MATE - Part Two

Simi kept a keen eye out for Pritam, her beloved while her fingers twirled around the bow on her purse.  The plan was to meet in the train, he had his ticket and she had hers and one whistle had already gone off, but he was nowhere in sight. Then, with a final whistle piercing through the station, the train carriage jerked as the engine made its first move to pull it out of its home.  She searched once more through her small window, within the bustle of the crowd on the long platform, her hand ready to wave him down to her location.

The train moved slowly before picking up speed finally leaving the station behind.   The view from her window changed to a staggered skyline of multi-story houses, laundry drying on lines on the terraces, transmission wires networking over neighborhoods to extend beyond their limits, children walking, running or playing close to the railway tracks. 

A deep sigh escaping her thin, rosy lips, Simi leaned back into her seat.  Noticing the figure crouched in front of her, she offered her name and proceeded to make conversation with a deluge of questions.  Ria looked up, gave a curt greeting before returning to the screen in front of her.  Unperturbed, Simi continued to chatter commenting on the scenes they passed outside.  From the chaotic landscape to the unattended children so close to the tracks, but Ria offered no response.

Simi finally took the hint and relaxed back to gaze outside at the world passing them by.  Concrete jungle became sparser until all she could see were lush green fields ripe for harvest.  Dots of bright colors appeared at intervals hunched over with scythes in hand.  She admired the hard labor these men and women in the fields endured to feed the nation.  Her life had been of luxury where delicacies magically appeared at the table or her special requests accommodated without pause.  It was Pritam who opened a whole new world for her and helped her realize how she took so much for granted.

Simi turned to Ria again and asked if she was reading a romance novel, receiving a nod and a “mhhmm” in response.  Cheerfully, she went on to share, “I used to read those all the time, until I began to live it in real life...”  Ria lowered her e-reader as Simi declared, “…until I met my soul mate.”   Ria closed the flap, and looked up with arched eyebrows at her cabin mate.

to be continued.....

MATE - Part One

Ria’s one eye looked down at the tickets, the other up ahead down the corridor.  She squinted to read the numbers near and far, in her hand to match the ones on the cabin door.  With relief she slid the door, entered and set the bulk she carried down on the left berth.  Taking account of her duffle bag, backpack, a small suitcase and a laptop case, she carefully tucked them under the seat.  Extricating her e-reader from her oversize shoulder bag, she cuddled up in the corner, next to the window and soon was absorbed in a world of fantasy or was it a fantastic world?

Her head bobbed when her car pulled and tugged with a jerk as the engine connected.  She placed her feet up on her seat, knees drawn to her chest and relaxed her head back to read the words digitally appearing on her lap.  Cacophony of noise surrounded her as passengers looked for their cabins or seats, coolies harried to shed their loads, children screamed playfully or cried in fear with parents shouting at them to keep up.  A whistle resounded over the humdrum of the station as the train called all to attention.

Ria, oblivious to all activity around her virtually turned her electronic pages as she scanned words after lines after paragraphs.  Passengers boarded and settled in cabins adjoining hers or down the corridor, their chatter floating into her quiet abode.  Strangers introduced themselves all around her, inquiring of destinations, their missions, then divulging deeper into personal matters.  Before their parting each had learned of the other’s life story, their hopes and dreams coupled with all the miseries that befell them.  They had become lifelong friends but in their haste of pouring out intricate details of their lives, neither had bothered to exchange any contact details.  Strangers no more, parting as intimate friends, they remained strangers at last.

Ria ignored all the banter enjoying the recluse of her quiet cabin and the conversations in the fiction on her lap.  The door to her cabin slid open and a young girl breathlessly stepped in.  Ria gave a quick scan with a sideways glance at the new occupant before returning to the glow that radiated words from her lap.  The girl’s neatly braided hair had some escaped strands that flirted with her eyelashes.  Simply dressed in designer jeans that hugged her hips and red V-neck t-shirt that hugged her breasts, she sat down by the window, across from Ria.  Placing her medium sized red, white and blue kate spade bag on her lap, she leaned forward to look out through the bars of the window onto the platform, into the sea of people.  Her fingers fidgeted with the ostentatious red bow on her purse as her eyes darted back to front looking at both lengths of the station.

 

To be continued....

Motion in Stillness

A gust of wind scooped her off her feet, swirled and twirled her up above the clouds, across the ocean, over the mountains, past the pristine fields of red roses in bloom before depositing her on soft sand in the middle of arid land.

She licked her lips and squinted out into an endless horizon.  Her disheveled hair blinded her partially as it clung to her sticky skin, slithering towards her openings into her ears, up her nostrils, through her clenched teeth.  She turned and looked towards a luminous sandy hill, her eyes peering from under the awning of her shaky hand.  Her body whirled in circles to find direction before collapsing in disillusion on the soft, brown, sandy carpet.

Another gust blew around her, lifting up the earthy grains as they danced in circles heading nowhere.  The rim of her flowing skirt rose to join the dance, but her fingers clutched to hold it down.  She looked up at the open, clear sky feeling the weight of gravity grounding her.  Vastness of the circular dome invited her to expand, beckoned her fidgety feet into its limitless expanse while keeping her rooted in its circular confines.

A princess in a glass globe, her world was perfect and perfectly encased.

 

Wind in a Box

INSPIRED BY ONE OF JOSEPH CORNELL'S BOXES


It was all mapped out for her – school, husband, children;

she followed, listened, obeyed, submitted, and then she was 50.

 

Children grown and gone, husband passed on

she found herself surrounded by white walls.   Her perfect

life, all mapped out, carefully planned, followed a straight line

and had the richness of clean and white.  She reveled in its comfort

and its security;

 

until one solitary evening, from the whiteness of her room

she looked out her white window and saw blue --

a beautiful blue sky hung high beyond her reach,

it invited her into its serenity, beckoned her to observe its hue

 

of deep solace, as blue as peace.

 

She sauntered up close

to the clean lined edges of her perfect window,

climbed

to leave behind all that was planned

to melt blindly into a new blue bliss….

SILENCE

Shhh… listen to the absence of sound,

Cheerful birds are chirping

No more,
      they have flown away

rippling waters are gushing

no more,
      it stands still in river beds

still air is humid

no more,
      it hangs chilled and dry

falling leaves are rustling

no more,
      yet trees stand tall, bare naked

playful flurries are swift

no more,
      they linger for first snow

we linger and endure,

pause and wait,
      and listen to the sound of silence….

Seasonal Surprise!

The master brushed her long black hair wrapping her in its darkness.  The moon disappeared behind the cloud taking away all light.

The first drop was on her nose, warm and refreshing followed by a downpour.  She listened to the rain and its rhythm as if it was the sound of a flute.  Its music rose high into the sky and flew back to her as a Frisbee.

Her hair stood flat dripping water from its ends as her coat shuddered under the wetness, gleaming in the rain.  She let out a neigh and snorted, “Ooh La! La!  The monsoons are here!”

Samata - Final

Months later with police report filed for the stabbing and the assault, cremation and rituals for the departed performed, Samata collected her tears, rounded up her children and head out to the city.   A friend had given her the contact for a social worker and Samata was determined to take the landlord’s son to court.

A short, petite woman with a straight spine and face as round as the moon, the social worker received the family graciously.  She listened to their narrative of the incident that led to murder done openly in front of witnesses.  But the accused were held in jail overnight and then released after a phone call from the landlord.  She listened to the numerous injustices as large scale as assaults and cheating them of their hard work and of prejudices seemingly minute as a separately designated water source.   Samata stressed that theirs was not an isolated event, or unique case in just her village.  Coming from a tribal village did not make her less human and her educated children deserved as much if not more respect than the landlords and overseers.

Her final plea to the social worker was that even though her husband was no more, she refused to shed anymore tears or mope over her loss.  She was illiterate and had put up with the discrimination, in fact was treated worse than even the beasts in the villager’s cowshed, but her children were literate, earned decent incomes, lived well, and read extensively.  It’s time that people like the landlord and his son learned that people from her caste were not helpless, literate or not, and refused to be continued to be victimized.

Staying true to her name, Samata called for equanimity, equability and equality where with composure and poise all humans are treated equally and the world is in balance.  She demanded justice.

The End

Samata - Part Three

Time stood still as Samata’s husband began his fall to the ground, as if in slow motion.  His son ran to catch him before the crash, cradling his father’s head.  He removed his shirt and pressed it against the wound, watching the once white dirt-ridden fabric turn red instantly.  He looked up to see eyes peering down from the crowd, not an ounce of regret or compassion for the fallen man in them.  His one arm extended towards the standing men asking for help, but no one moved.

Carefully sliding his arms underneath his old man’s body, he scooped his frail body and carried him as if a sleeping baby.  His legs moved swiftly towards the police station a whole mile away, limping from bruises from the fight, tripping over puddles on the muddy path.  Fierce rays of the sun stung on his neck and bare back as rivulets of sweats dribbled down his spine.

At the police station, men in their khaki uniform and a worn down baton stood casually, chatting and shouting out orders for tea.  As they saw a young man carrying a body approach them through the wheat fields, all chatter stopped instantly.  Out of breath and barely able to hang on to his wounded father, the young man tried to explain the incident.  He was directed indoors to a seating area to wait for the head constable as the rest of the policemen stepped aside to avoid his shadow.

The clock on the wall ticked away crawling forward as a centipede, inch by inch, minute by minute.  The old man’s clothes were soaked with blood as his breathing became more laborious.  He murmured in his subconscious, delirious state calling out to his wife, Samata, his daughters, his sons, his parents, his grandparents moving further back to his forefathers.  He called for justice, for equality, for equanimity, for samata before taking his last breath.

 

To be continued.....

Samata - Part Two

The ground below Samata’s feet gave way as her 16 year old daughter fell into her arms.  The two crashed down together collecting droplets of each other’s tears while her daughter recounted the incident between heaves and sobs.  It was the landlord’s son and two others; the Sun behind her burned her body as they peeled off her sari; names reserved for her caste rang in her ears repeatedly, obscenely.

Samata’s husband was the first to come home and their son not long after.  Finding the women in their state and after a brief narration of the events, both men exploded in unison.  They grabbed long sticks and barged out, crossing the perimeter of their boundary by stepping into an area revered to be pure.  After polluting the village of the higher caste with merely their presence, father and son continued deeper towards a tea stall.  The three accused men sat on rickety wooden chairs celebrating their exploits with cheap homemade liquor.  Their glasses were full but three empty bottles sat discarded at the edge of the table.

Samata’s husband confronted the landlord’s son, stick in hand and fire in his eyes only to be reprimanded for contaminating the tea stall and the village by his presence.  His son came to stand by his father offering an equally fiery glare.  The largest of the three men stood up unsteadily and jabbed Samata’s son in the face, bruising his jaw.  His father brought his stick down on the monster, drawing blood from his forehead.  Soon the rickety chairs went flying crashing on sunburned backs.  Sticks met shoulders and knuckles made contact with eyes and ears.  In midst of the commotion no one saw the shiny metal the landlord’s son extricated from his pocket.  The jab was hard and deep just under Samata’s husband’s ribs.

To be continued….

Samata - Part One

Even her shadow could pollute the water.  Samata woke everyday while the stars still sparkled over the open fields and the moon smiled over her mud hut.  She walked 30 minutes to a designated well and as she returned with arms lugging two buckets full of water, the sun usually winked at her and welcomed her to a new day.  Each day she balanced the buckets and put one determined foot in front of another, welcoming the freshness of the earth, the clarity of the sky, the golden smile of the sun while her low caste followed her limply in the shadows.

She worked in the fields tilling, toiling, sowing or harvesting shoulder to shoulder with her husband and his family.  The overseers and the landowners ordered with obscenities, pushed her frail body to its limits and insulted their low status every hour, but she trudged with her veiled head and back bent low.  Her eyes focused on the task, reminding her soul of her humanity and dreaming of a golden future.

Illiterate and scorned, she woke everyday with renewed determination.  Saving every paisa from the fieldwork or even skipping meals she insisted her children attend school.  Months evolved to years, her bent back stayed low in pain, her thick dark hair boasted white strands as her children graduated first from school, then college until securing respectable office jobs.

Landlords in the field continued to discriminate with constant reminders of her low caste but she turned a deaf ear to them.  Her simple life continued until one day, her daughter ran into the hut with tear streaked red cheeks, bruises on her body and tears in her sari.

To be continued….

CHANGE

Change is inevitable

Why?
Evolution
Seasons
Cycle of life

Change starts with a day
From sleep to awake
From night to day
From owl hoots to bird songs
 
Change starts with a life
From conception to birth
From youth to adult
From child to parent
 
Change starts with a generation
From notepads to laptops
From phones to internet
From community to self
 
Change begins with experiences
From innocence to wisdom
From student to citizen
From love to duty
 
Change begins with migration
From homeland to distant
From mixed cultures to divided nations
From submission to freedom
 
Change is inevitable
Else,
We won’t be humans
Falls won’t be colorful
Generations won’t progress
 
Transformations in our daily lives or lifetime
It’s elementary and essential.

No Title contributed by a friend

In your head to change your interpretation

To want, is it a set back for opportunity from mental freedom.

Are you really thirsty to drink the elixir that has been poured in a glass and sits peacefully at the table, while you wait

Deceived, gullible, parched

You remain, whilst under the carpet through the cracks of your broken mirrors and destroyed ties, all those perfectly placed lies, that sweat you dry

It drips

And still you sit cold restless

like a blank post card that waits to be mailed, you count minutes into shadows

Static time place thought

Everything lays soft under your feet waiting to be discovered