Skip to main content

I heard footsteps, or was it feet stoops!


James shook the double rimmed spectacles, gazed through the upper hemisphere, sternly, without a hint of doubt, started, stared, gaped, he could not believe it, removed his spectacles, shaded his eyes with the back of his hands, shoulders hunched, his loosened hands dropped spectacles on to the dark starchy rug on the ground, his attention slacked, senses drooped, his rustic and withered harmonious body twitched, trembled, for a brief pulsating moment, he memorized in his dying memories that he, James was dying, the moment has now come, the moment of elation.

Conscience withdrawn, light turned off, end of a life as I knew it, for what is conscience but a blot of ink on the large canvas of death. A blot attracts a bee that sits on it momentarily, offers in return, a precocious and naive imaginative abilities, and that are we, and we are that, that momentary objects of precarious and inevitable abysmal choices. then the bee leaves, discarded, the blots are now left, less of emotive gradient, cease to imagine, cease to exist, cease to live, as I know it, and I die, to join the limitless background of death, embellishing it, with my blot, inconsequential, for my embroidering is but one in a pool of infinite eventuality.

James wit fully resigned to the life as he knew it, and now he was going to die, gracefully, tenderly. He coughed, puffed noisily, exhaled, slackened his muscles, readied himself, propped his back on one of the legs of the chair, sat with his back against it, and coughed incessantly spitting phlegm from the deepest of his lungs, through his nose. He bled almost promptly adjudicated, profusely decorated his person, for what would be remembered as his dead body by those near and dear to him, quite a statuesque effeminate figurine sprouting blood, phlegm, ticking torturously, paunch pulsating vigorously, bloody smeared face, facade of mighty repulsiveness, he would make it, yes, and his untruly living embodiment of life, as it is known, sincerely regretted, ceased to be him, he ceased his conscience, or was it the other way?

Footsteps, or was it feet stoops, I heard, gingerly, straight jacketed limbs approached solemnly, grieving, burying, purposefully mourning, dejection raising above the corridors of uncertainty, they deplored the inimitable countenance at stake, he smoothed his palms, rubbed against each other for warmth, she tugged on to him closely, rested her head on his shoulders, still staring, without blinking an eye at the corpse, stroked his chin, he pulled her close to him, wrapped his hands around her, kissed her, she perspired, he dried her forehead with his naked palms, she kissed the back of his palm. I am watching, contemplating, the design works beautifully, the dramatic intervention strikes at the eleventh hour, unprecedented, and the conscience is withdrawn, blankness, but, I knew it, I readied myself to become the 'one' -'death', to live in death, painfully I declared resentment in those 'in-situ' stages of conscience, but I learnt later, realization horrified me at first, then I realized, for there was no realization, but the 'knowing' or 'not knowing' it. 'It', the death, yes, and I knew it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where British Steel met the Nubile Cultural Beauty.

Noughties have been a delight. My life began; I might be tempted to say-just as any other city’s did. But the fact is that my life began when angry gentlemen threw spades at each other. In sixteenth century, my rulers at Golconda founded me. Musi, my artery ran through me fresh and clear embellishing me for years. When plague besieged me portentously, my rulers wove one of the most beautiful monuments in India-Charminar, adorned me with the crown. But before the incumbent rulers at Golconda could flourish in the shadows of the great crown and meadows of the fecund land, Nizams defeated them in a battle. What was to come next, I would not have contemplated at that time, but looking back, I realise that the Nizams watered those shrubs of culture that sporadically rose in the rule of my previous rulers. What was to be quoted by Dr. Ambedkar after my inclusion in the united India - as home to all the riches and culture, so good to take upon the capital city status for a united India - grew...
2 comments
Read more

Chowmahalla Palace

It was the morning after my wedding. The dark peachy coloured blinds on my windows were still drawn; the maid with pigtails had retreated after laying down the morning’s breakfast on the thickly lacquered table. Stepping down from the cot, silk thread from my morning dishabille was stuck in the headrest’s broad eagle wings; it threatened to steal away my modesty. Gathering the folds around my knees, I restored propriety before slipping my feet into the glint slippers. The flower vase in the patio shone its tinselled mouthful of white roses that caught sun voluminously. In the garden that night, sitting alone, with the full moon perched in the pool water before me, I recalled the incident and the man who had turned me into a woman. The day before my wedding, a painter had been called. I met him in the courtyard; he was seated on a backless piano chair. Neatly perched on the easel was the drawing board, and from behind it, with tapered quills, greeted a man with sagebrush moustache. Th...
1 comment
Read more

Doused with life

Kiran was only eight years old when the incident occurred. He was walking home tired and hungry, sweeping the tar road with his eighty rupees worth new shoes as he walked on completely exhausted. His school bag, he hung it up his head and lunch box was suspended to his right shoulder. The year was 1984; India had just won the world cup. Kids were playing cricket in every street and by lane of the city. The cycle repair man was pulling the air filled tube through a bucket of water to check for the air leaks, the tall man Kiran’s neighbour stood by the repair man’s side counting the leaks himself, lest he be cheated. ‘If I can reach the end of the incline before the limping man nearing it from the other side of the road, I will get first rank in class this summer’ Kiran challenged himself. He reached the incline that would ease his harrowing walk from the school to home; he descended down the incline with measured relief and took a left turn at the end of it. He left the limping man behi...
Post a Comment
Read more