TERRACOTTA TRANCE

Moulded beautifully into curves and edges
My dreams had their own palette of colors.
Some black, some white, some grey, some red
Some saddened, some gay, some thoughtful
And yet some shallow
My dreams had their own set of beliefs.

But each had a life of its own,
Photographic moments in them
My thoughts had their own place to dwell.

Some dawns turned into evenings
While I burned them slowly
In broad daylight, and some
Melted in my mind
Quietly into memories.
And even some remained there
Passively enough but lighting the path
That is taking me to the destination
That my earthy dreams are making since.

SILENT SCREAMS

“Hush everyone!” The English teacher of the third standard of B.H. Public School silenced the noisy class. Rimi, sitting in one corner of the classroom, oblivious of her surrounding stared through the open window, gazing at the trees. The leaves dancing in the mild breeze calmed her inside.

“Open your textbooks.” The English teacher said. And after around forty minutes the last lesson of the day was over. The last bell rang and all the children rushed to their respective buses, cheerful, shouting and laughing aloud. Rimi tip-toed towards her bus. Among her friends in the bus she felt like the marooned sailor in an island without a game to score.

After lunch she heard her uncle in the other room laughing aloud to a joke that her father cracked. The afternoon nap with her mother beside her makes her feel relaxed and protected to a great extent. And after the badminton sessions every evening she often comes tired but she is bound to study with her uncle while her mother watches her favorite TV series and her father manages his accounts or goes to the market. Deepak uncle hasn’t married yet and lives with their family as he is the closest cousin of her father and his business partner. And Deepak uncle is the one in the family who takes care of Rimi’s lessons too. Almost every evening. But the little girl has been silenced to a great extent since a few days. She does not understand that touch on her shoulders that slips down to her underwear while her uncle teaches her. His hand stops only at certain places in her body. She felt some kind of an unknown agony and her heartbeats became faster when she felt that intimidating thing between her uncle's thighs. Now her vulnerable soul was at the mercy of a dirty sensation almost every evening. Her innocence housed within her vulnerable soul was getting more and more acquainted with her own body that she had never explored before. Her uncle's hands threw her body shivering in a furnace of burning fear. She felt exposed to a merciless being, felt bare in a sense that she had never felt. If only she could cry, if only she could understand what the touch meant. If only she could ask her mother about it. Why is she stopping herself from asking her mother? She does not know any of these answers. She is terrified. She looked for god, but her god had deserted her. Like a bird that flutters when its wings are cut, she fluttered in her uncle's dirty gaze that penetrated deep down her soul. 

Years went by. She reached high school and learnt what womanhood is. She understood what it means to be a woman in the society and even today the lamp within Rimi flickers with fear, the tragic marks of a strange fire burn her still.  A gush of pain leaves her heartbroken even when she laughs. Many a times she feels haunted by a powerful stench of terror, a brutal hand and a dirty face that she loathes from her heart. The heaviness that she carries within has turned out to be the biggest burden of her life. The sobbing never helps, maybe screaming will. But after so many years? It seems like yesterday although it happened ages ago. When she was a little child. When she played with dolls and flowers. When she did not have the courage to let her mother know or when the words 'rape' and 'molestation' were not in her vocabulary. Today if Deepak uncle had been alive she would have made him answer for her tears. Maybe she would have screamed, maybe she would have lodged a police complaint or maybe she would have cut his dirty hands. As she chops vegetables she imagines what it would have been like to chop off her uncle's hands or that strange thing that penetrated her mind deep down!

Rimi is now the mother of two beautiful daughters. She has made it sure that her daughters never keep a secret from her. Her daughters are yet to be women but Rimi has made them understand how cruel the society is. She keeps them bound to her love and protection in the safest sense. Because one day they too will grow up and she does not want them to weep silently at night, under a dark canopy filled with immortals who wouldn't care much for their sadness. Rimi does not let any forbidding touch soil her daughters' smiles. She sees to it that they fly high, free from all peril under a blue sky devoid of despair.

TERABITHIA

She keeps her mind wide open, and dreams

She smiles, deep in thought, feeling

The air around her…

The endangered rope that hung from an ancient tree

She holds on to that and swings.

 And he swings too!

And they swing one by one and lands

On Terabithia!

 

She runs…and he runs…

And here they reach this battered old car

Shhh! There must be the dark lord here

And he would hear them…

“But we do not fear him!” they say.

Here is the tree house,

worn out in the sands of time.

But now it is their castle

Guarded by the dragon-fly warriors

From the giant squirrels and red-eyed vultures.

The dark lord would not hurt them,

For he is weaker than her and him,

The queen and king of Terabithia

Who freed his slaves to the songs of the wind.

Climbing high on the trees they can see the whole land…

The blue stream flowing with golden fishes

The magical mountains and the pine trees

The land of magical Terabithia

Open to their shimmering eyes and their beautiful minds!

P.S. The poem is based on the magical adventures of two children who build their own space away from the world they live in as represented in the motion picture BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA which is adapted from the novel with the same name by Katherine Paterson and published in 1977. The adventures are metaphorical but leave a deep impact in the viewer’s mind.

3:03 a.m.

November 26, 2013

ESCAPE II

A voice…from far away…

Shutting the windows of my mind

It is a soft, caring voice…

Killing the voids in my heart

It is a promising voice.

Like the sunrays of the late evening sky,

Like the shimmering stars of the galaxy,

Like the unforgiving broken promises of love,

Like a nomad’s curse for a mirage…

Such strong feelings this voice inculcates

In the listener’s heart.

Afternoons like the dove’s feathers,

Nights like the scarlet rose-petals,

Those days thus went by.

Exciting mistakes and unforgettable regrets to make…

A love beyond human understanding.

A HEAVY NUMBNESS

Dry leaves scattered all over

on the pathway

Withered, pest-eaten

Yellow, brown foliage.

And this brings into me

A heavy numbness.

Like the billboard of love

Inviting his women,

Like the mirage in the desert

Inviting thirsty nomads,

Such is destiny for beggars of life

For mothers of stillborn children.

And this in me

Brings a heavy numbness.

SUMMER SMILES

It's a beautiful blue, this color of the sky
as Aurora strikes an arrow
on the silent, sleeping earth
swiftly through the night.

Never did summer bring
such a striking day,
dew-wet grasses to walk upon.

Now I do not await the monsoon
for hails and rain
instead, in the warm morn
see the birds fly towards
dreams unborn!

(5:11 a.m., 24th May '13)

Are they really 'juvenile'?

The last sunset hues have spread throughout the endless sky. It had been a busy, tiresome day in the college. A while after some rest, two of my friends and I decided to eat out. As we walked past a Government Boys’ School, one of my friends cried “Ouch!”. When asked, she said that she had been pelted on her back with a stone. We looked back with a hope to find the culprit and lash him with strict words of discipline; only to see many school boys hanging around. It was difficult to point at someone randomly. Discussing how mischievous children can be we headed towards a roadside food stall. We were of the agreement that we could have taught the person a lesson had we known who he was and to lighten up our moods, started eating some delicious snacks.

Suddenly, two adolescent boys who overheard our conversation came up to us and said, “Didi, hum jaante hain kisne mara. Hum dikha sakte hain aap logon ko.” (Sister, we know who has done that. We could direct you to him).

 He was a little boy, hardly eleven years of age. With a hope to teach him a lesson and reform his ways we approached him in a stern, but not angry manner. We enquired as to why he had done that and his reply was not in the affirmative. He denied having done any misdeed. We warned him not to lie and that we could go to the police to lodge a complaint against him for his mischief. However this ploy was just to scare him and we did not actually mean it. But up came the horrifying answer from a boy who was almost ten yours younger to us. “Main chota hun…mere upar koi case nahi lag sakta. Police kuch nahi kar payenge!” (I’m a juvenile and no case can be registered against me. The police would never punish me.)

Just a month has passed after Nirbhaya’s gang rape. People are still protesting against the rapists nationwide and newspapers are still writing articles to bring a reform in the Indian Constitution about the Juvenile Law. And here in front of us a juvenile freely does whatever he wants and says that he would not be punished for anything he does by the law. We, three women, stood horrified. The ‘Nirbhaya case’ not only made people terrified and aware, but also made a section of adolescent people worse. This section realized that however gruesome and brutal act they commit, they would not be punished by the law if they are below eighteen years of age.

This might seem like a mere incident but if such incidents are not taken seriously today they will grow into bigger incidents in a few years, such boys will become men and commit heinous crimes. The eleven year old boy’s statement proves that if he could do this mischief today, he might rape or murder people after a few years if his mindset grows in the manner it is growing today. Surprisingly enough many young boys do not fear the police and the law anymore.  They have realized that the law is too shaky in this country, the police lenient, greedy and to some extent anti-women. They understand the Juvenile Law in a way that makes them more prone to commit crimes. If such incidents and worse than this continue to happen with women more and more ‘Nirbhayas’ will see their fates sealed, denied justice, and more and more rapists will walk freely on the streets of India.