Reflections: Guilt

[This is a part of my short story series called Reflections. There are three stories that are a part of this series. They are unrelated except for their common setting.]

I take this bus every day. But today just feels different and I don’t know why. I look around for a seat. A young lady gathers her things and gets ready to leave. The bus comes to a stop and she rises and I take her seat. The old man in the seat beside me throws me a familiar smile. Since I take this bus on a daily basis I have become familiar with the other regular passengers. It’s funny I don’t know his name but we smile at each other every day and on occasion we’ve engaged in small talk about the weather and cricket. Today he just smiles at me and shuts his eyes to take a nap.

 And then I drift off into a reverie. A scene from last night plays back in my mind. In the dim kitchen lighting I search through the medicine box. All I find is empty packets of tablets and small covers made out of newspaper. I look up to see my brother’s wife standing over my shoulder, her eyes begin to well up. She holds some money out to me. One hundred and twenty three Rupees. I have around Rs. 200 saved. The total is far from enough as the monthly bill for medicines came up to around Rs. 1500. She starts to cry I reassure her that I’ll get the money and buy the medicines. A promise I am not sure how to keep.

My younger brother has been sick for about a year now. My wife and I work as construction labourers and my brother’s wife works as a maid.  We pool in our earnings to support both our families. We’ve been managing to get by so far but the last month had been tough. My brother’s condition worsened and he had to be hospitalized. Any money we had saved, jewelry that we owned was all put towards paying the bill. He showed signs of improvement and was then discharged from the hospital 4 days later.

I sink into my seat in worry. I glance sideways. The old man has drifted into a deep slumber. His heads falls. The bulge in pocket catches my eye. I quickly scan the other passengers to ensure no one was looking our way. I slip my hand into his pocket and extract his wallet. He doesn’t flinch. I get up to leave. I know there’s a good chance his wallet may not have enough money to cover the bill but maybe with a little more money I could buy enough to last my brother another 10 days.  I never believed there was a grey area between right and wrong but desperation

led me right to it. That still doesn’t explain the unsettling feeling at the pit of my stomach. I make my way to the front of the bus to get off at the next stop. I catch my reflection on the doors, the sight of the bulge in my pocket fills me with disgust for the man I see, the man I’ve become.

Reflections: Loss

[This is a part of my short story series called Reflections. There are three stories that are a part of this series. They are unrelated except for their common setting.]

I take this bus every day. The stops don’t interest me, I am just hoping to relieve the routine you had. I know it’s not going to bring you back but maybe it would take me closer to you. I scan the faces I see entering hoping that I could see you with your backpack. Do you remember how I used to say that your backpack made you look less like a working man and more like the little boy I used to take to the bus stop? Maybe you still remember that but I’ve been forgetful since you left. I forgot that I no longer needed to pack a lunch and send it with the Dabbawala. He would look at me with a mixture of discomfort and sorrow and then apologise saying he couldn’t deliver it anymore. You were a very forgetful boy too. I can recount days when I had chased you onto the street before you got into the bus with something you left behind. But this time it’s not your phone or your watch that you left behind. This time it’s me. And I’d chase you if I knew where to run. Death is indeed alive. It feeds on the living. I stare at my reflection in the window. I feel myself growing smaller day by day and the void in my life seems to grow bigger.

Checkmate

[I’ve written this free verse in the slightly dramatic narrative of the six pieces you find on a chessboard.]

 

We stand lined up in formation at the battlefront.
The air is thick with bloodlust.
Capture and conquer is the command.
Martyrs are what most of us end up becoming.
They call us Pawns.

I have mounted my valiant steed.

Our souls are two but camaraderie makes our fate one.
I take a deep breath just as we’re about to charge into the battlefield.
They call me a Knight.
 

I whisper a silent prayer as it begins.

I agreed to sacrifice my miter if it would save the king’s crown.
They call me the Bishop.

 I cast a watchful eye over battlefield from my high tower.
Defending my troops and engaging in combat when necessary.
After all defending and attacking are two sides of the same coin.
They call me the Rook.

 I draw my sword from its sheath.

Here royalty doesn’t command from the side-lines,
we fight at the front lines.
On the battlefield, the eager talons of death are ever ready to clutch at life.
I am their trump card their deadliest human weapon.
They call me the Queen.

 I stand strong on the battlefield.

Death saved me for last.
I watch helplessly as bravehearts are slain.
After a series of calculated moves,
We avenge our troops in one final blow.
Checkmate. Swords fall to the earth.
They call me the King.

 

 

 

 

Invisible Blood

[I wrote this piece in light of the tragic Paris attacks.I condemn terrorism and pray for those who lost their lives to it and also for their near and dear ones. I also condemn generalizing communities based on a few individuals. I pray for those who face unnecessary judgement for their beliefs.]

What would you say if they asked you why?
Why do people treat them differently?
Is it their headscarves or their names?

Their hands are stained with invisible blood.
Blood from murders they did not commit.
They can't see it no matter how hard they try. 
Then why do others see it?

You would recall numbers that the media used to sum up casualties.
Those numbers always fell short of the real number of victims.
There are more victims, they've  stayed hidden from headlines.
They may not have lost their lives, their limbs or their blood.
But they've lost the respect they deserve.
You'll recognize them by the invisible blood stains on their hands.

And then what if they asked you why millions should atone for the sins of a few?
What would you say? 
Why has unjustified hatred become a popular means to execute justice?

So tell them that you said prayers for those who had their last breath at the end of the barrel of a gun,
for those whose heartbeats synchronized to and were silenced by the ticking of a bomb
and for them too, the ones whose hands are stained with invisible blood.
And so may we wash away the invisible blood off the hands of the innocent.
Divine judgement is reserved only for the guilty.

Star crossed lovers

Maybe the sun and the moon are two star crossed lovers.
Fated to shine in the absence of one another.
For the briefest moment we catch a glimpse of what they could have been
when they come in perfect alignment with each other.
And we watch spell bound at how a love like that eclipses everything else.

Paper life

I see her looking down at me. Hoping to see the words take form on me and appear as though by magic. And then it happens, her pen dances across me, her words etched into my very fiber. She sets her pen down. Satisfied? I can’t tell.  And then I’m folded up and put in an envelope sealed with the greatest trepidation.  And then I travel miles and miles for days or perhaps even weeks. I can’t tell time in this envelope. I don’t know if the light I see through the envelope is sunlight or a spotlight. And finally I hear a sharp rip of the envelope. Light and air pour in and we embrace each other like friends reunited after a long time. I’m put on a table and flattened. It isn’t her I see now, the one whose words I was entrusted with, it isn’t her. He reads while his fingers run across the ink idly. And then in one swift move, he crushes me into a ball and tosses me away. I feel pain and I already know that my pain would travel across miles and eventually reach her too but in the form of absence - absence of a response. I hear a crinkle as I to stretch myself little but all in vain. Hours go by as I am reminded by the omniscient ticking of a clock. I also hear water dripping from a faucet somewhere. The silence is suddenly broken by footfall and the unmistakable flicking of a light switch followed by the buzz of a tube light flickering and then flooding the room with light. I’m picked up and then flattened against a table top. It’s him again but something has changed. He reads me over and over again and finally pulls out a sheet of paper. I watch as his pen dances across the paper just like hers did. He flattens me against the table top again and then folds me and puts me into a box. And then I meet a hundred other letters she wrote him and we share our stories. I also meet a few he wrote her but never sent. He opens the lid of the box. Letter in hand deciding where it should go. The box suddenly plunges into darkness but just before it went dark I caught a glimpse of him scrawling something atop an envelope. And that ink pattern I suppose is where she is.

Contemplate

(This is my try at perspective writing. I have written this narrative not in my own words but in that of an old man who finds himself contemplating over the journey of life)

I see a page torn from a newspaper I owned some decades ago. It’s preserved between the pages of a hard bound book. The page has turned yellow with age. I run my trembling fingers along my face and feel my own skin marred by the same agent of time. This is the way things go I suppose. I remember being a young boy full of energy. I recount scabbed knees and other bruises I earned on the playground that I wore with the same pride as if they were medals of honour. Those cold winter nights that I watched melt into summer days were a true act of magic. Back then I possessed a vivid imagination and it would breathe life into the most dullest and mundane occurrences in life.

Then came the next phase – youth. Things seem to complicate themselves unnecessarily and whirlpool of emotions didn’t make it any easier. I remember having to make several supposedly life changing decisions and only carrying on ahead in life to realise that those weren’t the decisions I had to be careful about. It was the others that had to be made on a whim, the decisions that didn’t come with paperwork and formalities. Those are the ones that still haunt me today. The decision to down another peg in spite of knowing I was already too drunk was one amongst my regrets. I burnt several bridges at the time and built many afresh.

My choices right or wrong led me to the self-same path of adulthood. I came face to face with the real world only to realise just how naïve I had been up till then. And then it happened, I started to relive the phases I had already passed, through my son. But it seemed to go by a lot quicker and eventually an air of melancholy set in when time dragged along distance into our relationship. His hand that was once small enough to fit in mine completely was now just as large as mine and that same hand that would reach out to me so often now pushes buttons on a phone to contact me in an attempt to bridge the distance of 1000 miles that lie between us.

The years roll on and things change some more. My limbs become stiffer, fatigue is a frequent visitor and my hair is coloured a distasteful white. But it feels as though my hair isn’t the only thing that has lost colour in my life. These days the news mourns the death of personalities I knew well as a child. And I sit here contemplating the life I made, words left said or unsaid, opportunities utilized or wasted and I ask myself what it’s all worth. Lying six feet under the dirt would render my social status irrelevant, my shoes would lose their shine and my crisp black suit would become a befitting shroud. All I hope to have earned in this lifetime was some love and respect. Maybe then I’ll be granted immortality in someone’s memory. Just like the page of the newspaper that turned yellow with age. Perhaps it’ll be discarded someday but I’ll still remember what the headline read.