A Father, A Son

Early to bed early to rise, was something he had never done before in his life. He still remembers when was young and doing schools. His father would return from night patrol duty at six in the morning and wake him up just to sleep on his bed. Though there were two more beds in other room but had been intentionally stripped off their mattresses so that the son couldn't sleep anywhere else after being roused from his bed. By this act, his father intended son to gear up for little jogging and exercise at Polo-ground that had been used for the game of Polo by royal family of the city they ones ruled pre- independence.

He knew his son was a lazy soul but smart too. After stepping into his jogging shoes and locking door from outside, he would walk languidly toward ground with half open eyes. Purposely he wouldn't wash his face and eyes at the running taps on his way. He just wished to sleep a little more and never turn his face toward east as the rising sun might upset his sleepy state. Stroll until the polo ground wasn't long at all and well in his sense he would cross the road and enter into the great polo ground through a huge channel gate that was always kept wide open enough for not more than two people to walk in simultaneously. There he would open his eyes in a way as if looking for something and yes he looked for something: looked for young men doing cricket practice at the only cricket club in the city. If they were not doing the net practice or something at the pitches then he would at once approach the dry grassy pitch and lie down with closed eyes just to open them again when sun would be high enough to upset his slumber. Sometimes he found those young men doing net practice on those well cared pitches with only intention to get into the national cricket team and bat like Sachin Tendulkar or bowl like Kapil Dev. However, he also loved cricket but never wished to be a part of national cricket team. Obviously, how could he, when his love for his slumber was more intense than for such a dream.

Some mornings when those pitches were occupied by the players he would approach the derelict stands and find a corner to lie down where sun wouldn't get to find him for an hour or two. Eventually when he woke up from those ‘LITTLE MORE SLEEP’ he would look at the sky and try to feel the environment just to make a guess – is it 8:00 AM or 8:30 AM or perhaps too late, 9:30 AM?

If certain that it’s not too late, he would approach a running tap at a corner in the ground and washed his face and eyes. Then, he went on to look for a place to sit and watch people who have been doing jogging, exercise and stretching. Sometimes, he found acquaintances and passed them a shameless good morning smile. Watching everyone playing games, doing exercises and all sort of physical activity gave him joy and occasionally he would smile at something or someone with no sensible reason. But he wouldn't sit for too long and after dusting his pants take his stroll back to the house.

There he would open the door and step inside, just to find his father sleeping on his bed. Sometimes, he would lie down on mattress-less beds and wait for his father to wake up. On alternate days, after returning he would check the tap, if running then he filled the empty water storage and sit inside it leisurely to cool the body from all the morning activities. He always hated his father for waking him up and making him go through this rigors morning – as he considered it.

Now several years later, he deliberately tries to wake up as early as possible and gets furious on himself for not being able to do so as often as possible. And, if he does, then he would ask for a nice cup of tea after freshen up and stand in the window to see people who are taking out for morning walk, jogging or exercising, and look back at his empty bed just to see his father sleeping there. But, now he sleeps somewhere far away from his bed, perhaps in a big wooden box, four feet under the surface with a big cross on his head saying, “It’s my time to sleep, you go and live the life at fullest, my son.”

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Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

What else will you do, when you really can’t do anything?

Monotonous days, loneliness is your companion and you watch sun rise and sunset from the only window in your room. No, I am not prisoner of any jail which is abide by law. However, I am the prisoner of myself, who has no desire left to walk out, who has no love to fulfill, who has no purpose to live for. Had I loved someone or something I would have thought about going for it, but now, where should I leave for, the whole world appears a granule to me. It is empty. It is hollow. It holds no value for me. Sometimes being human is a punishment in itself for the crime you must have committed mistakenly.

I know it must not be making any sense for who is reading it. However, there is a sense in it, a sense that only I can make out of it. I don’t wish for love, I don’t Crave for relationship, I don’t starve for aspiration. The only ambition which lies in me is to visit the end. There lies an urge in me that craves for an end, it needs to know the meaning of same end or is there any end which really exists or this whole concept of life is a lie, a hoax and I am made fool by this very fact.

I don’t raise both hands in the sky and ask for blessing, I don’t stretch hand for companionship, I don’t see you because my vision is stuck in the horizon seeking a way out. I attempt things that are taboo not because they are taboo but to ascertain why are they considered so. Perhaps one day they will show me a way out. Instead of spreading fingers to feel you, I curl them in to save you from the disease of heart since my pain is my pleasure.

My prose and poems are lowest of the categories of art but they are destined to be written and only read by me.

It’s the fourth time I have heated water to clean myself from what I have been living with since ages but it dejects me as I attempt to touch it with curled fingers. It’s still as cold as I brought it from an unknown stream. They call it Holy River but I see it nowhere more than a stream of muddy water. The fire from the last night bonfire has turned into grey ash and I see someone standing there above me in white rob with a cross saying ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ as though in that ash they have buried a soul that was seeking to escape and loose itself into the airless space where only twinkling light shows the way like lighthouses in the middle of oceans.

I smudge face with that ash and walk like a ghost in the forlorn streets where I scare only myself with that new face. There, all hopeless beings laugh aloud at my cover up and spit at me for only one reason - to see me naked and crawl like wounded snake. Since they are thirsty they are cursing me for my dry eyes, wanting to quench that thirst with my tears. But behold I shall declare that tears have left me a long ago, you are living dead and you hold no right to drink the tears of a man who had died with wide open heart and open eyes.