Saturday 19 July 2014

Strings of Truth (poem)

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T'is like playing cards
Rice, rice, rice
Curry, curry, curry
Then beans, beans, beans
To pack in three sets
Then pick a set,
A bottle in another
Check the doors
And hurry, hurry, hurry.

The same routine
Day after day
Stings my nerves
Ends my romance
With life.

It's time to rebel
I think
But can't.
Commitment and debt
Push the wheels
On and on.

Thus engrossed
I nearly stepped
O'er a woman
Lying
Dead or alive
I couldn't tell
Flies covered
Her face and body.
Her back exposed
She lay in a puddle
Perhaps
 Let out unknowingly.

Like others
I too passed by (doing nothing)
Stung by the truth:
I have home, health and family.          

Sunday 13 July 2014

The Mysterious Visits (now edited)


                                                                                                            free digital photos.net

"Oh no, Beauty, you mustn't push your way inside like that," Kala said, gently pushing back the group of pigeons that were circling the balcony impatiently  as they waited for her husband Karuna. "Your boss is late today. Just wait till he comes."

She drew the curtains and night turned to day all of a sudden in the room. "Wake up, Karuna, she said. Your friends are all waiting  impatiently  for you. Helloo!..." and she gave him a light shake.

 Karuna seemed more and more withdrawn lately. His affinity with the birds was perhaps the only normal quality openly visible.
 He felt stiff and cold as his body rolled over. "NO... she screamed. You can't do this to me, Karuna, you can't..."

                        *      ..................*..................*.......................*.....................*

Priya was surprised to receive a call from her sister Kala so early in the morning.
"Priya," the voice said faintly. Priya... and then there was the sound of a thud and of the receiver dropping.
"Irresponsible burden,"  Priya's husband Bharat said as he cut open the lock to  enter Kala's door. "Had he been more responsible we wouldn't have had to bother so much about Kala," he grumbled, giving the door a good push.


 Kala was lying unconscious by the phone. Priya ran to get water and sprinkled it on Kala's face. Kala blinked her eyes open and was shocked to see Priya and Bharat by her side.Then fear swept over her face and she pointed towards her room. "Karuna's dead," she whispered.

In fifteen minutes the place was swarming with people.
"He shouldn't have resigned his job," Jim a neighbour said.
"Yes, that was how their troubles began," Jim's mother said.

Outside the house little Gopi gave a flower to three year old Shalu and she  accepted it shyly.
A  small piece of cloth moved all by itself across the grass. Janaki watched it in amazement and then followed it half with fear and half with curiosity. A rat got dismantled from under it and entered a hole in the ground leaving the cloth at its entrance.

Meanwhile the drummers arrived and started to beat the  flat drums as they do during funerals here. These typical drum beats indicate death and helps spread the news faster. When Kala's mother arrived the drummers beat the drums fast and loud. Loud beats indicate the arrival of a close relative or friend of the family.
"Kala, oh my Kala, see the plight he has left you in!" Kala's mother slapped her own forehead to express her grief.

Karuna's relatives began to come in too.
"He didn't look too good lately. Must have started on alcohol or something. Once that comes in, life is lost automatically," Karuna's brother Muthu confided to their father Arasu, privately. Arasu was an independent  man who had his own views. He knew that Karuna took after him but now he wasn't too sure that it was good on the whole.

Shanmugam, a one time friend who turned into a rival in Karuna's past business came too. "Poor Karuna had brains. If only he had stuck to his old business, all would have been well. Only his venturing out to strange places  made his foot slip. The places he's been visiting recently is notorious.

'Irresponsible, drunkard, gambler, womaniser'?  More salt in her wounds. None of this fit in with Kala's idea of Karuna, though she couldn't give a valid explanation for the places he was visiting or of his other strange behaviour. He used to visit some hill tribe area more  out of interest than for monetary gains. But there was the practical problem of debt. So he was depressed and had a heart attack...

The elders arrived to conduct the last rites and rituals. Holy water was poured here and there. Men washed themselves to ward off any curse that might continue to follow the family. And then they lifted the body.

Nobody noticed a stifled whiff of air come out from the inner room. It circled Kala's head and then followed the body hesitantly.

Kala suddenly remembered a cupboard in her husband's study. She was sure it wasn't connected with any business. Yet Karuna had been using it a lot lately.

After the crowds left she opened it quietly.She was right. Karuna had fought and won the rights of the tribal women of that village.Opened schools,brought water connection to it and made the women aware of their rights: against the lust of the men.

It was just like Karuna to work with the right hand what the left was unaware of.  

*                                       *                                           *                                *


                                        Basic idea given by Ashok Kumar

Wednesday 9 July 2014

The last laugh

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I woke up
 and looked
around me :
My body ached,
A sense of loss
engulfed me.
I took a breath deep
and set out afresh.

I worked
I earned
I gave my mother
A sustenance
She smiled.
My younger brother
hiding behind her
smiled too.

Twenty years later
I am still
toiling for nectar
while he smacks
the honey.
Mother relishes
his company
                                                           And will not send him out.                                              

 I wonder
when
 I'll ever
have the
 last laugh.



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