A Tale of Two Sisters

 

she fell and broke her foot.
her head bled and they cried
'get some ice," a voice screamed.
'may be I am dying. glass rain, 
piercing, cruel, hot. "All my precious 
ceramics and china!" detachment
coerced upon the heart that loves;
lying in bed the bare walls enclose
upon her, resounding with blabbers 
of children and grandchildren: first 
words, first steps, falling crying 
laughing. She smiles. The rupture 
in her head hurts. Like a kitten 
tangled up in a ball of wool it had 
never intended to unravel, she lies
there in the debris of daily life, 
softly moaning.

Eleven birds in the twirling depths of 
skies: craned neck, eyes squinting 
trying to communicate with the 
dancing song of the winged beings
"take me  with you, I who wanders 
alone these stretches of red earth 
looking for feathers, stones and 
some meaning lost and never found"; 
a snake slithers past shy unsure 
shedding the safety of its hiding 
place; black cat is not breathing
rufous treepie's ruckus having 
given rise to a silent revolt. 

"Why live in that ruthless city? 
Look, how it devours your time 
and goodwill! Come, my darling 
sis, be part of this gentle sprawl 
of trees heavy with morning dew 
and skies light with our flight. 
Here you will not need your fine 
china rimmed with 24 kt gold, 
just a cup of chai will do"

The flock is sucked into the azure
heights...the eyes search but in vain.
On the way back home, a bright feather
waiting to be picked up 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

C'est La Vie...Really?

Seven peacocks sit on the parapet of our terrace fronting the bay. A murder of crows spearing into the morning silence flies past chasing a hungry Brahminy kite who desires absolutely nothing but a clutch of eggs for breakfast.  The jails in the country are packed with sloganeering opposition leaders, journalists, activists, and to use everyone's favorite term, 'pseudo-intellectuals'. As elections draw near, the dire need to quash all competition has arisen  within the alpha party.  More than six months on, the war wages on in  the Holy Land. Yet, the country responsible for it, stands fifth on the World happiness index! According to the United Nations, more than a million people are likely to suffer from starvation in the war-torn region since aid is not being able  to reach the affected populace because of innumerable road blocks.  It rained last night. An out of season shower, which brought the peacocks out of the coconut grove. The cashew tree now laden with fruits, spa
Read more

Beyond dreams and awakenings

How to sift reality from non-reality? Pry dreams from fiction?  Our daily constitutional. In an inadvertent raising of the eyes, rust orange of a crow-pheasant in flight caught and released by the irises...scales of a snake dangling from its beak wring the air silver, merciless.   Further up, on a path crisscrossed by the trembling shadows of coconut trees, an explosion. Anvil hammers away on frail eardrums. Something bounces off the ground, grazes past the right foot: a humongous coconut. Mumsy is unperturbed. "They never fall on people," she reassures me, adding sweetly, "for they have eyes". She points them out to me. I pick up the deadly fruit and shake it: the sound of ambrosial water splashes therein. There is a triumphant smile on mumsy's face, "It is a good one," she exclaims. I am still fazed by this close encounter.  "How many people die from coconut falling on their head" I google. According to a British Travel Insurance Company, c
Read more

Summer Blues

Image
the cashew carrier It is difficult to respond to a long spell of tropical summer with anticipation or with memorable fondness. Clammy, humid, clinging and breathlessly hot, it ushers in an oppressive lusciousness and fructification. Neem, mango, cashew, rose apple, kumquat, all flowering and fruiting trees conspire to blossom, bear, and mature at once. A life of ontogeny and everything it encompasses such as fruit-flies, caterpillars, termite over-rush, and scorpion ants is not something we romanticize; we deal with it. As we do with the incessant two-note song of the koïl, sweet yet monotonous in its execution. Through the endless summers  dappled with our prayers for rains, for respite from heat and dust, peacocks strut down the winding path trumpeting, sounding and beckoning the clouds...I sense their yearnings.  Every few hours I haul myself to the yard to pick up the fallen cashew fruits, soft and swollen with juice. Sometimes only a spatter of overripe fleshiness is found, its fi
Read more