Hark! The rhythm

Hark! The rhythm. The pellet drum rattles. The dance begins. The creation, the annihilation, the fleeing in-betweens, and beyond these appar...

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Unsaid

Thousand unsaid thoughts,
And rustling whispers of winds,
Cruise the starlit nights.

Linking with Haiku Horizons

Cruising along

We cruise along the edge,
Tracing the seams,
Swaying carefully,
With the strong currents of time.
A little tip.
A hard fall.


Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Orphaned by cancer

Raivat Kumar.
No, not a very renowned name. Just another homosapien amongst the crowd of billions. Inconsequential perhaps but probably notable for family and us friends.
Raivat lost his mother that day. Rather his mother lost the battle against cancer and yielded to the tyrant malignancy. One more instance of death by cancers. Won't alter the statistics drastically. But will definitely be tumultuous for Raivat and his younger brother. To unimaginable degrees.
One moment, she was there. Sick, pale, weak, failing but present, warm and breathing. Her heart beating, though erratic but pounding beneath that hospital gown. The next, she wasn't.  Cold and stiff but absent. No breathing. No rising and falling diaphragm.  No heartbeat. Not even a faint one. A pin drop silence in vacuum. Sudden, swift, screaming silence.
Raivat clasped her fingers in his own. But she did not squeeze them back. He shook her but she did not stir. He called her but she did not respond. The heart negated the lack of stimulus, sleep, exhaustion and the likes of it. But the brain had processed the workings of electrocardiogram. Silently, the truth had seeped in. His eyes blurred. Tears stained his cheeks. And he made no effort to wipe them away. Perhaps his tears would bring her back from dark lands. Perhaps she would want to wipe away his tears one last time. Perhaps. But there were many perhaps lurking in her untimely death.
The flames on the pyre flared. Sublime now, the elements consumed her. Each claiming his share. A few hours later, she was reduced to a handful of ashes. A handful of ashes. Nothing accompanied her. Her needles. Her crotchet. Her spectacles. Her sewing machine. Her pestle. Everything stayed behind. Reminders of her being. Reaping of her life. He looked at the smoldering ashes and wondered if her memories of life spent with them would accompay her in her journey. Or had they turned to wisps of smoke with her? Did she think of them in her dying moments? Had she wanted to tell them something? Had she speculated her end? Had it pained her to leave this life behind? The questions hung heavy over the sooty remnants.
For a few days, he ached to hear her voice in the empty house, living in flashbacks. But then he adapted himself to the silence. To the misshapen rotis and cold daal cooked uncaringly by the maid. To no one bothering about his day. To the void around him. To the numbness. Ofttimes he sat like a retard, not comprehending his present sans her wisdom. Other times, he let his grief wash him over.
Someday he would marry some girl. But his mother would not be there to welcome his wife. There would not be that  adorable nagging between his mother and wife. No insecurities about daughter-in-law.  She would not be there to play with his kids. To tell them tales and sing lullabies for them. To teach them  pearls of wisdom. Would his kids ask him about his mother? For them, she could easily be a star in the sky or some beautiful angel. For him, a huge hole in his heart that will never heal. A picture on wall. A photograph in some album. A hand in his hair. Extra ghee on his roti. Homework on his school notebooks. Words when his voice failed him. Anger when he did something wrong. Pride and joy on his achievements.
So much unsaid. So much undone. So much unseen.  But one fine day, cancer came knocking and swept her away. Just like that. A flicker called life humbled forever.
That day, Raivat lost his mother. Raivat Kumar. A speck amongst a billion others.