My first Haiku

A starlight winter sky shines,
An embrace, an eager kiss that begins

A beautiful love story

Bridges

People call me crazy. The thing is I like to jump of bridges now and then. I do it just for the heck of it. Sometimes I do it to see if someone would save me! Mostly I do it for the thrill. See I learnt the hard way that life isn’t easy. You have to go through ugly downs and mind boggling highs. But in the entire journey you learn how to survive. Or you learn how to pass by.

It is a wonderful sunny morning. It is so beautiful. The breeze is cool, the sun is warm and the smell in the air is that of freedom. I am walking alongside the road, wandering aimlessly. The more aimless the better. And I come across this beautiful bridge. Hidden under weeds and veins it hasn’t been used in a while. The road hasn’t been used in a while. Only trucks which lose their way, come. I stroll along the railing looking at the beautiful stream underneath. It is the kind of bridge you know people never use. Yet the bridge has its own set of dark visitors. You might find an odd couple, at night, making out. You would find a group of strange men getting high  or gambling far from their wives and the policemen in their lives. It is the kind of bridge people come to, to do things they would'nt want the world to know. The kind of things that give you the type of pleasure you are addicted too but are not proud of.

 I find cigarette butts where I stand. They make me crave a nice smoke. But I blew all my money on Monica last night, the best hooker in town. She gave me a memorable night. She wasn’t really young but her age meant experience and her experience made the night one to remember. She was worth every penny. I can not forget the taste of her skin or the heat of her breasts. Plump and ripe like a woman's body should be. Even her thought makes me crave her love. I stole one of her earrings. It was a cheap ruby imitation. I took it just to keep it as a memoir, a memoir of the night that comes so rare. I cant really afford her every night. But on the nights that I can I ravish her and she savours me. There is something about love making and cigarettes. One always leads the mind to crave the other. I guess its the addiction and the ardent need for one that compels you to remember the other. Yet Monica is far far away. And I stand here alone.

I like my life. I really do. I live how I want too. Money can be a problem at times but I find odd jobs here and there. I have discovered that there are many jobs, some clean some dirty, that people don’t like to do and willingly pay to get them done. These jobs aren’t found in want ads but in alleys where creeps like me roam. Oddly enough I remember all the dirty ones. They were fun. The rest, your run of the mill less money more effort kinds, were pretty forgettable. 

This one time I got a nice job. I had to drive a man from the airport to his home. The man who hired me gave me a huge chunk of money and said there’d be more if I do the job well. The job seemed easy enough, the money good. I picked up the old man. From the looks of his he looked rich. He had the costliest clothes money could buy, the shiniest diamonds and the worst smelling perfume. He sat in the car and we left. Just as I began to enjoy the easy paying job, things changed. There was a car chase. Another vehicle followed us. The man was rich indeed but the wrong kind of rich. He was a smuggler from what I remember and I was the unlucky driver who had been picked to die alongside him. I swore I chanted my holy book under my breath as I swerved and dodged bullets. The sound was thunderous. I was scared. The man behind me sat peacefully. I couldn’t tell if he was prepared to die or he had faith in me. I dodged a few bullets. One of them hit me, right in my thigh. I couldn’t walk for almost a month. But my boss survived and so did I. I managed to escape. Adrenaline rush I guess. He took care of my medical bills and I got free food, free drugs and a beautiful nurse for a month. The sponge baths were the highlight. No hooker could make me feel the way her warm touch did.
But that was another decade. Another life! I was young and so was the place where I lived. But things have changed. I have changed. These days no one hires an old man. So I beg at times. I do dirty jobs where there is no excitement or danger just a lot of cleaning up of shit.

But in my days I was my own man. I had even joined a circus for a while. It took me across the country. I tamed lions. I slept with some pretty acrobats. I drank and smoked pot with the clowns and learnt a lot about animal shit from the maintenance. They were interesting people. I even picked up a little bit of Nepali. I learnt how to say I love you. I guess that was all I needed. I often smile when I remember those days. I don’t smile much except when I think of my life as a young kid. The circus was a great experience but it ended abruptly. Sleeping with the owner’s daughter got me kicked out. What a beating that was. They beat me black and blue and left me unconscious on the road. The girl wasn’t even worth it. Damn virgin! She was the scared kind, almost made me do everything. But they left me on the road and moved on. I don’t say I miss them but I’d have preferred a better ending, a better goodbye.

It’s strange how this moment reminds me of my conquests. Strange, how the running water beneath me soothes me. The water just sparkles so pretty. The sun looks so warm. I must say, the edge of the bridge is oddly tranquil. I can’t help myself so I climb over the railing to stand at the edge of the bridge. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world. There is a wild stream running beneath me. I raise my hands and I swear I feel like I am flying. If only I could fly farther. I wonder whether I should jump just to see how cold the water is or just stand there and keep wondering. It’s not like I haven’t done this before. I am not afraid of dying nor am I here to die. But jumping of bridges just makes me come alive. Just as I lift my leg I hear a voice in the distance. It’s a soft voice like that of a song. A woman’s voice. The sweet melodic kind. The only thing good enough to stop me from doing the one thing I like the most in the world. I turn. There she stands. A young woman with a child by her side. She is dressed in a pretty blue sari. Her kid is a young baby boy who has his arms around his mother’s neck. He is fast asleep. The woman seems distressed to see me standing on the edge. I can see it in her eyes that she is scared. She is scared that I want to kill myself. I instantly fall in love with her. What can I say I love women! And this one is beautiful. Her hair is in an entangled mess. She has been working hard, I can tell from the lines on her forehead. Her sari is muddy and torn at places. Yet she looks beautiful. I sit along the edge choosing not to get down. She draws closer. She is talking in a funny language. I guess she is a local. She is worried and she blasts of in her native tongue which is very annoying. I just keep smiling at her. As she comes closer I get a better look at her face. She is not as young as her body deceives one to be. She has lines on her face. But they add a charm to her beauty rather than deprive it. Her eyes dance a lot. Her lips are shaped like a fish without a fin. Her kid stirs because of his mother’s constant banter. After letting her talk for a good fifteen minutes I raise my hand and shake my head. I try to tell her I am not jumping to die but just for the heck of it. Yet I can’t explain it to her. I guess you really cant explain irrationality. No language no actions equips you for that. I try unsuccessfully. She cant understand what I feel or what I try to say. But as she gets closer I fall more in love with her. Yes I am in love, again! She smells like fish from the sea. Probably a fisherwoman I guess. She gets closer and starts tugging at my torn shirt. Her touch sends a shiver down my spine. She is trying to pull me off the railing. I am too strong for her. I let her get a little closer. She is persistent. She keeps pulling me. I am enjoying the struggle. She won’t leave me I know. As long as I am propped up on the edge she won’t leave me. She is an adamant woman. I am enjoying her attention. I don’t get it for free much anyhow. I smile at her. And she is still worried. She keeps saying something. I don’t move. Her pulling gets weaker with time. I can see that she doesn’t like to lose. She still stands next to me tugging and pulling. I finally relent and get down. She points me towards her home. I follow her. There is the sound of her anklets that rings whenever she walks. It’s like music, God’s music. She leads me into her hut. It’s a small hut, enough to squeeze us in. There is a small stove in the corner. She sits next to it, sets her kid alongside and starts making me tea. I am in awe of her. Her movements are graceful, her body firm and her face glowing. I am served with hot tea in a few minutes. She sits and stares at me like I am a sick old man. I know she pities me. It used to bother me, pity of strangers, but I have grown accustomed to it. I welcome it now. Pity leads to kindness and kindness of strangers lets me feel human for a while. We don’t talk because we can’t. I smile at her and she looks at me like I am a sad old crazy man. I point to her son and try to tell her he is very adorable. She looks at me with confusion. I try to make her understand and in the process I end up looking like a fool. She laughs. I can see her crooked yellow teeth. Its so infectious that I join her. What choice do I have? And for a moment we share a connection.
I hear a man outside. Her expression changes. From an easy smile it changes into a frown. I can hear a hoarse voice outside. A few minutes later a drunken old tiny man enters the hut. He is drunk out of his mind and smells worse than rotten fish. He looks at me and then looks at the lady. In his stupor he reacts. I can see that he is furious and he starts ratting off in the same annoying language the woman used a while back. They are fighting. I can see it. I take it as a cue to leave. I get up and start to walk. The man grabs me by the back of my shirt and pushes me out. He follows me and starts shouting at me. I can’t understand a word. So I smile at him. He misunderstands me and throws his bottle at me. The glass cuts me on the forehead. I can feel my own blood dribbling down my face. I can see she is afraid that I will hit him back. I am bigger than him. But he doesn’t anger me. I don’t react. I see no point in staying. So I turn to walk. He doesn’t stop. The woman feels guilty she tries to stop the man. He slaps her hard across the face. Had he not done that I would have walked away. But my infatuation with this strange woman builds a fury within me. His violence infuriates me. I am not a nice man when I am angry. I have seen some ugly things in my life. And I have also done some ugly things in my life. I use to feel shame and guilt but as I did more I became numb. But this fury just takes over. I grab a wooden stick nearby and strike the man hard across his face. The woman is horrified. She is scared. She grabs the man and starts wiping his face. He is knocked unconscious. My fury descends but she is scared. I can see it. She wants me to leave I can feel it. She didn’t like my interference. I just wanted to punish him for hurting her. But she doesn’t understand and wants me to leave. She pushes me and with a sullen look points at the way we came from. I try to touch her hand. She draws back. She doesn’t want me to touch her. So I turn and leave. I turn to look at her once. But when I do I see she has the man in her lap and her face is flooded with tears. He will beat her up again tomorrow. I know it. He will get drunk again tonight. Maybe sleep with a whore and come back to beat her. And she will quietly get beaten up and still love that man. Who can understand why women do the things they do? But I won’t forget her. I wish I could have touched her once. But she wouldn’t have liked it. So I turn back and walk.

I reach the bridge again. The sun has become sharper. The breeze has stopped blowing. I climb the edge again. I look over the flowing stream. I stretch my arms out. The feeling of freedom takes over my entire body. I feel weightless. I feel like the most powerful bird in the sky. There is no sound but that of the water flowing. I hear the anklets once. But I am pretty sure its my imagination. I think of the kind woman once and her torn blue sari. I take a deep breath. It brings me back to the same question. Should I jump? Not to die. Just to feel that thrill. It just makes me feel alive. And another follows- will she come to stop me again? I smile. What more can I do?

Justice is a Joke

 

Things you must remember if you or someone from your family gets killed mysteriously one night by this hooded criminal who can outsmart the Noida police and Centeral Beaureu of Investigation of India twice otherwise you and your family are doomed.

• ·         Dont mail any person belonging to the opposite sex. Good Indian girls don’t talk to other men even if you are a fourteen year old talking to a classmate.
• ·         Don’t be too open with your parents. Its just wrong!
• ·         A father and daughter just cant be best friends. There is something wrong with the father’s intentions if he is too close to his daughter! He must be torturing her secretly.
• ·         Withholding your tears and not bawling like a mad man in public designates you as a cold blooded murderer.
• ·         Having dinner at a fellow couples home at night directly leads to the possibility of wife swapping or partner swinging.
• ·         Don’t fight for justice, some crazed vigilante might just slash your face in two.
• ·         Even if you have had an inter community marriage you might very well kill your own daughter for looking at someone from the other community.
• ·         The police is always right, even if they don’t know what’s happening.
• ·         If you live in India, don’t get murdered or let anyone from you family get murdered.

Aarushi Talwar was a normal girl on the verge of teen age. Their family life was like any other upper middle class Indian family. Then what went wrong? What destroyed them? A deMOCKeracy which is a joke, a joke incompetent idiots play on a population of millions destroyed them.

On 15^th May 2008, Aarushi was murdered while her parents slept in the adjacent room. The Noida Police came to the rescue. They suspected the domestic help- evil Hemraja. Hemraja had murdered the poor girl with his nepali knife- khukri. The proof was there- the mark on the dead body. The suspect was absent which was ideal (it fit like a puzzle piece for the brilliant Noida Police Force). But surprise surprise- the very next day Hemraj’s mutilated dead body was found on the roof. So evil no more, Hemraj was in the clear. Soon the media plastered Hemraj’s family on the news. In one night he had gone from an evil murdered to the friendly domestic grandfatherly servant.

And then began the circus. In the centre of the ring were Dr. Rajesh and Dr. Nupur Talwar. Their dead daughter was accused of promiscuity, instability and incest. Their respectable social image was distastefully dissected in public and converted into that of cold blooded murderers. The Noida police failed. The CBI came. They made claims. They played their cards. There was an autopsy. Narco tests, psychoanalysis and what not. Parents who deserved a little bit of mourning time were paraded from one place to another. With a tunnel view the police kept circling the same path coming back to the same things. Krishna Thadarai, the hospital clerk who had been found with clothes and pillow covers with hemraj’s blood was brought into light. Krishna Dr.Talwar's compounder, rajkumar- servant of the durrani's and Vijay mandal -servant of talwar's neighbours were the three new characters that came into light. The story that came out was that they had been drinking in hemraj's room on the day of the murder and tried to sexually assault Aarushi after gagging her. They hit her with a blunt weapon when she screamed and killed hemraj for trying to defend Aarushi.The trio killed Hemraj in the terrace and then killed Aarushi. Krishna and Ram kumare have confessed to the murder during Narco analysis.   

Surprisingly the CBI team kept running between their “the father did it” and “ the servant did it” theory. Another CBI team came. They totally discarded the Servant theory and went behind the father.  The father was the most obvious choice (read: the easiest to implicate).

After a lot of discussion, name calling, theorizing, mud slinging, character attacks- the CBI came out with CLOSURE REPORT on 29^th December 2010. Dr. Rajesh Talwar was accused of murdering his teenage daughter with reasons ranging from honour killing to incest to keeping family secrets safe. This ambiguous closure report has been challenged. Protests are rampant in the support of the touch DNA technology which has promise to reveal this mysterious murderer.  

However there have been several victims in this charade of the Indian investigative agencies. Firstly two murders remain unsolved and that many criminals unpunished. Secondly a family that deserved respect and mourning and a fair trial have been left lifeless and outcast in the society. Thirdly this nation which chooses to forget rather than protest against such bull shit.

 When you look at Aarushi Talwar posing before her camera, hugging her father or hanging with her friends you see your own life or the life of that girl you know. At least I see mine. The ludicrous way this entire family has been violated breaks my heart. I wonder how people can speculate so much bull shit about someone who is already dead. Incest, rape, promiscuity are not words that 14 year old girls should be associated with. Even my gmail inbox contains a lot of personal mail. My facebook holds a lot of personal notes whose interpretation may vary from person to person. They accuse her of being non traditional, when has it been acceptable to disrespect the dead or destroy a family. For example, Aarushi’s mail to her father said “I just wanted to try it out coz I heard from mah frndz … so wotz da harm … I wnt do it again n I kinda noe hw u r feelin.”  She had written this to her father after they had reluctantly allowed her to go out with all her friends for a movie. However these lines were released in the media as damning evidence to the kind of character the media painted for Aarushi. They had twisted her words into something far more perverted than its original intent. There were re constructed scenes of Aarushi and Hemaraj having sex and Dr. Rajesh killing her to save his honour; Aarushi being raped; Rajesh attacking his daughter and what not.

How did we get to this place where we let such blasphemy dominate the great Indian mind? How did such distaste and narrow-mindedness find its way into our world? I too have a family a lot like Aarushi’s. Doting parents, a normal life full of facebook, twitter, orkut, male and female friends, million crushes, the will to try new things, an interest in guys, maybe falling in love. But will I be put on trial too if I am murdered tomorrow? What’s worse is will my family be put through such hell? Would the media be plastered with my photos? Would my father who hasn’t even made his peace with my death be forced to defend the fact that he loved me? Should anyone’s father or mother be subjected to such cruelty? All this just because the best investigative agency of our nation was incompetent!

 A society is made of people who take up the responsibility to think for the masses. This society is made to protect people and give them a structured life. There are rules of every nature and every belief. We as a society decide what must be followed and what must not. Those who choose to are accepted those who don’t are rejected. Some do things in their own privacy and pretend to be a part of the society. To each his own, live and let live are some principles that help us survive. That’s how one survives. But ‘kudos’ to the Indian media, the Indian people and the Indian police for taking a normal acceptable DEAD teenager and painting her as a dark and slutty wild child with a dark family with a short fuse. Her murder shook the nation but the manner in which this nation has reacted and silently sat as a mute and incapable observer to the circus that went on in the name of investigation is the real loss. There used to be a time in this country when people believed in having a stand and making sure everyone heard it. Today all of us are scared. We are scared of being judged of being punished and of being caught in a war that’s not ours yet. The more we turn our back to all of this, the more cowardly we behave the probability of our family being next increases. There is no shame in the adamant hypocrisy shown and there is no outrage at being subjected to such mediocrity. The fiery Indian spirit that could fight for justice and fight against any might is dead. Now there are just feeble hypocrites who silently witness how the country is being raped by idiots!

Justice has really become a joke. you can see the loss of faith of life itself in the eyes of Dr. Rajesh and Dr. Nupur Talwar. They have lost everything. And as a nation so have we! The joke is on us!

Shweta A. Kulshreshtha

Contractor's fancy

Chandan Mishra had a good life. He lived in a small hut in a posh slum in the middle of his city. He was a proud man for he had started as a small time labourer and risen to become a small time contractor. His life was like every other small time contractor’s life with its own twists and turns. He was man with varied tastes and bad habits. Famously infamous among his people, he lived life with zest.

One fine night as the contractor was returning from his midnight activity he walked on his beloved street that led home. It was an inconsequential street with its own share of open sewers and cow dung. But it was his street. On this very street he had contributed in the construction of the new showroom and the famous mall. This midnight the street was just his for there was no other sign of life anywhere. He spoke to himself, “Build all the modernity in the world and my city still sleeps by 11.” He laughed to himself and walked on the street back home as he had done a million times. However tonight was different. Because instead of going back home he stopped. Something had caught his fancy. Something that never really happened every night.

He stopped to look at an old building that stood between his modern marvels. It was an old style four storey building that stood shamelessly on the street. Old, damp and in ruins was how it appeared. But to the contractor it looked like a past he had almost grown to forget. The building was an ordinary building with its own share of cracks and broken windows. But what caught his eye was the fact that on a street where everyone slept by 11 someone was awake. On the rightmost corner of the third floor a light glimmered. A yellow eerie light that shone out the window and caught the fancy of the man standing across the street. He couldn’t take his eyes of it. It seemed to call out to him to keep looking. Oddly mesmerised our contractor stood there as a dazed spectator and kept looking at the window. The window showed a simple room and the light reflected of the wall right in front. There was no activity just that yellow light. For a normal night and a normal person this wasn’t such a spectacle. Many would have confused the contractor’s fancy as a perverted invasion of someone’s privacy. Yet despite no movement the contractor kept staring. In a few moments he saw some movement. In the yellow light a beautiful woman emerged. He couldn’t see her face but from her shadow he could make out that she was beautiful. Slowly and gracefully she took of all her clothes almost as if she was teasing the contractor. She pulled out a long cloth and wrapped herself in it. She had some magic in her for the contractor felt a pang. He couldn’t help staring at her. She disappeared somewhere and showed up again. This time she threw something out of the window. Our silly contractor should have left but his curiosity didn’t let him leave. Instead the fool got up and ran towards the bag she had thrown. He wanted to know what his mysterious muse had thrown away. He searched through the trash pile and found the bag. Before he could look into it he turned around. To his horror he saw his muse staring at him with a look of terror and fury combined. She was dangling half out of her window with her long hair falling on her face. Her hand was outstretched as if she wanted to grab the intruder by his throat and her mouth was twisted in a scream that never came out. Chandan felt fear and he ran. For some reason he ran. He didn’t even apologize but he ran with the bag clutched in his hand.

As he reached his hut he shut his door behind him. He felt uneasy but he pulled the bag he had just stolen closer. He should have left it there but in his panic he took it with him. The woman that had just terrified him had a hauntingly beautiful face. He looked at the bag and with trembling fingers opened it. He found among the contents a broken bottle of perfume that smelled of roses, a huge chunk of dark black hair and a bloody blade. He was terrified further. He knew he couldn’t keep this in his house. So he got up and threw the bag with all his might over the wall that surrounded his slum. He came back and went to sleep hoping he’d forget the entire night.

The next morning chandan woke up in a fit. He was sweaty all over and shaky. He knew last night had happened and the woman had haunted him in his dreams all the while saying, “ You shouldn’t stare!” convincing himself that all that was just a dream he got up to go to work. As he was about to leave his home he saw the same bag right across the street. He shook his head to shake of the creepy feeling and went about his day. He kept saying, “It’s just a normal day!”

His job today was easy and he wanted to get over with this day. All he had to do was demolish an old building. He followed his herd of labourers towards the decided address. As they were walking he recognized his own street and in a few moments to his horror he stood face to face with the very building that he had ogled at last night. He was perplexed. They couldn’t tear down a building still inhabited by people. He took out his papers and as he read through them he realised that the building had been uninhabited since the past five years. No one was living in the building and a team of government officials had sealed it a month back.

To hold onto his sanity he had to check himself. He ran into the building hoping to find nothing there making the last night a mere drunken haze. As he climbed the building he saw that every house had been locked and sealed. No lady could break those locks. He reached the home he wanted to check and found it sealed and locked like every other house. He stood there for a few moments. Convinced it had all been his imagination he started to descend and that’s when it happened. He smelt rose. A strong sent of roses began to envelope him and he felt suffocated. Panic stricken he looked all around but could find nothing. He began to run down the stairs and a voice filled his head, “You shouldn’t have stared!” it was a silent whisper but it followed him throughout. He came running out and he was back on the street at midnight. He saw a man seated across the street with a beautiful woman. He was drunk and she was beautiful. She smelled of roses. He remembered. He saw them ascend the stairs, he followed. They were in a different time he could feel it. He saw them stumble into the house on the third floor. He followed them inside. She kept giggling and he wore a smirk on his face. She dragged him to his bedroom. As Chandan gaped around he could see that he was in the woman’s house. The walls were adorned with photographs of the other man and woman.

In a sultry voice she said, “Do you want to do it in the dark or do you want to turn on the lights?”

He said, “I always like it in the light where I can see what I am doing?”

“What if someone sees us?”

“In a city that sleeps by midnight, who will? Now take of your clothes and do it slowly!”

“You are the boss.”

And chandan saw her undress. She grabbed the blanket on the bed and wrapped herself in it. “I’ll be right back!”

She went inside and came out with something hidden behind her back. The man waited for her on the bed. And chandan stood there watching the whole scene play out in front of him. She came out and told him, “I hate your beard! It makes me it itchy!”

He laughed and told her, “You want me to shave? Now?”

She giggled, “I can do it for you! And i guarantee you it will be the best shave you have ever had!”

He nodded and half naked she approached him, sat on him and slowly began to cut his hair. As she progressed Chandan saw a change. Her motions became violent. And the man’s moans turned into screams of pain. Like a maniac she cut his neck and her face was splattered with blood. She rose wiped her face on the blanket. She looked at him with furious eyes, “ You unfaithful bastard! You deserve death!”

She grabbed a bag lying on the table. She collected all the hair and the blade in that bag and threw it outside the window. “We shouldn’t make a mess now should we, you asshole!”

As she was at the window Chandan walked towards the bed and had a look at the man who had just been brutally murdered. As he saw the face he felt a shock. Right in front of him mutilated in the most monstrous way possible was the man from the photographs on the wall. Stabbed and bloody. He got up confused and afraid. He stared at the calendar right in front of him. he was in another decade. He didn’t understand. As he turned she stood right in front of him with a twisted smile.

The last thing he heard was, “You shouldn’t have stared!”

-Shweta and Denny 

That place

Alone. All alone. He stood all alone in the middle of that place. His eyes looked up at the sky looking at the stars. Stars were his world. His only friends who would never leave him. He had recently learned that the twinkle that people saw in the sky was just the brightness of the stars reaching the earth late. So in reality people saw the past. A past memory of the very bright stars. He was looking at the light that had glowed hours back. His only friends were pigments of some distant memory that didn’t even belong to him. The grass felt cold under his bare feet. He had spent the entire day inside and the night time was the only time he ever came out to look at the stars, rather the memory of the stars. He felt a cool breeze bristle past him. It was that time of the season when it was a little cold. He felt the hair on his hand rise and goose bumps covered his body. That place always did it to him. The first time around he’d been there he couldn’t survive it for more than a few hours but today he felt like he was back home. Back to that happy time where all he had felt was laughter and bliss.

In his rut of a life he was considered a recluse who rarely talked, kept to himself, worked a lot and just survived every day. But at night, every night since that fateful night, he’d come to the very spot where he stood now. He would sit and think of the times that had passed. The time he had laughed. The time he had played. The time he had made love. The time he had smoked. The time he had felt like he was happy. He could hear the laughter at times. But more often than not he heard a piercing silence. The silence just reminded him of the absence of what he had lost. Yet he came to keep that pain alive. To keep that memory alive. It had been almost a decade and yet the place kept him on a leash. For the watchmen who made his night round, this man was a nutcase. The watchmen had seen him cry, seen him dance, seen him sing, and seen him run here and there. It was the most unreal sight to see a grown man with a decent lifestyle act like a mad one. He would often shrug and say, “Those city folk are weird!” and walk away.

But the watchmen knew not why he stood there and danced or sang or wailed. This man felt at ease when he was there. It was the only place he would feel like himself or at least feel a distant connection to the man he had once been. An outlet to his past, a past so glorious and so distant. When he wasn’t here he felt like a dummy whose strings were in the hands of an unknown force. He would live through a day and not remember a single thing he had done that held any importance. His life was passing by like a meaningless debacle. But he felt something at night. He felt calm. A connection when he came back to that place. Today he was content by just sitting at his spot and looking at the stars. For the past few days he had been feeling uneasiness. His emotions had changed. The feelings had changed. They seemed like a distant memory now. They still left a pang in his heart but he had stopped prancing around and reliving. Now he would just sit and remember. It had become harder. Some things had changed. Some hadn’t. Some memories lived. Some died. And he felt incomplete. He felt suffocated without them but he had no choice. He couldn’t abandon them again. He couldn’t run again. He just couldn’t walk away again and live his life without this. This was his place. His everything.

He smiled when he remembered the time that she had kissed him. They awoke in each other’s embrace and he remembered her hands had caressed his face. They had one of those kisses, the kind that makes you feel connected. It was a perfect kiss. Passion and intimacy. He remembered how he had walked through his home looking around. He felt comfortable in his home. He even thought of his child, his little girl who looked like an angel while she slept on her princess bed in her room. He could hear his mother’s voice in the background singing her daily prayer. He could see his father struggling with the new sport shoes and fussing about how complicated things had become. He walked through that morning like he had every night. And then things changed. They felt a jerk. A jerk they had never felt before. Everyone looked shocked. His little girl was awake and calling for her mother. He saw her run to their child. His mother’s voice had stopped singing. His father stood with one shoe in his hand the other on his foot and fear on his face. And the jerking began. Everything began shaking. At first it was a jerk and then it grew. It grew into a violent and deadly shake. Everything was falling. The walls that had been their safe harbour were beginning to crack. At first they were small but the cracks grew exponentially. The walls began to break. He yelled for them all to run and lead them. Soon they were outside their home running down the stairs to get out. Everything was crumbling around them. Piece by piece everything fell. His father was the first to fall. His little girl kept screaming out of fear. His wife was drained of all her blood out of shock. She couldn’t move. She was in a state of panic. He tried to move her but she wouldn’t. He picked her up and ran. He was too scared to register his father’s fatal fall. He just ran. He had to save everything. He had to save everyone. They were his life, his family. He ran dragging and pulling them. And that’s when the floor beneath their feet crumbled. In a moment the beautiful morning turned deadly and soon he was pressed down on his own daughter and his wife on his other hand. A huge slab of rock pressed him from the back. His daughter was bleeding and his shirt was drenched with her blood. His wife was stiff in his arms. He saw his mother’s feet right in front of him. A bigger stone pressed her down. For the next 37 hours he lay their incapacitated. He passed in and out of consciousness. His daughter’s breath kept falling. His wife wasn’t moving at all. He kept believing he was dead too. He didn’t want to let them go. He kept holding onto them. There were times when he’d feel tears down his cheek but he wasn’t sure how real they were. He prayed for this to be a bad dream but god wasn’t listening. Suddenly he felt movement. The huge slab of debris that pinned him down began to move. He felt hands grabbing him. He strengthened his grip on his family. He couldn’t let them go. They might survive. He didn’t want to let them go. But everything else was a blur.

He woke up with a jolt. He was in the hospital one moment listening to the doctor tell him of his family’s death and the other he was back at the place where once his building, his home and his family stood. His eyes were wet. His heart was aching. He was back underneath that rock pressing him to his dead daughter. His hands shivered with which he had held his wife. He was there with them. He was there alone. He could still see his mother’s bloody feet, his father’s shoes, his daughters scream and his wife’s last kiss.

The stars were disappearing and the sky had turned greyish. The sun was about to rise and another pointless day without his family awaited him. He got up and turned to walk away from the life he wanted more than anything. The life that the earthquake had taken away from him. Other than God he blamed no one. And he walked. The only sense of life that he felt was when he came to the death bed of his family. That earthquake had taken a lot from a lot of people. He called it god’s joke. God had left him healthy and unharmed but had killed his soul, his reason for life.

~Dedicated to the millions who died during the earthquake that happened almost a decade back in Gujarat on 26^th January 2001. It was one of the most horrific experience of my life. The pain and suffering was unimaginable.

Shweta A. K.

Something inside.

I did it today! I did what I shouldn’t have done, what I shouldn’t have said and what I shouldn’t have thought. The priest told me envy is a sin. The priest told me lying is a sin. The priest told me lust is a sin. Still I did it. And today I suffer from the consequence of my own darkness. I loved a man I shouldn’t have and mistook his lust for love. I lied to the world about him and today I bare the consequence of that lie. I trusted the wrong woman and today I stand betrayed, alone and angry.

The priest told me to control my anger and take the misfortunate incidents of my life punishment for the sins that I have committed and as a true Christian I bore it all in silence. And then it happened today. That final burst of anger, of an emotion so deeply repressed that it exploded. I saw him and I saw her and I saw them and all I could think of was the wrong that had been done. My mind refused to accept it as the punishment for my sin. I stood there feeble and weak as if I couldn’t do anything to punish the monsters that had ruined my life. I wanted to make them suffer; make them pay for the illness they had spread in my life.

Love is sincere and beautiful. Friendship is honest and faithful. Trust is binding and liberating. Things the priest had taught me at every Sunday mass. I hadn’t just learned them I had lived them. A moral life of a true Christian. I had followed the testaments of Christ to every word. Life was perfect. Prayer was my only job. A life that just wasn’t wrong. The priest then told us about love and marriage. The day I learned about love I wanted to love a man and have a beautiful marriage. The only marriage that I had known as a young imp was that of the lousy neighbours who fought all day long and threw things. I always thought marriage was a war. But the priest told me marriage is holy. And I wanted everything holy in my life. So I wanted love and I found a man who wanted love. And I gave him my love, but he only took what he really needed and did not find in me what he wanted. I couldn’t even blame him. The church forbade it. He wasn’t wrong. At least that is what I believed. I let him go. You had to, as my very wise spinster aunt told me that if you really love someone you must let them go. If they come back they are true else it was never meant to be, it was god’s will. So I let him go and he left. Never came back. I cried tears of sorrow without the world’s knowledge. The priest only knew. He was bound to. Confessions was the only Christian way to come clean.

Lost love I found solace in a friend. A friend who had been wronged by a lot of people and misunderstood by everyone.  She was very different from the church. A person unique and unreal. I saw some sense of sincerity and understood her darkness. Judging her wasn’t my job it was the holy God’s. She taught me a lot and I stood by her. She helped me move on. Move far ahead and she always told me to stand up and fight. Forget the man who left me and embrace the options I had. She ridiculed the church. Showed me a side to them I never saw before. Showed me how wrong they were or how wrong she thought they were. I was too lost to comprehend anything. Trust was the only thing I could bestow on her and trust is all I had to offer. And trust is what I lost in the transition.

With her being dark was easy. With her being bad was easy but being with her wasn’t easy. And the fruit of my stupidity is what I bear today. I am ousted from the church I once was loved in and she stands on the holiest pedestal there could ever have been given. As an outsider I try to remember what a true Christian should do. I must wait for god’s justice and wait is what I did. Patiently I stood outside the church everyday hoping to find that justice, to find that solace and to find the peace that I deserved. But I had none. But I got none. The man I loved didn’t love me back. The friend I trusted took my biggest secret and my good faith and turned me into a laughing stock an ostracized joke. She told the church that I had committed the ultimate sin. Of loving another man. You see Christ doesn’t accept one man’s love for another. My hidden repressed feelings were what betrayed me. My moment of passion was what destroyed me. I was a simple honest to heart Christian who loved Christ and did everything Christian. My only mistake was to find love in another man, engage in homosexuality the ultimate sin. My other mistake was to trust a sweet honest woman with my secret. Let her know my darkest secret. Her ridicule of the church convinced me that my sin was love. She twisted my reality and exposed me to win back stature in the church and I was thrown out like a useless life form.

So I did it today. I took my father’s old gun determined to make those pay for the sins they did. I went and stood outside the church on a Sunday morning. I knew they both would be there. Pretending to pray, pretending to love Christ and basking in the glory they got at my cost. I stood outside the church to fire those bullets that would set me free forever. The gates opened and my hand fastened on the trigger. As I saw them walk out I pulled the trigger.

When a bullet is fired it can pierce through anything. The first one pierced through my heart. The second through my head. And I saw those two sinister people gape at my dying body. They deserved the guilt. They deserved the pain. And I needed the liberation. I am flying into heaven now. Where my Christ will decide my destiny, my eternity. After all I was a true Christian.

Escapade

I stood on the outskirts. It had been a long day and the herd stopped to rest. They surrounded the pond and hogged down the cool water. I had had my sip and lurked on the edges of our marked territory. We were going to settle her for the next few sun sets. While the leaders discussed the future of the herd, the followers looked at them with monotonous eyes. Nothing out of the ordinary.

A young leader was rebelling against the aged ones; the minister was intervening with the leader’s wishes. They were all agitated and prepared to fight. I had been a part of it all not so long back and now as I looked at them squabbling over petty issues to assert their dominance I felt my food rise up my throat. I looked around my not so special herd. We were all slaves of one another, slaves of the rut that we were forced into. As a young one my folks told me that to survive I must fall in line as the entire herd did. We survive because we follow each other. I was never the kind to follow suit. I was different but they changed me to become one of them. The only way to fit in was to be normal. Was to be enslaved. It wasn’t a cruel life. Much better than the kind of life ill fated rebels had received. Imprisonment by the humans, being murdered by a stronger predator and worst of all being caged. At least I had a secure survival. I had food, water, shelter and a future to look forward too but I swear the open meadow that I stared at looked so tempting. When you have the gift of speed in your bloods merely standing still just doesn’t work.

It was a moment’s glimpse that caught my eye. As I looked around the boundary of our occupation I caught a glimpse of the beautiful meadow right ahead. Right as I was about to stare into its beauty I heard screams. As I turned I saw a fight breaking out between the old leader and the new one. They argued and fought as they always did. And I had to go forward to calm them down. It was my job. Unsuccessful, I managed to be thrown off. Giving up I went back to my spot. As I looked back at the open space the meadow beyond me felt a tingle in my nerves. It was beautiful. An open ground with a never ending horizon to run after and the element of not knowing what lay ahead. I felt a jolt I hadn’t before but I couldn’t leave. Leaving meant rebellion and rebels were never treated right.

Yet that meadow looked so beautiful, the grass honestly seemed greener and the fresh air was just too irresistible. But every eye of the herd was on me. They never understood me. I was the weird one. They never understood my musings about freedom. I could see right through each and every one of them.  How each of them had compromised so much to fit in that they resembled each other in more ways than one. And they considered me an outcast who was too foolish to understand that to survive you either becomes the alpha or you follow the alpha. And the alpha was no leader himself but was a slave of the herd. It was suffocating to pretend to be ordinary when every bone in my body wanted to rebel. Was I too afraid? Or was I just bound? I didn’t know. This life that I had chosen was the only life I had ever known. Our herd frowned upon rebellion and called it a sin. But why would they consider freedom to be a sin. I wanted to run away yet my legs felt heavy as if they’d been bolted to the ground beneath me. I was stuck in this herd with no friends. None of them understood me. None could be trusted. Each of them had their own regrets that they reflected unto others. The greedy ones only wanted power and food. The selfish ones took what they needed. The holy ones were above everything else and were engrossed in their own world. The foolish one’s played into the hands of the greedy and selfish ones. The sincere ones never got their dues yet kept working unquestionably. The alpha men treated everyone else like dirt and everyone was an alpha to someone else. The lowest of them all were the returned rebels- the ones who had failed to find freedom or survived from a misfortune and had to return to the herd. They were treated like dirt. Everyone saw them as the black sheep. No one respected their will to explore. As the day ended the herd began to rest. I was about to sleep when the minister approached me. I was appointed as the back guard which translated into a night watchman for the entire herd. The minister did babble on about how age had taken its toll on the alpha. When I refused to be a part of his petty politics he left disappointed. And I was left with no other alternative but to stand still and stay awake and alert. As time went by my visitors increased. One after the other followers of the young alpha came and hounded me with ill facts about the old alpha. Power struggles- they all have the same pattern. One contender who is too eager and too hungry and one contender who is too adamant. I heard them fuss about the sorry condition of the herd. I was dazed and my head began to hurt. With time their numbers decreased and I was left in my solitude. Silence never seemed better. The fresh cold air in my lungs made me feel alive. I felt that urge again to run. To run into the wilderness away from all of it. I was in a place where unknown darkness seemed more tempting that the well known life that I had.

In that moment, the temptation just overtook me. I ran! I ran away from the place where I had stood still for so long. I felt like God. I was running like I was meant too. The wind had to catch up with me. The sound of my hooves on the grass was music to my ears. I felt the air rush on my face. It tasted sweet, like the taste of freedom. I was in control; every turn I took was my own. I could feel the shackles breaking. I didn’t feel any burden no more all I could feel was liberation. I was free. Running wild like I was meant too and it felt real. It felt natural and most of all I felt elated. I ran and I ran into the wilderness unaware of what lay ahead. It was a chase and I was in pursuit of the horizon that never seemed to come closer. I was free and happy for the first time in my life. I felt like I had when I was younger when the word responsibility meant going back to mother at sunset and lying under her warm body and drifting off to sleep. I was free. As I kept running I realised that I had left herd behind. I knew I had to return in time. Yet the time I had now was mine. All mine.

-Shweta A. K.