Colours of Joy

He woke up startled, a smile spread across his face and a feeling of high very evident. As he lay on that charpai, spread-eagled, he screwed his face trying to remember what had made him wake up with a start and why he was so happy despite a broken sleep.

The smell of burnt wood wafted, with a chilly November breeze, from the sigri under his charpai. Its warmth was a solace for his bare arms and legs in such nights. He could hear the birds chirping at a distance and knew he had only a few more minutes to lie before he heads off with the cattle for their daily graze. He took a deep gulp of saliva to quench his dry throat, and the winced at the aftertaste of garlic from last night’s dinner. Everything else was dark, the chirping and the chill and the whiff and the taste all meddled with what he wanted to think about. Plus the urgency as the night was about to end…. He turned his head in an attempt to doze off again.

For the next few moments he tossed around lazily and then considering it as a lost cause woke up again; though the experience, that had woken him elated, lingered on. Getting back home, he took a deep breath and the air was scented with freshly thatched cow dung cakes, making a thoughtful gesture he moved quickly to wash up. After the daily chores of the morn, he picked up a bamboo limb and headed to fetch his bovine companions.

It was amazing, the dexterity with which he moved among the fields on the paltry muddy pathways. Every now and then he’d run his hand in the bristles of grass and trying to make something more out of the tickling sensation. He whacked the buffaloes a few time just to hear them groan and again smiled as the thoughts of wee morn kept renewing inside him. On his way, he pulled off a few leaves from an abutting bush and kneaded them on his palm impishly, and his smile broadened as he put his palm to his nose and let the aroma fill him up. To him it was all a joy of discovery…. Over and over again!

Reaching the destination, he tied the buffaloes to the tree and got inattentively distracted by the clinking of their bells. He sat there for many minutes flicking the bells casually and repeatedly just to hear them and the same jubilant smile lit up his face. He had packed for himself some extra amount of rice for lunch, just so he can have a nap while the buffaloes grazed. The idea of a siesta was just too tempting, for previous night’s slumber had just given him a new found joy!

He sat for on the bare ground and started tucking in the rice, and again he mashed up a lump of rice in his fingers and kept stretching them out and back in to feel the stickiness, and again like a new born who just learnt to stretch out his fingers, he would giggle out with joy and kept doing it in hope to find something more. After having played with his food for much time, he undid his bundle and stretched out a tattered sheet on the ground; unbundled himself and did as intended – stretched himself out. For a last brief moment before having dozed off he felt the gravel lying all around him and heard its crunch.

Then he just slipped off into the world he aspired to! All that was dark suddenly came to life…. The open sky had a strange hue of freedom… The home he lived in was earthy in complexion. In his fantasy, he walked among the grasses and crops that had a restless tinge about them, a sort of playful pigmentation; the buffaloes grazed somewhere nearby and a mere look towards them made it clear they were of a lazy solid tincture; leaves and twigs of bush around his field swayed with the winter breeze and looked intoxicatingly saturated; and the gravel among which they grew were heavily undertoned.

If truth be told, this was his fantasy, his fancy, his dream and that was the best he could do. When awake he had to use four of his senses to understand the hues of the beautiful world around him, which he couldn’t name, but when asleep he made up for the one sense he didn’t have.

His dreams was where he saw, his dreams was where is envisioned his sensations of the worldly escapades, his dreams was where his had not bounds to his vision. He didn’t have to name every hue he saw, so long as he felt it right….. But his dreams was where he saw COLOUR.

The Toxic Femme

Her intoxicating beauty,
The greed to hold her close.
Her aroma and her fumes,
Drawing you outdoors.

That enlightening experience
That sigh which you exhale
That fire of passion
Her allure making you pale.

Feeling winded from inside,
Making the thoughts to twirl
That aimless stare at her,
And charring of your curl.

Is she a witch...
Or a magician...
Or is it a phoenix...
Rising again from it's ash...
Or just something you renew
To escape the worldly lash!

Heavenly Tail / The Wilderness

As I sat on my woody perch,
Among the bales of hay,
Waiting eagerly
For the end of another sunny day,
I saw the fading daylight
Filtering through the canopy of trees,
And watched patiently
The home-coming of the ill fated bees.
On the west horizon, The tyrant sun
was reduced to a mere smear,
And the anxiety rose in me,
As I saw it disappear.
Suddenly there was blackness
All over, in the farms,
In the barns,
In all the wild wilderness.
My wait was over -
What was about to unfold
In the wild and the untame,
Was what I longed for -
Twas an extraordinary game.

Like always,
The 'Beasts' were first to arrive,
Oblivious to the fact, that
At the end of the game,
It may not survive.
In the moonlit night
Their fur shone brightly,
As they glided along the wilderness
E'er so slightly.
Hunting for bees, and nibbling on comb
With it's paws - sharp and strong,
Hoping to feed with it
The Young Cub - tugging along.

Saving the stares of the uncouth beasts,
Crawled in the hindsight, an unwelcome guest.
He was The Predator Of The Beasts,
Handsomely dressed in a kilt and a vest.
Bears in his focussed mind,
And eyes full of tempest,
He had to make his Kill
Before the moon went down in the west.

The three metal studs in his belt
Were all that shone in the dark;
To conceal that too,
He made his refuge behind the thickest bark,
And from his shelter, he looked upon
The bear and the cub who larked.
And held his movement and his breath
To make hiss presence unharked.

His dagger dangling from his belt,
He pranced to make his kill.
Alas! he couldn't 'cause
He froze as if taken ill.
Dumbstruck
Astounded
Spellbound
By the beauty and the flair
Of the fur and tails
Of the beasts that shone so bright,
With his eyes popping
And jaw dropping
He stood there all night.

The distance never neared
As if 'twas the light of their fur
That he feared.
He watched them growing faint
And felt himself becoming frail,
The last to leave the sight
Was the brightest of all -
The Cub's Tail.

It's almost dawn and
It seems the game is over.
But something tells me,
He'll look for vengeance from the beast,
Lest, again, the beauty bowls him over.

Programmed

Being an android ain't easy. Especially when you can see and feel the world around you go smooth and fine, while you creak about in tin-shells. Not a finger could move without a jerk, and mind you, I don't even have the pleasurable jerks despite so many of them.

The same work everyday, every week, week after week; And why so? 'Cause people liked my work. I mean, I am an android, can't possibly have much variation to my job, its monotonous and I've perfected it since I was born or rather made.

Feel like I am programmed, which I am, but still, answering cues, taking orders, doing chores is all I have in life. Don't even havve enough rejuvination time to charge myself up between two acts. Just me, rolling in and out, and watching the world enjoy at my expense. I need a break from these cues and orders, these chores and this work, this tin-shell apprel, these jerky moves.

But what can i possible do??!! It's been months like this now, since the day this wretched play was written and this android sketched. Since then, from curtain rise to curtain fall I am an android...... and beyond the curtain I am PROGRAMMED!

Freedom - "Paid For"

It's been like this for days now, these overcast, grey skies, hazy climate and morose lights. Everytime I look through that window, day or night, cloudy or sunny, the same of train of thought runs through my mind and soul - My Daughter.

She loved looking endlessly out of that window, towards the sky. Day in and day out, all she did was, sit in the rusty, creaky chair and stare at the sky. But, she really had little choice than do that - barred from attending school, as good as jailed an the house, she had no friends, nor any siblings. Here, endless eye-wandering, looking at "free" birds fly, were her only means or quanta of hope. Suffering a punishment for someone else's ill deeds, being grounded and the confinement was getting her no where; nor doing any good to her nerves. That longing for freedom could be seen in the eyes; the ones I dared not meet for the fear of seeing a deserved hatred in them. There were moments when a cuckoo or a sparrow would fly by and she would smile genuinely with a twinkle in her eye. I longed to see her like that for long, but I wasn't the decision maker.

To keep her couped up in the house, for social stigma, was the ill-fated girl's fathers decision, my husband's decision.

Being a lady and of gentler heart than my husband, I could feel the pain of her physical chains owing to paralysis and the mental chains owing to her father's paranoia. When her pain became unimaginable and unbearable to me, "I set her Free".
Precisely why I am in confinement of these grey mossy walls with a singular barred window.

"Cost of Freedom - Freedom"

Heavenly Tale

Picture by Devesh Uba

Splashes of blood,
And stains of flesh;
He goes down bravely
In the red flood.

Armies of the victorious,
Running all amok;
Taking the battlefield
Celebrations are glorious.

The field was turning gently black,
Blotched with mellow red,
With flowing blood of the fallen knight,
Who has the will to fight back.

Joyous is the army bright
Shroud of darkness round,
Beaming, sparkling, radiant,
At the broken warriors flight.

Ignorant in glee and totally unaware
Of the knight's strong will;
At the break of dawn he will be back,
And scuttle the army, with his lambent flair!