times ahead. He found Yesterday’s newspapers with highlighted Old Age Homes classifieds.
“Peace for your after-years, Longing for its yesters†said one of them. It was the farthest, an overnight journey would disconnect his bonds with his Home and his family.
His fingers ruffled the pockets and felt the creased aeroplane. He took it out clumsily. The sketched child looked familiar but he knew that familiarity bred contempt.
 On the reverse, there was a crafted depiction of a small cottage. It was complete with white besieged fence, colorful marigold, lacy curtains and a Locked door. To one side, was a garden a green bean teepee in the center. Blueberry bushes and Raspberry plants to the left; ivy trailing up along the brick chimney, framing it in green splendor. The Garden Paradise!!
Above the house was a white puffy cloud the kinds that caste no shadow. Upon it sat a man, an ANGEL complete with his wings and halo, smiling to the earthliness below.
The old man stood up. He carefully refolded the paper back into the airplane it was, sharpening the creases and opening it up like new. Then, he launched it into the air toward the sky, watching the wind carry it away higher and higher-once again on the breeze as it should be.
