By:- Mushtaque B Barq
A sleaze ball
fancy giggled the partially parched mind; the current that was so strapping
from the back doors of the semi consciousness settled in. What metamorphosis!
This majestic globe was just précised to a dot in the park wherein, grass and
grasshoppers were nakedly narrating their naughtiness. With their gestures so weird and strange, few
leaves from the nearby tree had shed their frill. And down the lane a few
wanton boys followed as their playmates had long been locked. The weather took an ugly turn, the sun moved like a kid under the
breast of clouds to share the grief and thunders broadcast the agony. “There is a sorrow that lingers in old parks”,
the old man said, looking around wistfully. He is yet another fallen leaf from
the branches of the family. Wrapped in
rags, this feeble frame was too heavy to be carried on, the grief on his face
had along settled down as his wrinkles were narrating saga of his sadness. A
fallen leaf on his shoulder was not all a mismatch, but a pictorial
representation of his veracity. “Let somebody lift this mount of me”, he
yelled. For there were only kids around and everything in them was a thrill. He
was flocked round and examined by those innocent eyes carrying a ray of
naughtiness to tease when compassion would have been employed. He was lifted like a sac and bundled in a
corner under the tree that like him was shedding leaves occasionally.
The wandering
kids had their half pants at their bases torn and like old man’s shirt near his
shoulders, but covered by withered leaves. What harmony between the hunger and
heed. The fallen leaves shrouded both need and the heed. A few shamelessly
glued at their bases but failed to stay on the shoulder. Shoulders must have
been taken to toil and the fragility around was just an accidental whiff. The
rain brought down few postcards reading his tale of worries and the storm with
its carry bag knocked every door to drop the mail. Most of the people fail to
read between the lines for their eye glasses were already broken into pieces because
their own pieces were scattered by the roar of the clouds. These clouds are
scary; they take the life out of the cage. Merciless! Moreover, despondent
coins from the city of ether banged the already bald head of the old man
waiting for an out of order umbrella. The weather brought back unrest in the
park where the old man and the kids had nothing to fall back upon save the
giggle and the glare.
Kids are funny
things. They weep and laugh for the reasons they only know. In one voice,
beating the rain and combating with the storm, a coil around the old man they
made. One holding the other, one giggling the other, one teasing the other, one
pulling the other and one naughty reaching the privacies of the other making a
human fence . The movement up in the bowl and the wrestling down the Dale was on
the whole poles apart to send a signal of relief. He cried, “Where must my sons
be?” His words irritated the vacuum of the kids and in reciprocation a few made
ill faces, a few just laughed and the rest of them were still roaming in fancies to portray the
fate. The naughtiest among them responded, “They like our parents must be
ignorant.” The old man raises his head and they just fixed his eyes on him, he
was about to say something when all of a sudden a spell of chill turned his
words into a vapour and he only sighed.
They made around him a pulsating umbrella. The old man under the umbrella of love looked
like a hen in the pen ready to incubate the eggs. Eggs, of course, but not of
the human race, of but aliens, for human eggs have no shells, they move with
the flow and leave, leaving their own race. Human eggs have rich yolk, but fragile shells.
We are all but eggs, luck ones find the pen to get hatched; unlucky ones are on
to peck from the heap of dust to produce a race that in the backyard of the
temple perform inhuman rituals. And produce for the dust bins. What a
discovery! These dustbins in a corner of the park are still waiting for the
morsels, in their infinite belly baskets, the sins and sensitivities are
nursing the worms, these scavenging tiny balls that finally fill their
miniature bellies and compel the decomposed tissues of a sinner to travel
through the darkest and the longest pathways of their innards just to mark the
end of the man who leaves the old man in the park.
He opened his
arms, and broke the rim of the umbrella; a boy , immediately pulled his arm and
forced him to be fixed at his chest. He
felt his palpitation; it was not at all different from his own. Full of wishes,
copious with needs and equally painful.
“Are you looking
for eggs in my bony breast?” the old man asked.
Laughter under
the human umbrella died soon when the boys reached his pockets to find what all
they needed. His pockets like him were
full of agony, empty and wet.
“We hate eggs”,
they responded.
“No, we cannot
hate eggs as we too are eggs, human eggs”, he responded.
“Where is our
yoke, where are our shells, let you show us?” the naughtiest asked.
“If at all I
tell you, you will break your shells and your yoke shall but only serve the
worms”, the old man announced.
They looked at
each other and all of a sudden folded their arms and exposed the old man under
the weeping sky “Don’t go, stay here”, he tried to plead them. The wind hardly
reads the post.
“We are looking
for the yoke to save our shells”, the naughtiest remarked.
Beating his
stripped body, the wind brought down a limb of the tree to break the shell of
yet another human egg.
Mushtaque B Barq is a columnist besides a poet and short story writer. His earlier translation work: Mystic Voices of Kashmir , Verses of Wahab Khar , The Wings of Love were published by Jay Kay Books and Withered Petals was published by Global Fraternity of Poets His poetic collection is available on Poetry Soup and Poem Hunter.Com. He teaches English Literature and is associated with various literary clubs and forums. The author was awarded ‘Editor’s Choice Award’ for outstanding achievement in poetry presented by Poetry.Com and International Library of Poetry in 2007. In 2017, the author was awarded with a certificate of Appreciation in recognition of his poetry being published in The Criterion: An International Journal in English in February 2017. The author’s publications are available in New Age Islam , Shabnama.faiz-e- zabaan- org., Kashmir Lit ( On line journal of Kashmir and Diaspora writing)and The Tibet Journal. Author is a regular columnist of Daily Kashmir Images, his column ‘Creative Beats’ is a regular feature of his writing. His short story collection : Feeble Prisoner, Aditiya Publications has been appreciated by readers. The author was awarded Late Ab. Rashid Farash Memorial Award by HF Foundation. He is a member of Jammu and Kashmir Fiction Writers Guild