THE FRENZY OF FEAR

the frenzy of fear....
incessant drum-rolls, like irritable hiccups...
hiccups are the price you pay for divine gluttony; your gluttony, for which stands shuddering a God-fearing alibi- the callousness of a murky file of tomato soup sliding off the crack of a mouth and hanging by a hair at the chin....
and then, that preposterous drop dropped into the chasm of infamy by your one violent burp.
the sin, complete.
and fear....anticipated in the black veins fast erupting across the pale-faced egg-shaped surface of the earth.

"amar kichu hobe na toh, saar?"
fear, as it sun-bathes on the flats of your feet as the flats of your feet drag the colossal weight of happily-sun-bathing-fear to the public hand pump and struggles to wash it all away.....but the pump yields not a drop.
fear rolls among synthetically-coloured carrots, licks the crimson off shrivelled tomatoes, sucks a tunnel through and through impoverished brinjals....in your very shopping-bag. you sweat in profusion and mumble the initials of your three and twenty gods and goddesses. the shadow of a stretching dog appears to you as the very missile of wrath set with the precise instructions to puncture the north-east corner of the left valve of your heart.you sleep with gaping pupils, alert claws clutching at a claw-hammer....
and all the while, you hunt for salvation in the kind eyes of the tea stall owner, in the garrulous mien of the butcher, in the accidental pat on the back by an outstretched hand clasping a ten-rupee note in the swaying fetid congregation of a public bus.

but, in the end, do you not pull the trigger yourself on your own brain?
do you not commit suicide while mumbling assuredly- "amar kichhu hobe na!"
and do you not wonder in that single fleeting moment of self-betrayal that the grand machine of annihilation has missed its target by a long shot- from the designated north-east corner of the left valve of your heart to the right side of your skull?

the murder that you anticipated with religious conviction has spurred off the very frenzy of fear.
"what was my sin?" you may ask, teary-eyed, breathing in the pure nothingness of heaven.
was it the the drop of soup? you may wonder.

and each man would hastily procure a pristine white handkerchief, holding it at attention a mere millimeters away from the lips as the lips sucked in noiseless civility the spoonful of tomato soup....the frenzy would thus erupt, in pretty little flowers embroidered into the corners of death-white handkerchiefs.

you would never know the seed that sprouted into this FEAR.