OF LIGHT....

Patches of light, moonlight...

click! click! goes the knitting needles, steel striking steel.

The patches quiver painfully as they are made to twist and turn, loop their hundred-and-one tentacles over each other, stretch till they whine.

Two bony figures, one shorter than the other, crawl on all fours to reach the twelveth hour. Once there, they sigh, joyful for the brief respite...their temples dripping senility....

The Hour....has been reached.

The knitting done.

'i am safe..', she murmers, the iron claw gripping her throat, slowly loosening its hold...

' another night...will Pass..'

Wrapping herself up in the newly-made cloak, she sits at her corner.

The singular cockroach marching resolutely towards the warmth of her bunched-up frame does not stir a single muscle on her face...

She keeps sitting at her corner...the blazing cloak, clasping her, tight.

She sits...two blind spots distended mercilessly over the hollows that should have been her eyes.

She sits...

gathering wisps of courage to brave a world that she can not see....

THE GIFT....

I put her to sleep with a snorkel in her mouth, held on resolutely as her pink rubbery lips tried in vain to push back the intruder from storming its portals, and having finally succeeded in my seigh, kissed the two faint eyebrows good night....and waded out.

The brown envolope lay on the shelf, i had read and re-read it, memorized the obese words spattered across the page, till they had started to do somersaults around me with surprising perfection. Now, i stood ready for my oration....
He, my singular audience, sat on the couch, dispassionate eyes tracing the trials and tribulations of a terrified treadbare duce ball as savage men hit at it mercilessly with bats and still others, chased it to the farthest ends of the arena. I could hardly see him, the world swam before my eyes, like looking through a curtain of smoke....he, knitting the curtain with a deftness that shocked me, still....
Finally, my cue...the comercials came on...
"Thank you for giving me this...", said i, and threw down the X-ray report before his eyes.
Two over-cooked brinjals with their stalks sliced off, stared back at him, glumly...
"What the hell are these?!", he exclaimed....
"My lungs", i replied.

Trudging through heaps of ash, diving through giant smoke rings in an act of mock celebration of my fate, i turned back and looked at him for the last time...
"Don't worry..i havn't told her that she has it too...not that i wouldn't have, only, it would have been a tad difficult explaining the beauty of cancer to a six year old..."

DARKNESS....

The Night gathered strength, forming ominous dark puddles at the foot of my bed. Where the rheumatic street-lamp offered its last bleak services to the world, the coconut tree, reclining against its quivering net of light, rose to a menacing stature against my wall. Moonlight there was none...just wisps of greying hair gliding indifferently in a bucket of inky black. An eclipse formed over my eyes, disturbing shades of darkness waltzed around me...every single object in my room seemed draped in black...draped and sashaying about, their feet barely touching the ground, or so it seemed to my blind eyes, for not a single noise did they make. The Night walked barefeet, painting my oh-so familiar world with the shades of unfamiliarity....'What was this place?', I wondered aloud...a timeless, formless space...a space that escaped the clutches of definition. This space i knew not...this place was not Home.

Do not forsake me at the tentacles of rabid Supposition.
Love does not dress in mourning black, but, in pristine white...in shining yellow... in rippling blue.
Our childish little plastacine world i have carefully built...the walls against which, many a times i have rested my tired head and dreamt...dreamt of petty squables over the logic of hanging a Chinese fan on it's face!
When your boat hit the side of mine, the wound was mortal...my boat sank, but my heart...you saved. After years of dormancy bordering on death, my heart finally gave a little leap...a tiny, elusive jig...and the world unfurled before my eyes.
Finally, i could see where Life would travel from here...the ports it would visit, the inns it would put up in...the inconsequential feats of greatness it would perform in public reading-rooms. Finally, i could build...build and make indomitable Hope the skeletal framework of my creation...
So, having lighted up the candles along my way, do not snuff them out now.
The darkness will raze down my dreams....it will trample over the candles, make them moan in pain...our plastine world will melt into nothingness....Armies of Doubt and Fear will march in, lay seigh...
All will be lost in the hot frothing claudron of Darkness...of death before dying...and my heart will stop breathing...again.

WATER-SHOOTERS!

The world seems weary of soggy shoes….of papery gondolas bobbling up and down in murky puddles, holding up traffic…of wet widow-seats of public buses, enticing yet unaccessible.
Something must be done….and so be it.
‘Government calls for a state of emergency! Hike in all prices…umbrellas and raincoats will come free!’
Free! Free! Free!
Sticking out defiant tongues at bundles of pregnant clouds above, military helicopters zoom across the sky, dropping carters of raincoats and umbrellas at the sneezing, coughing, shivering world below…Where they drop with a deafening thud on the soil of Iraq, men, women and dogs alike, scream in terror till their lungs expand and burst…phut!
Around the world, water-proof mushrooms blossom…like a Mexican Wave they pop-up…from west to east, south to north. Skyscrapers button themselves up in the massive raincoats, streetlamps look grumpy in their comically oversized cloaks…their gumboots like empty flower-pots, humoring the balancing act.
‘The Government is satisfied…all seems dry with the world…the battle has been won!’
But what of the clouds?
‘Will you not rain?’, I ask them. A shadow passes over their countenance, darkening them further. ‘We are not needed anymore…’, the tears they shed fall Plink! Plonk! on the stupidly grinning umbrellas below….
I grind my teeth….
Something must be done…so be it.
Bleary-eyed, slumping, swearing, the sun emerges from behind the moping clouds…A frothy toothbrush in mouth, it tightens the string of it’s night-gown….grumpily.
‘Eh! Disturbed sleep last night sir?’…My cheeky question flares him up…angry spits of burning flint coupled with specks of white froth dart out of his mouth…I hold up a woolly cloud in self-defence, and my shield deflects the raging arrows….down down they shoot….towards the earth…and phisss! Singe the leathery skin of the umbrellas….
‘A hole! A hole!’ I shout in glee…
The clouds they scream in ecstasy…do cartwheels across the sky…and then with loaded water-shooters, advance…..
Rain! Rain! Here they come…
Here they come…Again!


But I, have other jobs at hand….scaling slimy water-pipes, evading the watchful eyes of the wise, cynical world, I would have to make my way to the printing-room…
For, without me, who else would ‘Forecast’ the weather?

THE SEA?

Life marches on...I drag along.
"Lift your feet and walk!"- Life commands.
The logo on my coconut-oil bottle promises a wristful of sand...
I long for the sea...for the insolent pinpricks of salt in my eyes...
Crows I wish to seize by the throat and dip in pools of white...
Look! Look! Seagulls in disguise!

The man who translates life for me...is dead.
Now, I sit on my haunches, chewing on my nails, biting my lips...tasting salt...salt? ah! the sea?
The Sea! The Sea!
I run wildly down the streets, slipping on my slippers, bumping, shoving, kicking gaping coconut shells out of my way...Coconut Shells!... ah! the sea? again!
The Sea! The Sea!
Thoughts challenge my feet...they run...neck-to-neck, eyes set resolutely on the finish-line...
Tiny drops of sweat join forces at my forehead...a murky threadbare curtain falls over my eyes, blurrs my sight...i tear it away, with all my might.
The Sea! The Sea!
'I can read life!'....Relief runs a omforting hand over my head....
I run on....
I run towards Life...
But Life...
Life scowls down at me...I, the defiant foreigner, finally brought to my knees...made to pay for scoofing at the Language of Life.
"The Sea it is not"...Life smirks this time..."The One is Blood...the other,a rotting Coconut-Shell...The Sea it is not!"
I walk back in the dark.
In an incomprehensible world, the barring cannines of the garbage-bins seem to bark at me- "It's all Greek and Hebrew to you...is it not?!" and the streetlamps blink in appreciation of the joke..."Cheers!", shout the signposts....All great scholars of a wise old world.
The tears...they came, as they had to come....
But wait...the tears...the salt! salt?...
The Sea? Yes,the Sea!
The Sea! Here I come!

YOUR JOURNEY...

Shoelaces tightened in a solemn bow across your feet...

Over-stuffed mouth of your leather suitcase, stifled with a loud snap!

Halting before the mirror, your image makes you jump...a comical red bindi sits smugly on the clearing between your brows...but on a closer look...ah! the red rogue is not on your forehead..it is on the glass!

The otherwise dispassionate man-in-the-radio, chokes on his words everytime you pass by him...you hit him angrily on his head, twist his ears, make them go red. The 'roads to avoid' section of his narration becomes gibberish...a messy concoction of clogged lanes and roads holding rude sign-boards screaming 'no entry!', with the teary man-in-the-radio standing in the midst of it all, the clueless traffic police.......Sniff! Screech! Phut!.......and you pull him out of the socket. Silence...complete.

Hurried bites on the toast as the untouched cubes of butter stare at you...hurt, again...you ignore them everytime...why?

" Because i have no time", you say...

Time! Time! You remember then....strap the black ticking appendage to your wrist...wind yourself up...a human time-bomb...ticking away....

So you leave, your squeaky shoes rolling in dust like naughty children, the wind shooting arrows through your well-combed hair...arrows that burst into grains of dust and rain down on your head.

You board a bus...no place to sit....a tight fit, you are. Again and again you bring your hand down to your pocket...the bulge of your wallet assures you- 'im there!' A stranger in grey and white makes a pillow of your shoulder...you do not complain...maybe the man's formidable snores frighten you into submission.."it doesn't matter"- you console yourself...

You walk on and on...

On and on...you walk.

Through overflowing vats of concrete and sand, metal and man...you walk...

Finally,you arrive...

A tired sustained ring on the bell......

I open the door....

You smile...for the first time in the day....

' I would like to believe that this is what you prepare yourself for every morning....that this is what you travel towards...this where your journey ends...'

I close my diary...the only recipient of these loud thoughts- my red bindi sitting smugly on the face of the mirror....tomorrow, it will make you jump again...

THE LAST CUE....

Raised voices, fingers and flying plates of bone-China nudged the night awake...Sleep slipped down slimpy water-pipes, heaving a sigh of relief...He swore, dramatically and with eloquence...they, the three-and-twenty ancestors framed into captivity with steadfast devotion, wished and prayed to be devoured by termites or be felicitated with cobwebby wreaths...She, wrung her heart dry...not a single drop of tear left to be spared....

And then...the Silence, counting its breath.....She, combing her hair, tapping her feet to the dull rythym of the breaths...waited for her cue.

Her cue..it came...and she walked away with appreciative pats on the back...flicking jealous glances off her shoulder, smiling at the camera...waving at the stupefied world....a world that had dragged Her by the collar and dumped Her into the reeking box of 'the sufferers'...'She would be wipped and caned, Her eyes gouged out..and yet She will stay, rising for gasps of breath from the sea of self-inflicted grief...'

But look!

Look how the puppet hangs by the strings from the gnarled fingers of the ceiling-fan! Look at Her!....See how she hangs....Defying the desperate pulls of the infinite strings, She hangs motionless...

A puppet that would dance to the tunes of her puppeteer no more....