BEAUTY OF BRICKS!

Ah! The beauty of the bricks! Of the motar...of the sands...and of the Dreams!

Their enticing nakedness, making a thousand hopeful blueprints errupt in the mind. Bring in the potter's-wheel!

Blundering my way out of the musty womb of eternity, aided by a pair of forceps and prayer beads, the furnished world that greeted me with a toothy smile, was disappointing. I had expected disorderliness...chaos...the inexplicable charm in an upturned water jug or a Van Gough hanging carelessly by one arm on the wall. Then with my bulldozer i would have come, the blueprints receiving indelible wounds of the pencil all the while.

What about the hands that itch upon seeing a well-combed hair? What about the tiny ant of irritation that fastens its seat-belt tighter around your gullet when confronted with a creaseless milk-white shirt? It is then that we loosen our hair, kick away the sandals and run roaring towards the sea...the sea- unkempt, shabby, reeking of dead fish and skipped baths...The sea, rolling on wet sand, getting teary with laughter, pointing a frothy finger towards the world...a furnished world that had disappointed me.

Centuries of careful ironing has rendered the apparel too stiff for wearing. Now it hangs by the shoulder in the cupboard..the shoulders, too stiff to slump...too stiff! too stiff! A stoic without a choice!

This world then, has lost my attention...i will let it go, and search for alternatives here and there. Search for a place where my builder's kit and rubber boots will be of use....where my handiwork would speak for me....where i would decide after much contemplation, whether Van Gough should hit my visitors in the eye upon entering the sitting-room, or choose to sneak up on them as they sipped coffee in the dining-room!

For Ah!...The beauty of the bricks!..Of the mortar...Of the sand...and of the dreams!

THE STORMING.....

Dried slices of mango, strips of green and red chillies, deliciously pregnant cubes of lemon…all stamped into submission, staring out at the foggy world from their mustard oil-filled glass prison…intermittently, choking…silently spewing oily rivulets of tears….the tears, their only letters of unconvincing assurance to the loved ones around….’I am fine! I am fine!’
Then, a dull thud! The hot summer air drew in its breath…sharply. An army of ants scaling the rusty yellow pipe of the water tank for the fifth time, stopped in their expedition, shock gleaming loud and clear on their perspiring brows. And then, a nanosecond of ominous silence, followed by a thunderous crash!....and little Raja has set them free! The glass prison has been stormed…it has fallen, limp and defeated at the hands of a single thread-bare duce ball!
The exodus of the jubilant prisoners...the dying shards of glass counting their last breath under the smirking sun…the pools of oily blood, expanding, flowing into each other…drowning all long bottled-up grief and suffering in the massive ocean of freedom…..This moment will be remembered…remembered and recorded in little Raja’s personal archive…The day the glass prison fell!