THE CITY

Excitement running riot

For reasons varied

Flashing lights and deafening sounds

And bodies moving in apparent rhythm.

A city so considered

Bright and oozing with merriment

The place that well conceals

Darkness and eerie silence.

Footsteps hurrying along

And mock laughter ringing aloud

Men and women intoxicated

With ‘society’ brewed over ages.

Time in its lazy slumber

Trampled over by men

Who hold on till they bleed and after

To an idea that time stops for none.

Would this be joy

Or a pretension so worn

To mask the evident insignificance

Of this, a glorious life.

A BRIEF PERIOD OF NOTHING

      At night, rummaging through the pages before you, trying to make sense of the volumes of data laid out in front of eyes….suddenly…. the power goes out!

      A wave of exasperation and then of resignation. You know then that like you many have come to a stop, a stage of complete purposelessness.

      This becomes one of the rare occasions, or probably the only one when you sit in front of your open doorway starring outside, not because you should be, neither is it because you want to, but just because you have nothing else in mind. A period when purposelessness is the only driving force behind the minimal activity among the stillness!

      Sitting there, staring out…seeing, hearing and feeling everything but nothing.

      This, the time when you realize that the tree in front of your house is huge and that the intricate patterns made by its vastly spread branches is actually very beautiful, and yes, very interesting. When you realize that the darkness, when you are pushed into it, is after all, not so bad. That in fact, it is very elegant.

      This, the minutes when you ‘hear’ silence. Had silence been the propagation of motionless waves, a transmission of immobility, then you know about the existence of the concentration points of these silence waves, where motionlessness is the only motion, the only action.

      This, the period when you realize that the movement of paper does produce a sound, that layers of clothes rub noisily against each other, that a hand through your hair creates music, in a weird sense….

      This, the hour when your coffee, the usual dose of caffeine that keeps you awake through the night actually tastes and smells amazing. The only evening when the wind on your moist skin produces a cooling effect forcing you to appreciate the engineering of your body.

      These moments marked by complete uselessness, complete inactivity, yet filled with sights and sounds that come uniquely with them. When a tear and a smile goes without an intruding question.

      You sit there,  wondering how you could have missed all these things and more that were always around you, as you pursued things that were beyond your reach, and then…

       First the blinding light and then the whirring, followed by the return to motion of everything as though awakening from a slumber. And then you leave for your papers, vowing, unknowingly never to come back to that doorway till the next power cut.

WHOM SHOULD I BLAME ?

(a work of fiction inspired by a true incident, one among many which are all too common in this 'busy' world.)

       The calls of the Mullah had ceased. She knew that everyone in the neighbourhood would be immersed in deep prayer. But she could not on that day.

       She smiled involuntarily when she thought of the smile that erupted on her daughter’s face the first time she tasted the food that she was now preparing for the umpteenth time. She knew she would receive and waited with impatience to get that smile yet another time that evening.

       Her daughter was living what to her was a dream too lofty to be even dreamt about. As she slowly lowered the meat balls dipped in batter into the simmering oil a dark cloud drifted to her face when her memories passed over that day, which now after twenty years still found her shivering and sleepless, when prayers and calls that filled the air to bring peace to the soul of her husband acted as swords that pierced her mind. Belief in god was lost on that day when she was rudely thrown onto the streets of life with a wailing child in hand with not a support and none to accompany.

      But years after when her child held aloft an admit card to a reputed college of the city and a paper promising her a handsome scholarship, she involuntarily thanked the heavens for that which she considered as the greatest blessing of her life. Since then she immersed herself in deep prayers for that bright eyed creature that she brought into this world. Her life depended on her and her days revolved around hers.

       She immediately woke up from her thoughts and looked at the watch. She hastened her movements. She had to finish cooking. It was to be her special surprise.

       
       The noise that seemed to move closer to her courtyard and that ultimately seemed to have stopped near it froze her. She stood rooted to the spot oblivious to the fact that the hot oil was burning her hands which were dangerously close to it.

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       The onlookers looked on with horror. No one knew who was to blame or what circumstances played the villain. A speeding bus, a sight all too common in the city where no one seemed to have the precious commodity of time, threw out yet another student that week.

       The still body that showed no signs of blood kindled the hope of the girl being alive in the minds of the travellers. A few from the crowd who could think straight after witnessing an event such, rushed towards the girl. A man lifted her head to find a better position for her.He was first curious and then shocked at the moistness that was felt on the cloth of the girl’s customary religious headgear. He stifled a scream when he saw his hand, on retrieval, smeared with blood. Being a doctor, what the blood spelled was out all too clear to him. To the surprise of the crowd he suddenly slowed down in his movements and then reached out for a phone to call an ambulance without haste.

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       A filled plate remained untouched that day and wails remained sans sound. Buses continued to kill people finding accomplices in the other vehicles, small or big and men continued in their rush towards the unseen, in that city which claimed lives, young and old alike, without remorse. But not the man running to his office to be on time in order to impress his boss neither the woman who was cursing her bus for passing too slow in order to make her late for her meeting nor the man who was careful to slow down at the sight of a camera which was to record all speeding vehicles and not the crowd of people who thronged the city centres and streets could answer the question of this mother, not alone, “Who am I to blame?” 

WORDS

     The same black on white expressing the glories of war and the passions of love. They hold within them the power to change the future and guard the reputation of the past. Heroes and villains, princess, princesses and demons, a wicked stepmother and a magical godmother, the young girl who contains her passions hence winning the war of her desires, angry pixies and magical fairies,an inspiring teacher or a grumpy gym-master wielding a cane, the intricacies of economies that existed, exists and are to exist, the fascinating story of the birth of the universe and all in it, the accounts of prophets and men wise and great and above all the stories of letters themselves captured within those magical black coloured creatures that float on white, simply called ‘words’.

     They clothed themselves in gowns and tailcoats when the people did so and uncomplainingly got accustomed to the drastically different skirts and pants when demanded of them. But these flexible, easily dominated and ruled over entities have taken lives, destroyed cities, disrobed wailing women, mercilessly thrashed young children and have passively given accounts of the very same. They are not dubbed ruthless and similarly goes unnoticed their roles in the slightest of the smiles that played over the smallest of the human faces that have existed in the world. No one considered to give a thanking word on that wedding day, to the words that smilingly existed on the rose scented letter that brought together the couple who were wedded that day, them who proclaimed the deepest apologies of a son grieving for his inconsideration towards his father went without praise on that deathbed where the father accepted the words of apology, the words that brought the news of a mother turning grandmother rested on the parchment forgotten on the first birthday of the child. And so words have remained throughout the ages without praise or blame, simply existing as part of the human race rather than with it. They have existed as shadows of everything real and imagined.

     There were times when they looked markedly different from the forms that we so easily attribute to them today and even in this age where the world has come closer than ever before, they retain their diversity in all its various hues and colours. From an age where the word ‘hunting’ was depicted as a dead animal on the walls of stone we are now in one where we witness the formation of a jumble of symbols to mean the same on variously coloured papers that would have made them even more harder for the early men to decipher than it is for us to decode their words.

     These brilliant creations of the human mind which have caused many a men to draw their swords, which has been the reason for many a touches right or wrong, which have caused armies to move east or west, which have saved uncountable lives from storms and wars and which have,above all tried with all their might to portray clearly the minds of men great or naught hence bringing about celebrations and disputes with the same uninterested expression of a casual witness can let us live and can see without remorse our deaths.