She would be 9 or 10 years old. Sitting outside her makeshift house, her elbows slept on her arched haggard legs and her head topped her crouched self. She was lost in her own ruminations, held to the deepest of them and I couldn't pursue any of my thoughts that trooped inside my head to read her mind. But I could see clearly that she was devotedly mulling over something intense, something far older than her age and far gloomier than her face and that she was troubled.

A woman falls out of the gate to the house, down to the floor close to where the girl is sitting.

Her mother, she is wounded but crawls in no time over to her daughter to immune her betwixt her bangle clad hands. Scared, she moves to peep inside into her own house, her quivering eyes raiding the place for signs of terror when her drunk husband barged out in her face. Balancing on unmeasured steps and breathing anger, he was instant. He grabbed his daughter, like we suddenly pounch on a paper to prevent it from flying in the air. He lashed her cheeks thrice before shoving her besides the 'chulha' on the cemented saddle to make 'rotis' for him.

Now, her mother was thinking and this time I knew what thoughts spoke to her.

He was sitting on the window seat, leaned mostly. The train had been false to its much applauded flaring speed and was travelling too slowly to attract everyone’s disgust. There was a continued chaos in the train, infants crying out loud, newspapers being folded and being read and ringtones that varied on a wide spectrum, from the typical Samsung one to US band songs to ditties that praised the god. Around him, the people were all hidden behind books, one enslaved amid Amitav Ghosh’s creations while one was devouring the end of a thick novel, the name of which he could not see. He was thinking of his future, trying to steal that one thumb rule of life that would ensure him a successful and victorious future although he was wise enough to know that life was never meant to be walked on one thumb rule. He had the Ernest Hemingway’s ‘old man and the sea’ in his bag and thought to pull it out to keep in harmony with the vicinity but those iterating fears of a pale future kept clinging his head and he kept striving for that one thumb rule.
That was when the writer instinct in him slackened out and he drifted into the portal of reveries. The fears which he was coercing himself to abandon had all fallen apart and before he knew, he was framing stories one after the other. Stories came up to him like someone turning the pages of a notebook in his mind and he was just reading them up. He would think of a couple, their love unconditional like a free flowing river, rejuvenating like hazel but their puerile judgments on each other are a barricade in their trust to marry or he would envisage the story of a vendor who had lost his daughter at a railway junction. He knows that many of the tales are naive and embryonic but he dreams and believes that one day he would stitch them all together to weave a story of the world for the world.

* the old man *

Amid the sky's tinted orange stains,
the sun was being devoured by the mountains.

Under the dusk sky walked an old man,
watching him over, the poem thus began.

Alone, the old man was walking not, down the desolate lane,
his grandson, he was carrying on his back pain.

The infant's tiny fingers were teasing the deep wrinkles of the old man’s face,
while the old man's weak fingers combed his  grandson's scantily haired scalp.

As they walked along, the child got lonelier like those tall trees,
for the old man drifted back to his jolly young memories.

The evocative memories of the old man always had her,
she, who never did break their promise of being together.

She was true; it was her illness that served the barricades,
alias their love would have chuckled for decades.

It was the very lane on which they went for an evening stroll, she and him,
a stroll that had always pampered their love under the sky going dim.

The old man walked the road like a river flows its awry way,
he knew every turn that kept deranging the road's array.

The old man halted to feed the swift, mob like pigeons,
these pigeons might also be remembering her, he envisions.

*only if dreams could breathe in the bright*

Dreams always fool us. First they will barge into our sincere sleep, cause us to mingle with them, to unite with them and then they die incomplete with the first yawn of the morning.
Ruthless, they are. A mantle so grand they will build, it will belittle every realm of the vast sky, a story so untold they will narrate, you will love it as you love a new born.
The night gets raven, the dreams get tyrant. They will conquer you, they will consume all of you. You will wander in the alleys of your dreams, your mantle will shimmer so bright as to beckon you, your story will bicker so loud to urge you to scribble it.

But the night travels swiftly to its end. The dreams fall weak, the alleys seem ethereal,  the palace fades away, the enthralling story dies an insignificant story as you go and see the sun.

a story - part I

“Disperse out guys, be quick and nimble,” she directed her team. She headed the force to vanquish the human trafficking menace that had trampled upon the lives of many innocent children. The children had those shitty blotches on their hands, the stamps, the seals that proclaimed of their enslaved childhood.

Her prismatic visage had however always belittled her dexterity at her duty. Her confident caring eyes, her smiles, some being restrained to bulge out her cheeks, some being benevolent enough to part her lips. She was the right matchstick to annihilate the dense forest of that menace, I will second anyone in that. but I hated her, I always had contempt for her till that one day.

“Boss, you disappear through it,” that squad has again trailed us.” And you all, he commanded again, you all will follow me. He was an enigmatic character. A gentleman at heart, he propelled inhumane deeds.

A naive or puerile, he was not but today, today his judgement and strategy, both had toppled. The squad had encircled them and they all did flap for a run away but in vain. They were all caught and she started nearing him, the gun checking him out for her.

* bless *

We had to attend a function at night and so I was before mom nagging her that it is just a function for elders and that I will be left alone idling with my phone there. Actually, it was a formal function for 2 days to toast the 50th marriage anniversary of a couple. 
The next moment the phone blurted loud. It was the bride herself on the other side.
“Ekta, you will have to come with your family, you know I may or may not live to invite you a next time.” These were the bride's unabridged words as she conversed. I came to know that she was suffering from cancer which has advanced to its IV stage.
For the next few minutes, many thoughts trailed and gashed inside my head and I kept thinking how a person can live when he knows that all the glimpses flipping around him could be his last ones.
During the function, for the whole time, she had a transcending calmness embellishing her visage. The tumor had stretched out to her stomach and she was enduring intermittent but agonizing pain for the last few days but she hid it all with her serene, perennial smile. She even accompanied the guests on their outings.
Later I came to know this total jolly gathering was stemmed from her children’s thoughts that it would be a good thing if their mom could see all her well wishers all at the same time under one roof.

I just hope she be blessed for every second she breathes